The First Mage

It sounded a little silly to say it out loud, but conceptually, an Adventurer Guild was exactly what I wanted. In many fantasy stories, such groups essentially run everything. Governments usually exist, but it’s the guild that protects the people and holds the most power for any potential altercations against monsters or otherwise. Authority over stopping those abusing their powers also commonly falls on them for the same reason. They have offices in central locations, but their branches reach every part of the world they are needed at. And despite their power, they are most often independent. The guild just does its job, without answering to anyone.

The best part for me, however, was that I wouldn’t need to act all high and mighty and call myself “King Miles I, Son of Frank, Defender of Puppies” or any such nonsense. At worst, I would take on a high-ranking position within this institution. At best, I would be just another member. If people wanted to kiss my boots for being powerful, fine, but I wouldn’t have to care about it one bit.

The more I talked about this idea, the more excited I got about it. It was an ambitious one, but it would also be very interesting to put it into practice. Berla on the other hand seemed a little skeptical. Having sat up and lit a lamp, she glanced at me sideways and attempted to follow my ramblings.

“An adventurer would be someone who fights beasts voluntarily then?”

“It’s a rather broad term,” I said contemplatively. “It could technically apply to anyone who regularly travels the Wildlands in a professional capacity. I suppose the name implies the need for an ‘adventure,’ but just coming out here kind of is one already, no?”

“I suppose so, but I was wondering about the ‘voluntary’ part. You know that Fighters don’t usually look forward to risking their lives. I mean, there are some—Captain Lera comes to mind—but they are the odd ones out.”

“Right, but Fighters will always need to hunt beasts. Maybe that’s a better parallel, an adventurer is like a hunter. They need to go out and bring back carcases that can be processed into food, clothes, tools, and so on. Granted, with how much Alarna imports from Cerus, this doesn’t apply as much to them, but still. Someone, somewhere has to gather these materials.”

“Hunters... I see.” Berla nodded in understanding and thought for a moment. “And where does this guild fit in? Hunting parties already exist. They bring their spoils back to their respective towns and the merchants and workers process and sell them.”

“The guild functions as an intermediary between the hunters and the merchants in most cases,” I explained. “They put up a bounty for what they want and the guild forwards these requests to the hunters who bring back the items. Ideally the hunters will be able to always unload raw materials at the guild though, regardless of whether someone is currently looking for them. That guarantees a somewhat regular income. And the guild might also employ workers and merchants themselves, to increase their profit.”

“Wait, does that mean the Fighters aren’t getting a salary?”

“No, they would be paid more like Handiworkers than Fighters. The more they hunt, the more profit can be made from their work and the more they get paid.”

“Hm... You would need them to choose to work for the guild then, right? For some that might sound like a bad deal. The Fighters in Alarna get to live in nice houses for their service, and their pay is rather impressive as well. They live a decent life even if they only stand guard all day, far away from any danger. And given how few beast encounters there currently are, that’s actually most Fighters. If they had to choose between that and putting themselves in danger every day, I doubt many would want to become an adventurer.”

“Yea, you’re not wrong. Though that only applies to a walled-off town like Alarna, which also had the luxury of being able to rely on imports for a long time. Imagine Cerus was gone, then the king would have to send Fighters outside. That’s probably the case for most towns, and might soon happen to Alarna as well. Being a guard won’t be so great anymore in that case. You’ll be forced to hunt whatever they want you to hunt, and whenever they want. If they need you outside for fourteen hours a day straight, you don’t have a choice. The same applies if they order you to hunt down a dangerous threat. A modest person who doesn’t need much in life is put into as much danger as someone who might actually enjoy the fight. Working for the guild, however, they could hunt as much or as little as they want.”

“Right. That makes sense.”

The rough plan I was outlining sounded outlandish to her at first and she appeared to try to find flaws in it, but she was slowly coming around as I gave more and more details. Whether any of this was actually viable, I didn’t know, but I figured we didn’t have much to lose. Nobody needed to know I was basing the entire idea off of various fictional stories I read at some point.

“Let’s assume that would work,” she said, “how would you go about starting something like that?”

“That is a very good question. Not sure yet,” I said, revealing that I didn’t know.

It was a topic you don’t typically think about. What was there in these stories before the guilds were established, and how did they come about?

Berla sighed as she hung and shook her head in exasperation. “So it’s another one of those plans. Well, you’re getting excited and you sound certain, so it will probably work. That’s so weird.”

“Hm? What’s weird?”

“That you’re usually right about what’s going to happen—assuming that you’re aware of what lies ahead that is. It’s one of the reasons we all trust you so much, but it doesn’t seem normal. It’s like a sixth sense. Everything you touch somehow works out.” She chuckled depreciatively.

This statement made me frown, unsure what to think of it. While I appreciated their trust, from my perspective, many of our successes seemed more like luck than anything else. We took calculated risks and fortunately they worked out more often than not, but the way she talked about it, it sounded almost like I was clairvoyant. This was a potentially dangerous mindset.

“People shouldn’t trust me too much,” I said. “I made my fair share of questionable decisions. I’d rather not want anyone to follow me entirely blindly. At least you’re still questioning my plans.”

“I don’t know if questioning is the right word... I want to understand them, but I do usually assume that you know what you’re doing. It might help if you were wrong every now and then,” she joked.

I scoffed sadly. “If Tomar’s mother had been more critical of my ideas, she might still be alive. Isn’t that enough?”

“That was just after you got here, wasn’t it? Back then you could be forgiven for not understanding the danger beasts pose. And you did better after Tomar awakened and you left Alarna. As far as I’m concerned, your track record has been rather impressive since then. You casually decided to take over Alarna and you somehow just made it work for the gods’ sake!”

“That also required quite a bit of work though. And several puzzle pieces needed to be in just the right place for it to go this smoothly.”

“Maybe, but you were certain it was possible from the moment you first mentioned that idea.”

“Well, yea... But... Hm...” I fell silent. I wanted to object and thought back to that moment, searching for an explanation for why I had been so sure my plan would work. After a couple of seconds though, I came to the realization that she wasn’t entirely wrong. My certainty had been sky high even before I had a real plan. I wrecked my brain, but I couldn’t think of a good reason for why I hadn’t questioned my idea back then.

When I didn’t say anything, she eventually prompted me to continue. “But?”

“Actually... You might have a point. I just figured we would make it work somehow. I also had contingency plans later on, but I never expected that we would need them. We also had to pivot multiple times, with Lilana and Cerus and everything. Why was I so confident?”

“Don’t ask me,” she said, shrugging. “But speaking of Lilana, you had a bad feeling about the first meeting with Arax. You were right about that as well.” Giving a negative example was a good reinforcement of her argument. I found it difficult to disagree. “And there were so many little things,” she continued. “Like your deal with Zara. Based on everything you guys told me about her, I didn’t believe for a second that she would leave Riala in your care, but I don’t remember you wavering.”

“No, I didn’t,” I said quietly. “I figured my arguments would probably be good enough. Was that wrong?” I asked myself, staring at the ceiling.

“Seems to me like you were right, they were good enough,” Berla pointed out.

“Yea, but you’re right as well. We’re talking about Zara here. How could I be confident that I’d be able to convince her? And why didn’t I seriously think about this before?”

My usual confidence stemmed from me weighing my options, going with the best one, and hoping for the best, knowing that I had done the best I could. These situations had been a little different though. I had no reason to believe that we’d succeed unconditionally, and I wasn’t an optimist. I now went over this again and again in my head, and it began to weird me out.

“What about the moderators?” Berla suddenly asked.

“Hm?”

“They’re supposed to arrive in two days, and they’ll be about sixty beasts strong. Nobody is seriously concerned about that because you don’t seem concerned. I mean... you’re lying here, thinking about creating this guild, without mentioning them or the gods even once. It’s the same, isn’t it? You feel that everything will be fine. That you can allow yourself to think about other things.”

It wasn’t the first time in this world that I found myself surprised and confused about my own behavior, but this time I could say definitively that I didn’t get this way of thinking from Tomar, and I displayed it before I met Lilana. Once more, I had to agree with Berla.

“I can’t deny it,” I said. “I know there are risks, and there’s no guarantee we’ll win, but I don’t worry about losing. I... just don’t think it will happen.”

Berla chuckled lightly while concerns rose within me. With a grimace, I asked, “Why are you laughing?”

“We’ve been trusting you with our lives so many times, and now you start to worry. Not about the actual threat though, no, about why you weren’t worried more often before. It’s funny.”

“I see what you mean, but this could be important going forward... Were we lucky? Did we make it work? Or is there more to it?” I briefly thought about recent events. “What about Arax... I was sure everything would work out, even though the evidence was against us. And we only won because of Riala gaining new powers in the middle of the fight. Since I didn’t know about that beforehand, I was definitely a little reckless, wasn’t I?”

My mind became clouded with uncertainty. Anyone who thought I somehow knew we would prevail against this monster was trusting me too much. Or were they? At which point would it not be considered luck anymore?

“Two is a coincidence, three is a pattern,” or something like that. I definitely made more than three overconfident decisions that worked out in the end.

Berla watched me with a relaxed and curious expression. “You never thought about this before?”

“Not really. If you’re certain, you’re certain. You don’t usually question it.”

“Hm. The others should probably rather not learn about that. It would undermine their trust.”

“Unless we were lucky against all odds, in which case they should know.”

“Let me ask you then, what are the odds that it was all chance?”

“The odds? That’s difficult to say... ”

“And don’t forget, if you created this world in some former life or something, we don’t know what powers you might secretly have.”

“You think that’s why I know what will work and what won’t?”

“It’s just a theory regarding your sixth sense.”

It was my time to chuckle. She hadn’t always been one to theorize and hypothesize, and I wondered if I had influenced her. Regardless, she was raising good points. I couldn’t say for sure whether I knew more than others somehow, no matter how unlikely it seemed. Even considering it made my head hurt though.

Turning towards me fully, Berla studied my face closely. “You look like you’re going to brood over all this for a while. Take your time, I’m going to check on the others.” She leaned in and kissed me before she made her way over to the door. Her steps were light and unhurried. Without a hint of unease in her voice, she mused, “I hope someone went hunting,” and exited the room.

She left me brooding indeed. I couldn't shake the feeling that something was amiss. Was it normal for people to be this trusting? Even between lovers, it seemed like a lot. But maybe their unwavering trust was a sign that they saw something I didn't yet understand.

“A sixth sense... I don't know,” I muttered to myself, deep in thought.