Whumptober 2020 Day 1: Let's Hang Out Sometime (waking up restrained/shackled/hanging)
Word Count: 1880
Author: Katie/Ally (aquietwritingcorner/realitybreakgirl)
Rating: T
Characters: Olivier Mira Armstrong
Summary: Olivier wakes up in Drachman hands, and quickly finds out this is going to be worse that she thought.
Notes: Yes, I stole the name of the prison from another fandom. Points to you if you can tell me where!

Waking up

When Olivier began to regain awareness, it came the knowledge that she was in enemy hands. It was hard to say what tipped her off first. Was it the shackles that she could feel on her wrists and ankles? Was it the fact that, even with those, she could feel that she was also tied up? Or was it the odd sensation of hanging, almost like in a hammock, as if she wasn't on something solid? Olivier wasn't sure, but it honestly didn't matter. The fact of the matter was that she knew she was in enemy hands.

Even though she had returned to awareness, though, she gave no sign of it, instead listening. She would wager that she was in Drachman hands, considering that they were the closest and had the biggest grudge against her. But Olivier had not made it this far with assumptions. It was better to stay seemingly unconscious and gather what information she could through her other senses.

She heard what sounded like metal clanking all around her, as if people were walking on metal grating. The footsteps sounded heavy, like they were in boots. She could hear voices far off. They weren't clear enough to hear distinctly, but they had the cadence and tonality of Drachman. Regular movement happened as well. A patrol, perhaps? There were other sounds of movement, that sounded like they came from a distance away. There was the sound of some sort of gas leaking. Steam perhaps? It was quite warm in here, and there was a moisture to the air. She could smell metal, and perhaps the metallic scent of blood as well. There were other, strange smells that she couldn't place, but that made her think of electricity and motors and oil. When the boots came near her, she felt the vibrations from them, and a slight swaying, as if someone was walking over whatever she was attached to.

She timed the patrols. With nothing else sounding near to her, she risked opening her eyes. There was a reddish cast of light that seemed surround everything, no matter which way she looked. She was, it appeared, in a metal box, perhaps about nine feet in all dimensions. The sides and bottom of it appeared to be solid metal, but the top was a grate, as if to allow someone to look down at her. Perhaps they did. It would make sense. It would be harder for her to injure or take someone hostage if they were nine feet above her. Not impossible, of course, but more difficult. It would also be harder to work on the bars of the cell this way. Actually, it was an ingenious design, and she'd have to look at the merits of implementing it when she got back to Briggs.

And she would get back to Briggs.

Olivier herself was restrained in a very interesting fashion. She seemed to be wrapped in a cloth hammock of sorts, one that she didn't see an easy way out of, and that left her suspended off the ground, but away from the top of the grate. Chains held it in place and seemed to be attached to moors on the sides of the walls. It left her body in a somewhat reclined position, but not a restful one. She could feel the angle pulling at her back and assumed that was part of the purpose of it. She also could feel that she had metal shackles on her wrists and ankles and ropes tied around her arms and legs. The fact that she could feel the shackles on her ankles meant that she didn't have her boots on and, truthfully, whatever clothes she had on didn't feel like her uniform. It made sense. They wanted to make sure she was stripped of any potential weapons, she was sure.

So. She was clearly captured. She was in a metal cell with one exit on the ceiling. She was restrained. And she was suspended above the floor of her cell in a hammock. All of this could only mean one thing.

She was in Rura Penthe.

Rura Penthe was legendary. It was the most harsh of all of the Drachman prisons. No one came out of it. It was reserved for the worst of the worst, and the most high-ranking political prisoners. It was located in an inner area of the country, far north, and rumored to be so cold that Briggs winters looked like spring compared to it. It was constantly frozen. The Drachma government had dug down and built a prison here, using prisoners as labor. The ones that survived were imprisoned in what they had built. More than that, she had heard of the tortures that went on here. Their unusual ways of restraint was just the beginning. Once you were in, you were theirs for as long as they wanted to keep you alive.

Olivier smirked. Good to know that she ranked so high on their list of dangerous people that they had put her here. And she had an advantage—they'd want to keep her alive.

There was no way to keep track of time in Rura Penthe, she found. She estimated it based on her heartbeats, but those were variable, and with no natural light, there was really no way to tell how much time had passed. Everything here was bathed in a sense of red. The metal, the guards, the light. She watched as the guards passed over her cell, looking down at her to see if she was awake. They seemed not to care that she was. One just spit an explicative about her mother her way, laughed, and walked on.

The hammock, she discovered, was worse than she thought it would be. It was definitely not for the sake of comfort, or even for keeping her restrained. She was unable to shift even the slightest bit in it, especially as restrained as she was, and she found that her arms and legs were growing numb and stiff. She did what little she could to try to keep her circulation going, but it didn't help much. Eventually she couldn't feel them at all, and it was only by seeing a slight shift, or by feeling movement against other parts of her body that she still had feeling in that she could tell she was moving them.

She had counted about four circuits of the guards when there was a disruption in the pattern. The sound of heavy boots walking over metal grates sounded, and Olivier looked up. A big man in a heavy coat and with a thick black beard looked down at her, smiled, and then looked at the guards who were with him.

"Lower her," he said in Drachman to them.

Olivier watched as the guards opened the grate above her and attached small metal ladders to the sides of it. It was with these that they were able to reach the moors in the wall where her hammock was chained, and slowly they lowered her to the ground. The ground was hard, but surprisingly warm. Her body, after being held in a curved position for so long, did not like lying flat on her back like this and it ached.

She didn't show it.

"Remove her," he commanded, and the guards climbed the rest of the way down. They reached out, opening the hammock and then unceremoniously rolling her out of it.

"Remove the ropes, but attach the chains," the man said this time. "Bring her up."

The guards cut the ropes, and Olivier felt the stinging pain of circulation starting to return. They roughly took her arms and legs, and ran chains through the shackles, attaching them. They stood her up, then, and she let them, although pain flared through her legs as they did. Supporting her on either side, they walked her over to the ladders, and began to manhandle her up one of them. She jerked them off.

"I can do it myself," she snapped out at them.

They glanced up and the man must have made some sort of gesture, because they didn't try to do it again. She reached for and grasped the ladder and started to climb. Her whole body ached, and she was still having trouble feeling her hands and feet, but she forced herself to climb up on her own anyway. She could barely feel the grate through her bare feet when she stepped onto it, which might have been a blessing actually. Still, she stood straight and tall in front of the man, as if she were in her uniform and commanding at Briggs, and not a prisoner with no shoes in thin prison garb. Another deterrent, no doubt, to attempting to break out. No one would go out in these clothes if they had any sense.

"Major General Olivier Mira Armstrong," the man said, seemingly pleased with her. His Amestrian was heavily accented, but it was understandable. "I should have expected no less from you. Most people can hardly move after nine hours in the hammock."

"Most people aren't of my bloodline," she said back to him.

"Ah, this is true," he said. "Allow me to introduce you to your new surroundings. You are at Rura Penthe, deep in its belly. There is no escape from here, only death. Which, I suppose, could be a type of escape, depending on what you believe about the afterlife."

He paused, as if he were waiting for a response from her and, when he got none, he continued on. "As for myself, we will be working very closely together, General." He grinned at her. "I am looking forward to it."

"And what makes you think that I will work with you?" she asked him coolly, not showing just how much pain she was in as her body tried to readjust itself after nine hours in the same position.

His grin widened. "Everyone works with Geograg Sodeset eventually."

At that she couldn't help the shock that went through her, and she knew some part of it had to have shown on her face, if his gleeful laugh meant anything. She had heard of Geograg Sodeset. Everyone had. She had even heard Drachman soldiers speak his name with fear. The twister. The mutilator. The experimenter. The master of keeping someone on the brink of life and death for weeks, or even years, if the rumors were to be believed.

She believed them.

He laughed. "Come. We will get started. Let's see what makes your bloodline so hardy, no?"

The guards, now up from her cell, grabbed her again, and pulled her along with them. And, unfortunately, she wasn't in much of a position to resist.

Hours later found her being placed back in that hammock and suspended above the floor once again, although sans the ropes. After a session with Sodeset, there was no need for them. She wasn't even moving under her own power. The guards manhandled her the whole way. And this time, as she hung there, she had a new way to keep track of the passage of time. It was from the drip drip drip of her pooling blood seeping through the material and falling onto the floor.