The Archman

Chapter 3 - A Harsh Awakening, Part 1

Eira takes a tense breath in, blinking groggily in the process. She felt like she had woken up after being asleep for a week. For all she knows, that can very well be the case. Although she would've had to wake up at some point for water, so it is more likely just a day or less.

As she tries to adjust her position on the uncomfortable wooden floor, she finds she is met with some considerable resistance. Her hands are bound together by a pair of steel handcuffs, the edges of which are starting to rust ever so slightly. Additionally, she finds a single steel cuff secured firmly around her ankle, with a chain running from the cuff to a nearby wall, where it is fixed rigidly.

Eira blinks a few more times, her eyes trying to adjust to the strange lighting of the space. Everything is shrouded in darkness, but the warmth of the midday sun is in the air. It feels like she is in an artificial night, as just a few cracks in the woodwork around her let in a couple sparse rays of sunlight.

Upon closer inspection, she sees the shackles around her wrists and ankle are far from a pair of slipshod instruments of restraint. They are constructed with a kind of built-in mechanism which keeps them adjusted perfectly to the size of the limb they are secured to.

Despite their clear age, they are still in very good repair, and are reasonably comfortable for a pair of garments made of metal. She is far from an expert on the subject of restrictive devices, however. In fact, she now realizes this is her first time being trapped in irons.

She tries to lift herself up to a sitting position, but her muscles are hardly responding to her. She speculates that whatever is in the white smoke must still be in her system.

In her limited state, she looks around at her surroundings. Tall metal bars rise up from the ground to meet the ceiling, forming three sides of a cell which enclose her, the fourth side being the wooden wall her ankle is chained to.

The smell of sea water is still fresh in the air, mixed with the harsh tang of rust from the assortment of metal around the room. The resulting cocktail is quite pungent, as Eira could almost taste it on her tongue.

At the very least, she knows she is still at sea. The gentle swaying of the current beneath her and the crash of waves against the opposite side of the wooden wall made that much clear.

This clarity only brings her a fresh sense of dread, however, as she had been desperately hoping to wake in her bed, the same way she did nearly every morning for her entire life. Instead, she finds herself on the hard, unforgiving wooden floor of her cell.

Part of her wants to shut her eyes and go back to sleep, so she will have the opportunity to wake again from this nightmare. However, an equally prominent part of her compels her to collect as much information as she can from her surroundings.

She turns her head with just enough effort to shift her gaze around the cell. The cell is in an overall decent condition, minimal amounts of rust covering the bars, cuffs, and chains, which are evidently much older than she is. Standing out against this otherwise decent amount of maintenance, however, is a multitude of scrapes and scratches all across the inside of the cell. All through the woodwork and across the metal bars are dozens upon dozens of deep gashes. The cell looks like it has been used to cage several feral animals, though that didn't explain the unnaturally massive size of the scratches, which look like they can only have been done with a metal blade, at least the size of a dagger.

As she looks at the odd markings throughout her cell, her eyesight returns enough to extend the distance at which she can see clearly. She sees that hers is not the only cell in the space. She is in a large brig, which contains nine other cells much like hers, organized into two rows of five, with a single corridor dividing them.