She found herself in a tavern.

  How she came to be in a tavern wasn't really important; she hadn't much an idea herself, but she felt like it wasn't anything worth thinking about. She was always in taverns, after all, and that was true so long as one overlooked the fact that, at that moment, she couldn't think of any other instance in her life that she was in a tavern that wasn't this one, and that truthfully no such instances ever occurred.

  She couldn't really think of any other instances in her life, for that matter. That was nominally concerning to her, but she didn't like dwelling on it too much. She had beer in front of her, which some random wench had slammed on the table.

  “Ah! A new one! First one's on the house,” said the...

  What do you call a server in this situation, anyway? She could surmise from what senses she had about her that it was rude to think of a person one had just met in such terms as a “wench,” but it was technically setting-accurate and she couldn't think of another word at the time.

  “Thank you,” she said, perishing the thought entirely.

  Her memory had all but betrayed her, stabbed her in the back and rode off to the sunset, never to be recalled from again. She did, however, have her instincts, the kind that told her not to call people wenches (to their faces, at least) and that she should drink beer that's placed in front of her. They would do her enough, and if they failed to lead her to some answers before the concerns about her absent memories departed her mind and set themselves upon her heart, well, she could always have a panic attack. That usually did something.

  She was supposed to be in taverns. She was currently in a tavern. What did people do in taverns? She had a sword in a scabbard hanging from her belt and a piece of metal armor covering her chest. It could then be surmised that she was of the adventuring sort, and she would need to assemble a crew of fellow would-be adventurers. She had a sword, so at the very least she might need to find herself a nerdy fellow to be her wizard, a brooding-in-the-corner-parentlessly fellow to be her thief, and a holy looking fellow to heal them. Once that was done and they had exchanged their share of backstories, they would probably pick a quest off a board to exterminate some lowly vermin species and set off on their adventure to defeat the local demon lord or whatever. That was what taverns were for.

  That said, she was always in taverns, as we have previously established. Most people started in taverns, but few ever went back to one; in most cases, once you have your party together, you're supposed to leave and go adventuring and save the world or find the lost treasures or find your parents or, well, die. The last part usually happened before they ever made it back to a tavern. If she was supposed to be one of these people, it didn't really make sense that she was always in a tavern.

  Unless... oh, dear, was she one of those insufferables that never found a party? Well, wheresoever lays a tavern, so lays a brothel not far away. At least she had a backup career lined up; most adventurers' plans had little more sophistication than “get rich or die trying.”

  It was too soon to change jobs, though. Sure, she was always in taverns and apparently she somehow never found herself a party, but she also didn't remember ever actually looking for one, nevermind that apparently she didn't remember much of anything at all. She'd try at least once more before she gives up on her dreams of a crummy career that amounted to little more than dubiously legal glorified migrant labor, fraught with all the lack of workplace safety regulations, job security, pensions, fair wages, and... she was sure that she could call to mind more aspects of a “respectable career,” whatever that was, but she didn't like thinking that much.

  She looked around. Generally, taverns were supposed to be filled with generic commoners, and the would-be adventurer bore the onus of picking out the weird ones, as any departure from the basic commoner template signified some sort of thoughtful creation by some higher power – that is, they were characters meant for something more than filling space in taverns. In many cases, even that was unnecessary; adventurers tended to simply attract to one another in these places to save us the inconvenience of watching them bumble through countless pointless social interactions.

  There was a problem, though. She couldn't really find any weird people; rather, just about everyone in sight could be in some sort of adventuring party and no one would question it. Hell, given the gods' propensity for making heroes out of the most boring humans around, there were parties out there where any of the folks here would've stuck out quite a bit. She thought of simply standing by the job board and waiting, but there wasn't one to be found, either.

  She drank the beer. It tasted like urine. She didn't know what urine tasted like. She still thought it tasted like urine. For a person that was apparently always in taverns, she was awfully unaccustomed to bad beer.

  The lady next to her noticed her unfavorable reaction to the beverage and smiled politely. The wench here always served the first free drink laced with some mysterious magic that made every person that drank it retch without fail; a sort of prank or hazing ritual, perhaps. She had fallen victim to it herself, having received a drink that made her feel like insects were crawling down her throat. A beer tasting like one's mental approximation of the flavor of piss wasn't the worst thing they had in stock.

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  “Welcome,” said the lady beside her. Upon looking over, it was noticed that she had horns sprouting from the side of her head – this would mark her as a... demon, half-demon maybe? It was also apparently pretty rude to call people demons upon first meeting them, though she did not know the severity of it relative to calling them wenches.

  She heaved but thankfully, despite the retching, her stomach hadn't expelled anything – the wenches here hazed people, but they weren't looking to make more work for themselves. After recovering from the drink, she turned her attention to the horned one next to her.

  “I've been received worse, I suppose,” she began, not all too sure as to whether or not she really had.

  “It's the complementary terror-beverage. The beers get better.”

  “I should hope so. I get the feeling I'll be here a lot.”

  “Oh, certainly. Everyone's here a lot. People find themselves here and somehow I've never heard of one leaving... ah. I believe that means we'll be getting rather acquainted, you and I and everyone else.”

  “Mhm. Well, that's awfully inconvenient since I wasn't all too intent on spending the rest of my days in a tavern, but alas, if that's how it must be then I'm not one to question the will of... whoever decided I'm gonna be here, I suppose.”

  “You'd best get used to it, then. I haven't been convenienced once since I got here. By the way, since we'll be acquainted and all, might I trouble you for your name?”She thought about the question some, looking around as if she'd find any indication of the answer on the walls and roof of the place. She wasn't wearing anything that betrayed her occupation; a decently frilly dress, some stockings, nondescript boots... her name probably wasn't anything to do with her work in the first place, but it was worth considering.

  “Only if you give me yours first,” she concluded.

  “Hmm... people just call me the keeper here.”

  Well, that didn't help her search for her own name much. The keeper looked at her expectantly, and at this rate she wouldn't have much of an answer. She thought about making up a name, but she wasn't all too creative that day – and what did it really matter anyhow? A name was just a word, probably. She shrugged.

  “I haven't the first idea of mine,” she admitted. “Well, you've got a dress. Maid. That'll do, yes?”

  “Mmm. Does everyone here have such simple names?”

  “Sure we do. Everyone forgets their name by the time they get here; it's far out, y'know, a long walk whence we come, which is all over – you forget a lot of things while walking. It's pointless to try to remember anyhow, so we just get called all sorts of things until something sticks, so most the names are... pretty on the nose.”

  She couldn't tell in what way “keeper” was on any nose, her best guess being that it was short for something. Well, it didn't matter anyway; names were just words. There were more important questions to be asked, but before she could properly articulate all the quandries she was intent on interrogating the keeper about, a voice came from somewhere unseen, loud enough that the whole tavern must've heard it.

  “Drafting has begun. Please stand by.”

  A murmur overtook the room, the air of which had been filled with the typical cheers of a tavern a moment prior. The maid only wondered if it had any relation to draft beer, and if this is where the beverages start becoming drinkable; as far as she knew, that was fairly serious business worthy of a murmur.

  Instead, a rectangle appeared before her, a somewhat translucent black box. Simple text occupied its interior: “YOU HAVE BEEN PICKED.”

  It didn't come to her to question what that meant, at least not until she had gone through the trouble of processing the words on an intellectual level and thinking a bit on what the thing was trying to tell her, and even then she was only a bit confused at the vagueness. She glanced over and saw that the keeper had gotten a similar display and was similarly unalarmed.

  Right. It was routine procedure. She was supposed to be picked, whatever she was being picked for, just like how she was supposed to be in a tavern. There was nothing to be questioned here.

  “Got first picked, huh?” commented the keeper. “New hero syndrome and all, I suppose.”

  The maid cocked her head a bit at that comment.

  “It means you're contested,” continued the keeper. “All of them want to pick you. If they still had to manually come in and take you away, you'd've been torn asunder by now.”Being picked meant something to her on an instinctual level. She was supposed to be happy about it, apparently, but she hadn't any idea as to why. Comparatively, the keeper was just spewing meaningless words; she held no feelings for them, nor could she understand them on any basis, instinctual or otherwise.

  At this point she noticed that the keeper was looking over her head as she spoke. The maid curiously diverted her gaze in that direction, and noticed that a display much larger than the notification box occupied a wall of the tavern. It was divided into two rows of five sections, and in some of the sections there were moving portraits of what looked to be people (or at least, thus far, they were all of some human-like races). The keeper was one of them, and next to her was an intimately familiar visage: a pallid girl of brown curls. It was familiar because, of course, it was her own.

  Well, she thought she knew what she looked like, but she didn't remember ever seeing her reflection or hearing a single description of herself. There weren't any mirrors in the tavern and she had no recollection of ever being outside the place, but she supposed this was like, when wizards put apes in front of a mirror and they recognize themselves, or something. She was never smart enough to figure out what was going on in the world of magecraft.

  Anyhow, that was probably her face, and that definitely looked like how her hair felt, and she grabbed a lock of it and put it in front of her eyes – that was the correct color. The portrait of the keeper was definitely accurate, too, so she concluded that it was probably – though not definitely, because skepticism was important – her.

  It took her all of this confusion to realized that, in fact, there was nothing alarming at all about this. She had been picked for something which apparently everyone wanted to be picked for; was it weird to display her on a screen for it?

  Before she could think more on it, a magic circle appeared beneath her seat and a barrier of light formed around her, muddling her view of everything outside. The tavern faded and gave way to a whole lot of nothingness and a second later she found herself, for the first time in recent memory, to be in a place was quite distinctly not a tavern.