In Irons

Written by Jane Barnaby for character development of Jane Azarok Barnaby

Drip. The sound echoed throughout Jane's skull, reverberating in her bones. A nice, warm feeling spread out from it, making her want to snuggle up close and roll over. Except something was wrong here.

Drip. A dull pain throbbed around her wrists and her ankles, getting more pronounced with every passing second. She recognised this burning pain that quickly turned agonising. It was iron.

Drip. Her thoughts felt slow and muddled, as if they were in a pool of mud and she had to blindly feel around to find them. Yet one thought kept returning: something was very, very wrong, even if she couldn't quite figure out what.

Drip. Slowly but surely, her hazy vision sharpened. Her world tilted and distorted. Wait, no. Wood creaked all around her, matching the movements. She was on a ship, and the tilting was the waves. But this wasn't her ship.

Drip. The something landed on her head again, scattering her thoughts. With difficulty, she tilted her skull to look up, just in time to catch another droplet off the stuff on her face. It was instantly absorbed by her bones, making all sorts of alarm bells go off.

They were dosing her with buttermilk, or one of the other 'heavy' forms of calcium, letting it steadily fall from a leaky bucket. It made her too tired and slowed down to even consider rolling out of the way.

Drip. She looked back at her legs. Her boots had been removed, replaced by heavy iron fetters. The bone underneath was sizzling and smoking, constantly being burnt by the iron and them regenerated by the calcium.

Her wrists weren't faring much better. Even with the numbing qualities of the buttermilk, the pain ate away at her, making thinking next to impossible. She had to get out of here, to move skeletons, to melt away the shackles with hellfire-

Drip. And just like that, her train of thought vanished again. With a soft groan, she took in her environment. She was in a brig of some kind, but one of the largest she'd ever seen. It made the Galleon's look like a timeout corner. This had to be the British ship-of-the-line she'd been trying to infiltrate.

Two large cells were on either side of the ship's hull, blocked off from the rest of the vessel by thick wooden walls. They were empty of prisoners, except for her. She truly was on her own this time with no one to help her.

Drip. She leaned her skull back against the wall, too tired and weak to hold it up for much longer. Whatever was happening to her, she couldn't find the will to find our, nor the strength to struggle and try to escape.

Her consciousness slipped away again, trapped between all-encompassing exhaustion and soul-searing pain. And beneath it, the terrifying knowledge that she was all alone and no one could take on the warship to save her.

She'd failed.