The Ruby Magician

"Excuse me, Wyn!" John called, narrowly evading Wyn in the foyer while jogging. "I still have to get ready!"

"You're never ready on time," Wyn said, "why start now?"

John turned around and made an annoyed face at Wyn, then continued on to their wing of the guild house. He almost hit another member - someone in Nigel's team - and muttered an apology while not stopping.

Wyn shook his head then looked around. Others were hurrying about the Dawn's Light guild house, too, all scrambling one direction or another. Some of them were still in their civilian clothes and some had on their armor or other pieces of equipment to climb, but none were fully prepared.

Was no one ready to actually start the new season?

"There you are," Marcy said, walking up to Wyn. "Where have you been? And what are you holding?"

Wyn looked down at the wooden crate he held with both hands. "I left early to go see Benedict about a rush order. He secured us some badges for the guild! What do you think?"

Marcy reached inside the crate and pulled out a wooden badge a bit smaller than her palm. She turned it over several times, inspecting it, then nodded her approval. "I like it! How did I not know about these?"

Wyn set the crate down and pulled out one of the badges for himself. Looking it over, he was happy with the final product. The badge consisted of an image over their guild name. The picture was a simple depiction of a yellow sun with wavy orange beams, while the guild name was black. There was a slot through the badge that allowed a single pin to be placed, allowing it to be worn on most pliable clothing. Wyn thought it looked great, and was more than pleased with how they turned out.

"Cedric ordered them through Benedict, who was able to piece them together in just a few days. Apparently using magic to carve and create small non-magical items like this is relatively simple, if not a bit more expensive than when not using magic."

Marcy took the badge and fastened it against her tunic. "I guess I've been a bit preoccupied. Though they really do look great."

Wyn knew she had been spending more time with Faye, but he was happy she was taking some personal time. She hardly ever took any time for herself outside of climbing or helping her students.

"I want us to wear them when we aren't in our climbing gear. And we decided on badges instead of patches so if future students want them, they can buy them and wear them without something more permanent like sewing it onto clothing."

Another person nearly ran into Marcy, and she called out after them. "What in the hells is going on?"

Wyn smiled. "I told the team leaders to have their teams ready at nine o'clock sharp for a quick briefing before we go to Alistair together to start our climbs for the day."

Marcy looked at the clock resting on the wall beside them. Her eyes rose in alarm. "That's in ten minutes!"

"And you have none of your climbing gear on! I'd hurry if I was you - don't want to be late for your first guild meeting, after all."

Marcy cursed then took off running to their wing. Wyn couldn't help but laugh.

The guild members weren't like soldiers who were trained to be timely with getting ready or even getting up early. But it was nice to see they cared about wanting to make the meeting. Or at least they mostly did, anyway.

He reminded the other leaders that morning that he had mentioned the meeting during the festival the night before, but none of them remembered except Arabelle. They were all too drunk, while Arabelle didn't drink. Having witnessed firsthand their father's drunkeness, she refused to partake at all. Wyn was a bit more lax but admittedly wasn't around his father nearly as much. Though he never drank enough to get drunk.

Some loud clanking and noisy people drew Wyn's attention to his right, and he smiled seeing Arabelle and her team walking out to the foyer. All dressed in their climbing equipment.

"Good morning, brother," Arabelle said, her lips wide in a smile. "What a beautiful day to climb Alistair!"

"Have you been outside?" Wyn asked. "How do you know it's a beautiful day?"

"Because we're in a guild!" Adam said, excitedly clapping his hands together. "Even if it's pouring rain this is a wonderful day!"

Arabelle shrugged and pointed to Adam. "Exactly!"

Wyn laughed again. "Fair enough! Here are your badges. If you can't get them on your equipment, don't worry - but I do ask that you wear them when going out in the city. It'll help inform others of our new guild."

Each of them took one, and Wyn tried to stymie a laugh watching Adam desperately try to pin the badge onto his heavy chain mail. Try and fail, repeatedly, though he was very adamant about succeeding.

"Good," a familiar voice called to Wyn's left, "you're here. I thought you had lost track of time."

Wyn turned to see Cedric carrying a small book in his hands, though was already dressed in his climbing gear.

"Just made it with the crate!" Wyn said. "They look great, by the way. Tasha's design was fantastic."

"Excellent," Cedric replied. He opened his book and checked something off using a small runed pen with his ethereal arm. "That's one more item complete! We still have a list of things that need to be done for the week, but we're on schedule at least."

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"That's great. Thank you for taking the lead on that, by the way."

"It's no problem. Daniel volunteered to help once the initial preparations were done, and I plan to let him take over so I can focus on climbing and sorting through the guild's income. It's going to be no small feat once everyone starts paying their portions."

Wyn knew Cedric was being modest. Reviewing the ledger on the rewards the three teams are set to contribute for the first month was going to be a logistical nightmare.

There were what seemed to be an endless number of components involved in the finances to running the guild. Gregory and Caryn had provided an example ledger they used to track the profits and expenses, and Wyn, Cedric, Tasha, Cal, Daniel, Nigel, and Arabelle had reviewed them only briefly the previous night. John, Marcy, and Faye tried, but were too drunk to make any kinds of progress. There were necessary expenses like cleaning fees, food storage, service staff payments, guild house payments and upkeep, some other optional ones like guild vault additions or party budgets, and some extraneous ones like profits from guild fees and additional donations.

It was a lot to review, and Wyn knew he was the wrong person for the job. But as one of the guild leaders, he needed to be at least aware of the coin exchanges. He didn't want them to go under as a guild after just starting. Even if he wasn't the primary person reviewing the numbers he wanted to be aware of what was going on.

They had collectively decided that the first month was going to require more upfront payments, but everyone knew that was to be expected. They wanted to ensure they had a collected amount of coin to keep for miscellaneous expenses, and needed to quickly create and fund that account.

Starting that required each team to donate either half of their earnings for the first week, or five thousand crowns, whichever came first. It seemed like a lot but Wyn had an idea that they could accumulate the sum pretty quickly.

As the time neared their meeting, the guild members started to file into the foyer and Wyn greeted them all. To his delight, everyone showed up on time, even John. Though he was still fastening some of his equipment as he stood with the rest of the guild.

"Thank you all for coming on short notice," Wyn said. "I can assure you this is the only time I'll ask you to meet this early so suddenly. Since we just moved into the guild house and the new season is here, I wanted us to go ahead and get together as a guild."

The group nodded and muttered their approval, though Wyn noted they were far more reserved than the night before at the festival. Which made sense, considering that was historically a huge celebration for Climbers, who all tended to drink and converse well into the night. Most of them were probably hungover or here on little sleep, which made them less enthusiastic about the early meeting.

Wyn didn't care about that, though. He told the leaders during their celebrations the night before he wanted the entire guild to travel to Alistair as one large group and start their climb as a collective guild. They either failed to tell their team, or forgot.

He planned to stick with what he said, and he was doing exactly that. Just because they either didn't believe him or were too drunk to make sure the rest of their team was ready didn't mean they could skip out on the guild's first time together.

Still, he wasn't going to put the blame on anyone. Wyn wanted their first day to be a positive one.

Wyn lightly kicked the wooden crate at his feet. "I brought here your guild badges! You can thank Tasha for the design and Cedric for the arrangements of actually getting them done. Please take one and wear it when you aren't climbing and are out and about in the city, either now or later today after our first climb. Any exposure about our guild is for the better, especially to get people asking questions. Once we start getting some paying Climbers coming to learn, we can start easing off your own payments to the guild.

"Now, I don't expect all of you to climb all day… and honestly, for some of you that probably wouldn't be the best use of your time today." There were several laughs and people pointing fingers, and Wyn couldn't help but smirk. Those taking the brunt of the teasing seemed especially tired.

"But I do want all of us to go to Alistair together and start the new season as one!"

More cheers came from the smaller crowd, and Wyn felt more reassured. He raised his hands to quiet them. "I know your team leaders have gone over the requirements for the first week in the guild, and I also know they're not small. As an incentive and show of good faith, for this week, whatever I collect inside Alistair I'll be distributing back to the guild evenly alongside your own contributions. That way you'll hit your five thousand crowns mark faster and can put more of those coins into your own pocket."

Everyone grew instantly excited at that news, and Wyn understood. His team would likely hit the second tier in a couple of days, and he could possibly give both Nigel's and Arabelle's team a hefty number of crowns each.

"Lastly," Wyn continued, "I have three wagons out front for us, so we don't have to walk the full mile to actually get to the city. So, Dawn's Light, let's climb!"

*****

Arriving in the heart of Alestead as an entire guild was a bit surreal. There were dozens of Climbers already heading to Alistair, and far more citizens walking out and about, but having eighteen Climbers walking as a cohesive group and guild was a sight no one seemed to expect. Everywhere Wyn looked he saw both citizens and Climbers alike pointing and muttering amongst themselves about their guild. Several seemed to wave and clap as they exited their wagons to walk the small distance on the main street to enter Alistair.

"I have a feeling we'll be talked about plenty in the coming days," Cal whispered to Wyn as they entered Alistair's base. "That was no small crowd that saw us."

"Your plan seems to be working," Tasha said. "Word should be getting around quickly about the new guild!"

"Not to mention the flyers being hung in the various halls," Marcy added. "Daniel stayed up all night creating them and said he was going to post them all around."

"Hopefully he takes a few days to recover," Wyn said with a smirk. "He deserves some time to rest, too."

The three teams quickly made it to the portal room past errant Climbers and teams, where Wyn then saw off Nigel's team and then Arabelle's. He looked at his five teammates and took a deep breath. "No time like the present! Are we ready?"

Marcy snickered as she patted Wyn on the shoulder, impatience clear on her face. Without a word she stepped into the portal and the others soon followed.

Stepping through the portal last, Wyn felt right at home as the environment shifted from the pristinely white portal room to one far, far different. He blinked a few times as his eyes adjusted to the change and took in the environment.

It was the middle of the night, and the only source of light was from a single, large moon that glowed with an aura-like silver shimmer directly in the sky above. It provided enough light to illuminate their immediate area, which was a graveyard with headstones scattered about. The ground was hidden under a dense layer of fog, thick enough to obscure the ground up to Wyn's ankles but not enough to cover the path ahead.

Wyn shook his Mushroom Lantern and activated a bright yellow light that pierced through the fog relatively easily, revealing a patchy, grassy and dirt ground.

A soft moaning pulled Wyn's attention to the right, and Marcy already had her bow ready with a glowing arrow nocked. She drew and anchored it to her cheek, then waited for the monster to appear.

Shambling upright, Wyn stared at the monster rising up from the ground in front of a headstone. It looked like a person wearing shredded and dirty simple clothes, and their body was decrepit with mostly bone appearing along with some grey and brown fleshy areas.

Beside him, Tasha laughed.

Marcy released the arrow and it struck the monster in the forehead, causing it to jerk backwards and fall to the ground in a puff of wispy black smoke.

Two more monsters started rising from headstones around it, though they were slow to form.

"I can't believe our luck!" Tasha called, grabbing John's arm in delight. "Zombies!"

Wyn couldn't believe it, either. Zombies, and other undead monsters, were notorious enemies for three reasons. The first was that they came in droves, appearing in dozens in the first few floors up to hundreds in the higher floors, relatively weak but overwhelming if not dealt with swiftly. They were particularly weak to magic which completely killed them, while normal, unmagical attacks only served to temporarily incapacitate them to the point they could rise again.

The second reason was that they dropped absolutely terrible rewards. Regular monsters hardly ever dropped anything, while champions and bosses typically dropped inferior items with the occasional stand out piece.

The third and far more beneficial reason they were notorious was that they were especially vulnerable to divine magic. Instead of being healed, they would be seriously injured. A single Cure spell could annihilate a regular monster throughout the first tier, even seriously injuring a floor boss depending on their makeup. Divine classes and abilities reigned supreme in seasons featuring undead creatures.

And their team mostly had divine abilities. If there was a season to advance to the third tier, Wyn knew this was likely it. While they wouldn't make quite as much money with the floor rewards directly, it evened out by clearing floors faster and more often.

Wyn only hoped the season wouldn't be quite as unique as the recent seasons have been, though he knew it was false hope. There would be twists somewhere along the way. He just wanted to be positive in the times he could afford to be.

Marcy killed the two zombies easily, and the group started walking down the path that was soon devoid of any headstones, formed by a well-worn dirt road. More zombies appeared as they walked in a steady cadence like a consistent but slow stream.

"Let me this time," Wyn said, putting a hand on Marcy's shoulder. He faced the nearest zombie and cast Regen on it. The spell took only a moment to cast, and the zombie was covered in a white aura that disintegrated it over a few seconds as its already sickly body shriveled away.

He repeated the process on the other four zombies around them.

Looking down at his mark after, his mana was still mostly full. Based on experience, it would take about twenty to thirty seconds for it to recover based on the use of Regen several times in quick succession. He could be flexible with it, too, as he recovered completely from empty in four minutes. Ability Link helped duplicate the spell after the first use, too, making the healing spell even more effecient.

Wyn smirked at his teammates. "It looks like this is going to be our season."