07: Dog Days Are Over (Margo IV)

From what Margo had learned during the past five days, she deduced that she was in some seriously deep shit.

The first day, if you ignore the fact that she was literally dragged trough time and space to a different reality, was somewhat nice – everyone she met seemed to worship her and wanted to do everything to make her feel more comfortable. She was given free clothing (and, boy, was it nice – all the silk, all the lace), the best of foods and drinks available in this country, so she didn't even have it in her to be upset about missing her date with Mr Thorn.

The second day basically was what her little brother would call an info dump. It seemed that the king had decided that Margo needed to know the complete history of the continent of Sdiliph.

She now knew that the middle part of the continent (The Forest Lands) is inhabited by the purest creatures of this world – elves (and what a surprise for the elves to be considered 'pure'; after all, she had watched the 'Lord Of The Rings' - no matter how unwillingly), but the northern wasteland is where the demon kind is from (she automatically thought about Mordon, blame the elves). She also had learned that dwarves of the Blue Mountains of the Western shores hated their eastern counterparts of the deep underground caves by the Tainted Sea and Siren's Bay. Meanwhile, the beast-kin usually doesn't care for any disputes until the others are knocking on their proverbial doors while lighting the cannons (not that this world had them) – she guessed that the Beasts' Corner is the Switzerland of Sdiliph.

Of course, there was something oh-so-originally called ‘The Unclaimed Lands Of Creatures’ that have stayed, well, unclaimed due to being inhabited by the wildest and most dangerous creatures of this continent – Margo’s history teacher didn’t seem to care to inform her what the creatures were, but he did say something like ‘even the past heroes were not able to tame those barbaric creatures’, so Margo had decided to not press the issue.

There were also islands to the east of demons’ land – The Dragon Isles that were, oh who could have guessed, governed and inhabited by dragons that had forbidden any outsiders to their lands and were known by being extremely intelligent species that had… quick tempers. Definitely wouldn’t want to enrage those.

That day, she fell asleep with a hadache.

The third day, however, was worse – it had been decided that Margo was in need of physical training; she didn’t agree and somehow managed to talk her asigned teacher into finding her yesterday’s history teacher to learn more about those past heroes. And so she read about Hdhbsdk, Chengis, Patra, and Antony, while wondering how she was able to read a language that clearly wasn’t English.

Must be a ‘hero thing’.

Next morning started by Margo not being able to persuade the physical training’s instructor – a man named Yiksel - from yesterday ('How can you defeat the demon lord if you get tired after running for five seconds?'). So she suffered by having to run who-knows-how-many laps around the training ground, doing pushups, and not being able to understand why the hell she needs all this if her class was a BARD – even she knew that bards in games were never the muscles. She wasn’t fit for this. She didn’t want this.

Mr Thorn, please come for me – a desperate thought.

The fifth day was the worst, though, because she still had the physical training to do and she still was aching all over from yesterday. It was awful; she didn’t want to talk about that ever again.

But she also gained 5 points in body, which was nice. Well, not really – she was still aching all over.

But the fifth day also was the day she realised that this was her life now; and that she will need to swallow that toad if she wanted to get away from the palace training groups someday soon to do whatever she felt like. To find a way home – to Mr Thorn, to orchestra, to her parents, to her little brother who would find this hilarious.

So, yes, she was in some deep shit.