The warm rays of light hitting Ruby’s face slowly woke her up. She got out the bed, stretching herself and switching her clothes from the pyjama she wore back into the clothes she wore while arriving here, which had been washed since yesterday. Having slept nearly the whole day yesterday gave her an idea of what to do to get these so called heroes to do their job as such. But all her dedication quickly got lost, when she realized that she had no idea where this room she found herself in was located. Suddenly she heard loud noises from right outside her door and it seemed like people were loudly arguing.

“Let’s see, they said something about this being their guest room and that it is located right above the bar… Well either way there is only one door out.” She grabbed her bow and put it on her back, then Ruby gathered all her courage and opened the door to see what all this ruckus was about and what she saw frightened her to the core.

The most wanted person in the kingdom, a serial killer who was known for unspeakable things and his ice cold behaviour, leaving no witnesses of his crimes behind, stood there in the hallway, casually talking to Jamie who wore a pyjama with pictures of cute little bunnies on it. This scene was so bizarre that Ruby needed to pinch herself to make sure she was actually awake and not dreaming.

“Well anyway, so I stand there, completely bathed in blood of my victims and you know who I see? The same little girl from the other town!” As the serial killer told the end of his story, he and Jamie burst out into laughter, hugging each other and patting their shoulders as if they were lifelong friends or even brothers. With tears in his eyes Jamie spotted Ruby and quickly said goodbye to the most wanted man of the kingdom and walked towards Ruby. The closer he got the more details she realized about him, for example his immense eye bags and his one cheek which had a red hand print of a woman on his cheek, apparently he got slapped for something. Jamie yawned as he arrived in front of her.

“Hey there, Dorian told me what was going on. Your name is Ruby right? I will show you around town today and then you can tell me if you want to stay or not.” His words were disinterested and stood in stark contrast to his conversation with the mass murder. Did that mean he rather talked to criminals than to her? It didn’t matter, for now she wanted to set her plan in action.

“No need to wait for my answer. I will live here.” Her words were spoken with confidence and dedication but Jamie’s response was just a shrug as he yawned yet again. “Another mouth to feed, yay…” “Oh no, I wasn’t finished! I will live here, however I don’t intend on living here for free that would be a disgrace to my family! I want you to hire me for work and while I don’t have any experience working in such an establishment I am a quick learner.”

Jamie looked at her for a second then he nodded. “All right, that’s fine with me. I’ll discuss this with Dorian and if we both agree you are hired. Now follow me, I have a lot to show to you.” He turned around ready to leave but Ruby stopped him in his tracks.

“I wasn’t done. I will work here, however that’s not all I’ll do. I have decided that I will get you two to defeat the Demon Lord, if you want to or not, so you better look out.” She stood there with conviction and pointed her finger at Jamie who was completely taken by surprise. Then after a moment of silence he began laughing wholeheartedly as if she just made the joke of the century.

His reaction wasn’t what Ruby had expected and her head turned beet red from embarrassment as she realized how dorky her pose and words were.

“Stop, you’re killing me! N-no more! Haha! Okay, if you really want to, go for it girl! Chase your dreams!” He interrupted himself with laughter and barely got the words out as he caught his breath. While Ruby realized how embarrassing her action was, it infuriated her to be laughed at by a guy in a bunny pyjama.

“Y-yeah, I will! Just you wait!” Ruby spoke with anger in her voice, partly towards Jamie, partly towards herself for not thinking her plan through. The still laughing Jamie led her through the hallway, filled with famous adventurers and extremely weird people of whom one talked with a squirrel about the weather and another one constantly punched a wall till his hands began to bleed. Seeing them, Ruby got closer to Jamie in the hopes that if she was with the owner of this tavern that they would leave her alone. For the small outside, this tavern had a lot of rooms and Ruby wondered if everyone had such a small and simple room like her or if every room differed in size and decorations.

At the end of the hallway, there were two stairs, one leading down to the bar and restaurant, one leading up, however it had a sign saying ‘NO ENTRY!’ which lead Ruby to believe that it must be where Jamie and Dorian’s private quarters were located, and not near her room which was her initial thought. However she got no confirmation of this new theory because Jamie lead her down the stairs back into the restaurant and bar area she meet them yesterday evening. During the day she was actually able to get a good look at this place. It was filled to the brim with tables and chairs, some were improvised with empty barrels while others were professionally crafted, however one thing they all had in common: They were as messy as it got.

“As you can see, after a night of constant drinking and partying our guests aren’t really that into cleaning up after themselves. However you said wanted to work here, right? Well then get started by cleaning up all the plates and beer mugs from the tables, mob up the alcohol on the floor and last but not least put all of the barrels back into the basement. Call for me once you are done, then we can continue our tour.” Jamie told her all this as if it was just usual business for him and judging by his voice she could tell that he expected her to be done quickly.

“Why do I need to put the barrels away?” Ruby asked in hopes of not having to do that much tasks. “Well do you think this place is always this crowded by tables? We just take the barrels if too many people get in here, which is practically every day but you know. Anyway I’ll leave you too it Raby.” “It’s Ruby…” She mumbled in frustration, however Jamie had already gone upstairs once again and couldn’t hear Ruby’s correction.

An hour later Ruby had finally finished the tasks she was given and sat down on a chair in exhaustion. But her break didn’t last very long because Jamie almost instantly appeared out of nowhere as soon as she began relaxing. This time he was not in his pyjamas but in a white shirt a bit too big for him and a blue tie which loosely hang around his neck. He stretched himself as if he had just woken up and approached her.

“Get up sunshine I’ll show you around now.” Ruby let out a heavy sigh and began following Jamie who walked out the door of the tavern with motivation in his step. The Sunlight was blinding and Ruby needed to use her hand as a way of protecting herself. Jamie however took out something similar to Dorians glasses but they were completely black so that Ruby wondered how he saw anything with those things on his head. Nevertheless, it seemed to work because he had no problem looking at the sun and telling Ruby off for taking till noon to finish. She took it in stride and the two of them walked towards the middle of the small town, which resembled more of a village now that Ruby looked at it. She had never been to this location before yesterday and when she arrived it was too dark to see anything clearly adding to that that she was only thinking of how to free Jamie and Dorian and it was understandable why she had no time to look at her surroundings. But now in bright daylight she realized that this so called town of maniacs had four streets all converging at the marketplace where she and Jamie currently stood.

The buildings were all build differently and there was no sense of continuity in them as if the architect had drawn something with his eyes closed and the end result would become the building. The materials used were varied and reached from simple stone and wood to actual bones and pure gold. However while it was very strange and sometimes even off-putting, Ruby did find some kind of beauty in this absolute chaos.

But the buildings weren’t the only reason this town got the nickname ‘Town of maniacs’, its inhabitants were all oddballs, crazy or anything else that made them unfitting of a normal community. She had heard that her granduncle actually lived here because he couldn’t see the clean rooms of the castle anymore so he moved into a building here, which sounded insane to everyone but him so he thought something along the lines of ‘if they tell me I am crazy, I might as well join them’.

“Well, first of all you will meet our local drunkard: Torgga Eisenfaust- he might be an idiot but he’s also filthy rich and the son of an important nobleman so don’t do anything that would piss him off.” Jamie said and directed her towards a broke down shed, which didn’t fit his description of a ‘filthy rich’ man in the slightest. Jamie knocked on the door and a strong smell of alcohol made Ruby wrinkle up her nose bridge.

When the door opened the smell got even stronger and a half naked guy came tumbling out the door, instantly falling on his nose. He didn’t seem bothered by that though and he happily raised his bottle of beer up as a greeting.

“Don’t you worry, the beer is fine!” He slurred his words while he spoke and it was hard to understand him. With the help of Jamie he slowly got up and looked at Ruby in confusion.

“I didn’t order a prostitute today but if you give me five minutes I’ll be ready for you sweetie.” Hearing those words Ruby felt like she needed to puke, partly because of his words which disgusted her and partly because while talking his stench of alcohol got even worse.

“No Torgga, she’s new in town and will work for me.” Jamie told him off but it didn’t feel very sincere of him.

“As a prostitute?” Torgga seemed to not given up hope.

“No.”

Torgga seemed really down hearing this but he quickly got over it because he drank the whole bottle of beer in one go. After some more pleasantries between him and Jamie he finally got back inside his ‘house’, probably to sleep off his drunkenness.

“Well, I think that went pretty well.” Jamie said but Ruby was in disbelieve.

“Are you serious? He wanted to sexually assault me! And that’s ‘going pretty well’ for you?!” Ruby was angry at Torgga but at Jamie as well. However he just laughed at her.

“Well he also tried to do it with me and everyone else in this town, that’s normal for him. And if it were to go bad, you would already be thrown out of here.” Ruby thought he was joking but his tone of voice was serious.

What the hell did I stumble into?!

But there was no turning back now. She needed to see this whole thing through and she would succeed just as she promised herself.

“Alright, next up is the guy who founded this town, I think you might already know him but I will let you see for yourself.” He showed her to another house, which looked like the complete opposite of Torgga’s little hut. It wasn’t really a house, but a tower standing tall and menacing above all the other buildings. On top of it, there was a big telescope pointing up at the sky. She had seen things like that before but only in the palace in the part where the countries mage housed. For this small town to have such a thing was very impressive.

Instead of knocking Jamie yelled up the tower. “HEY GET DOWN HERE SCAN!” In response loud rumbling could be heard through the tower. Then something shattered and curse words Ruby had never heard before echoed throughout the tower. Then after another minute passed the door slammed open and the man who proclaimed himself as a professional thief while entering through her window stood in front of her. He looked stressed and the lab coat he wore was sprinkled with different colours, it looked like the shattering of glass had some consequences.

“What the hell do you want now Jamie?” At first he didn’t even notice Ruby, either that or he deliberately chose to ignore her.

“This is Ruby, she’s new in town and will work at the tavern. I thought I should tell you after all you are the founder.” Jamie spoke with respect in his voice but something told Ruby that he was faking it.

“Ruby, huh? What an interesting name.” He looked at her with great interest like a wolf looked at newfound prey.

“H-hello, I am Ruby it is a pleasure to meet you again sir. I had no idea you were the mayor of this town, I apologise.” She bowed her head but he seemed confused.

“Mayor? No I just founded this town, I don’t lead the people.” Now Ruby was the confused one.

“But the founder of a town is always the mayor, right? And once he dies the job goes over to his children and so on.” Ruby explained but both Jamie and the founder looked at her as if she said something deeply upsetting.

“Listen, we have something called ‘democracy’ which means we elect our leaders.” Jamie spoke to her as if she was four years old which infuriated her but at the same time she was interested in this democracy thing. But before she could ask any question Jamie turned around and asked the not-mayor with a grin on his face, “Ruby said ‘meet again’, care to explain what she meant by that?”

“Stop playing around, I know that you know about my failed attempt. Now stop grinning asshole.” He seemed pissed and then Ruby realized that she had no idea what his name was. Jamie called him ‘Scan’ before, but that wasn’t a name.

“Excuse me, what is your name sir?” Despite him not being the mayor she couldn’t bring herself to talk casually with him. Jamie slapped his hand on his forehead and the founder looked at her as if she just activated a trap.

“MY NAME IS SCAN 0036, A NAME GIVEN TO ME BY A TRAVELLER FROM ANOTHER WORLD, SUMMONED BY THE GODS!” He seemed really proud of that story but to Ruby it just seemed sad. I mean with a name like Scan 0036 who wouldn’t become a maniac? However Jamie seemed even more embarrassed by that name, it looked like he wanted to sink into the ground.

“Okay, that’s enough, you two have meet, however we need to go now, see you Scan!” He then whispered to Ruby, “Run as fast as you can.” She didn’t even question it for one second and together they ran away from the strange man called Scan 0036.

“Hey, wait a second! Ruby, don’t you want to be my test subject? Only seventy percent have died so far! Hey, wait up!” But the two of them were already out of reach and thus Scan gave up on chasing them and went back inside his tower.

Out of breath Jamie and Ruby stopped back at the tavern. The instant they arrived Jamie pressed into a loose stone in the brickwork and the wall opened up, revealing a secret hiding place for more alcohol. He grabbed it and began drinking.

“Nothing beats a cold beer after exercising. Do you also want one?” Jamie grabbed another bottle and offered it to the dumbfounded Ruby. It looked like nothing in this town was normal, not even the walls of a building. Just why was she in this absurd situation?

“Jamie, is that you?” A man approached them. Ruby turned around to find out who it was but she had never seen him before. He wore a plaid shirt with a perfectly tied tie as well as a sky-blue scarf around his neck. Additionally he wore black sunglasses and had his hair slicked back, even his trousers looked expensive and extravagant. Just who was he?

“Hey! If it isn’t Mister President! How did the negotiations with the west go?”

“It was perfect, did you know that they have a whole theme park over there just for alcohol? They immediately agreed on our proposal, you will get the money within the next week. Oh? Who might you be?” He spoke in a way Ruby only knew from royalty and his presence alone was intimidating and showed her that he was someone who held a high position and status in this town.

Wait a minute, did he just say ‘Mister President’? Is he the mayor?

“That is Ruby, she’ll be working for us from now on. Ruby that is the president of this town. No one knows his real name but we all simply call him president.” Jamie was speaking with the mayor as if he was no one special but wasn’t the mayor the one who held all the power within a town?

“I-It’s an honour meeting you. What you made out of this town is truly amazing, despite you having all the power you let the people do as they desire, truly magnificent.” Ruby got on one knee as if she was a knight bowing before a king. But once again the person she bowed to, had a look in his face showing her that he had no idea what she was talking about. Then he and Jamie began to burst into laughter.

“Me? Having all the power? Ha-ha, you truly amuse me! Listen, I am the president, which means I am the one who makes legislative proposals, which then go into congress, who then show it to an elected committee, who then…-”

15 minutes later

“-…and then I am the last one to sign the new law, which then makes it valid for everyone.” While speaking he made no pause and Jamie had already left after the first minute. Ruby’s jaw had dropped, never had she imagined that this so called ‘democracy’ was this unnecessary complicated and interwoven. While she wondered if plain old anarchy was better, Jamie returned with three bottles of beer in his hand. He gave one to the president and one to Ruby who hesitantly accepted. They all nudged their bottles together and began to drink.

It was incredible. Never before had she felt this sensation. Who knew that alcohol could taste this good and have such an effect? Everything about this beer was different than the alcoholic drinks she had tasted before. Only now she realized the meaning behind Dorian’s words. As far as she knew the best drinks in this worlds had three per cent alcohol in them and only royalty drank those. But this, this was something else. The two of them must have managed to consistently brew beer with a high percentage! No wonder everyone with money or status came to their bar, this was amazing!

“Hey, quick question President, how old must you be to drink alcohol in this world?”

“The age required to drink alcohol is thirteen, why are you asking?”

“Hey girl, how old are you? Are you even allowed to drink?” Jamie asked Ruby in all seriousness. He really couldn’t tell that she was way older than thirteen, somehow that insulted her deep down.

“I AM SIXTEEN THANK YOU VERY MUCH!” This was too much of an insult even for her, but why was she shouting, and why was the whole world spinning around her? Jamie stood up and caught her before she felt to the ground.

“Thanks you soooo muchs. Hey why ares you flying? Whoooo!! When did you multiplyes?!”

“Wow, she’s wasted after one sip.” Jamie was honestly impressed and though about how he could tease Dorian with this, who wasn’t able to get drunk even after drinking three bottles of high percentage of schnapps. But before any of this could happen, the sky darkened.

Ruby looked up, still seeing everything blurry, however despite that she was certain of what she saw. Rage filled her and her red eyes showed her murderous intentions.

The reason for the sky darkening, it was the same dragon she saw on the day the village and her friends were burnt down.