Yay for the fifth chapter! Or maybe not so yay, because writing this chapter was not fun. And that's not to say it was hard to write, that's to say I felt super uncomfortable with the first segment of this chapter.

Next thing I know, somebody's splashing cold water on my face.

"Wake up, prisoner." The voice is deep, and filled with something I can only say is... cruelty. "I'm going to have some fun with you." Yep, that was the right word for it. I note the sound of an empty bucket clanging.

I slowly open my eyes. My vision is blurry, and all I can make out from my current position are the black boots of my captor.

I'm suspended by my arms by what I think are chains. My legs are similarly fastened to the ground.

I slowly look up and find a Knight- no, a General- standing before me. His face... is not unlike a pig's. He's got a malicious smirk going on, as well. His head seems misshapen.

It takes me a couple moments to figure out what precisely happened; My fellow soldiers and I had been captured, and this man was one of our captors. It's only a couple seconds more before I recall who this guy is.

He's... Danomill, I believe, and he's the one who loves his prison to a creepy degree. He was memorable, in that way.

"So. This is the prison I was carted off to? How quaint." I'm grimacing on the inside, but grinning at Danomill on the out.

"Quaint? How dare you?! My dungeon is top notch! Perfectly designed! Impregnable! HOW DARE YOU INSULT MY BEAUTIFUL DUNGEON?!" The warden shrieks, visibly shaking with rage. Fuck, that's an awful short temper.

"Hm. I see. Can I leave?" I tiredly request.

"NO!" Danomill replies, his voice loud enough to be hurting my ears.

"Shit, man, could you quiet down? Some people don't plan on getting hearing damage, y'know." I mutter, glaring at the offending man.

I'm about to start laughing at how pissed he's getting when he socks me in the face. With an armored fist. Yeah.

"ARGH! FUCKIN' SHIT!" I yell, jerking to the side from the force of the punch. I don't want to deal with this pain, so fuck it.

Click!

I'm back to my original position, pain-free. Lovely!

Danomill's angry frown has become swapped for a grin filled with twisted glee. "Eheeeheheha! Just what I wanted to see! That ability of yours, oh that wonderful, wonderful ability! I can torture you as much as I want because of it and it's oh so wonderful!" He's vibrating with anticipation.

I think I underestimated this guy.

The warden- no, the madman- stalks towards a tool rack on the wall, rambling about how much 'fun' he'll have.

Wait, a tool rack? Oh, fuck. Oh, fuck.

"So, lovely prisoner of mine, what would you like first? Perhaps, my latest invention? I call it the Danomill Cradle, after me-hee-hee~!" He gestures to something next to the tool rack that looks like a stool with a pyramid place on top of it. "Or perhaps the lovely torture rack- such a classic, it is. Pulls your arms right off!" Yep, that's the torture rack all right.

"C-could I, ah, see my other options, please?" I shakily ask.

"Oh, that wouldn't be any problem, my friend, my friend! Perhaps you're more interested in the rats, hmmmmm?" He wildly waves his arms over to a cage of rats next to what seems to be an unlit firepit- oh shit, I've heard of that one. The rats escape from the lit fire by burrowing their way through the victim's torso.

"Don't, er, don't you have any less... long-lasting torture methods?" I inquire, uncontrollably shaking. Please say yes.

"Ah, you must be looking for mutilation or beating! Yes, I can do that. Not a problem, my friend, my friend!" He moves over to the tool rack and wiggles his fingers around

creepily for a few moments before grabbing a whip. "Yes, yes, this should suffice, will it not?" His grin is even more crazed than before, somehow.

I nod out of fear.

The next few hours are filled with my pained yells, the cracks of a whip, the clicks of my ability, and Danomill's crazed laughter.

I... wish I had the willpower to not use my ability. Then the torture would've stopped sooner. It finally stopped when I blacked out.

I groan as I come to, rubbing at my head. "Wha' ha'ened?" I mumble out.

I try to push myself into a sitting position, but immediately wince and collapse back down to the stone floor. I suppose the torture didn't s- oh god, the torture.

"Um..." A quiet voice comes from somewhere in the room I can't place.

"E-eh? Whozzere?" My speech is slurring together- probably the aches combined with mental exhaustion.

"Er- Ah'm- Uh, Iiiii'm Nephenee." Oh, I'm in the same cell as Nephenee. Makes some sense, I guess. "Are you alright? You looked to've been in a pretty bad spot when they tossed ya in here."

"I'm... yeah, I'm alright, nothing's wrong whatsoever." I manage out, faking a grin. Danomill definitely took a while to stop after I conked out. It hurts so much, so much, so much. I slowly struggle my way to a wall to sit up against. Once I'm successfully sitting up, I try to make my expression more genuine. "See? Absolutely okay. A-okay!"

"Ah ain't believin' that junk. You're hurtin' bad." Nephenee... seems really concerned, surprisingly enough. We literally just met.

"Nah, I'm good. I told you, I'm comp-" I cut myself off by violently coughing. I mean really violently, too, there's a little blood coming out. "Okay... m-maybe not so fine."

"Wh-what happened to ya? Coughin' up blood- that's t-terrible!" Nephenee is shaking at the sight, probably wondering if it could happen to her. Or maybe she really is concerned about her... 'fellow Crimean'. I dunno.

"Eh, just a bit of torture, that's all. I-I'll be perfectly fine. No worries!" I give a shaky grin. I doubt that anybody besides myself and Kieran will get tortured, anyway. Kieran because he was captain, and I've already gotten proof I'm on the torture list. "Anyways, the name's Conor. Nice to meet you, Nephenee."

"Right. Nice t'meet you, too, I s'ppose." Nephenee replies apprehensively. Fair enough; I did just cough of blood, after all.

The conversation awkwardly ended after that, neither of us endeavoring to revive it.

Turns out prison is really fucking boring when conversations with your cellmate end awkwardly every fucking time. What's worse is that we can't just let the awkwardness fade from separation because, y'know, we're locked in the same room. I don't really have Danomill's torture to interrupt these awkward silences, which sounds weird to say and it definitely is weird to say.

Also, yeah. Danomill's torture sessions are two days out of every week, two days of his choosing. Apparently, it's a limit imposed by some higher-ups to stop him from driving prisoners insane before they can release information. Thank you, Danomill's superiors. You're decent people.

Not sure why the guard decided to tell me, though. Maybe he pitied me? He might've wanted me to get really tense, worrying about being snatched away for torture at any time. Which I'm not, by the way. Nope. Not at all. Not thinking about it.

It's been... I don't know, three days since Danomill first tortured me? There aren't really any windows in this cell.

Fuck it, back to sleep. Nephenee already is asleep, and I just woke up from a nightmare which I will not disclose, because fuck that nightmare, man.

Sleep.

Since Conor's locked up in prison, I have the highly enjoyable job of figuring out just how long it would take for Ike and his bunch to finally reach the prison, in Chapter 10.

Now you're probably thinking that it's just a six chapter gap between the chapter the Mercenaries are on (Chapter 4, Roadside Battle) and Prisoner Release (Chapter 10), but in that time they got to Gallia and back. Which could potentially take... a ridiculous time, if I were being realistic. I'm not, by the way. Not good for Conor, as you may guess.

Now, Chapter 5 (Flight!) happens the night after Chapter 4 (not the night of) because I assume Elincia slept through to the next day before waking up.

Unfortunately, the gap between Chapter 5 and Chapter 6 (A Brief Diversion) isn't so easy. I decided to give it a six or seven-day gap. I don't have to be precise because Conor isn't exactly keeping track of time.

Luckily for me, the gap between Chapter 6 and Chapter 7 (Shades of Evil) is incredibly easy! They take place on the same day, or maybe the day after, but it's more likely later the same day.

Chapter 7 and Chapter 8 (Despair and Hope) are considerably more iffy. It's very... unexact as to what the time frame between the two chapters is. Greil dies in between Chapters 7 and 8, which means I need to figure out how long it takes for Daein to attack. I decided that it took maybe two days for the attack to take place, which is just enough time for Greil to have a funeral and for Ike to steel his resolve. There are a couple other factors I'm probably forgetting, as well.

Chapter 8 and Chapter 9 (Gallia) are completely unclear. I decided another two-day gap for it. Not really any reason for that decision.

And finally, the time between Chapter 9 and Chapter 10! Ten days. Yep. Ten days. They're going from Castle Gallia all the way to some miscellaneous castle in Crimea, after all. Now, let me add that up.

Twenty-one to twenty-three days. So, twenty-two for averaging's sake. Definitely looks reasonable, but probably not actually realistic.

Also, I'm tempted to rewrite this chapter and remove some of the details on Danomill's torture tools. I don't want people thinking I actually like to write torture scenes because I only wrote that due to the fact that Danomill is clearly obsessed with torture, and it's a medieval setting.

Here are the thank-yous:

Thank you to StoryCrafteer, for following and favoriting this story.

Thank you to smily072000, for following and favoriting this story.

Thank you to creaturehunter, for following this story.

You guys are awesome.

Seriously, though. Writing that torture scene made me feel super fucking uncomfortable, even though I skipped past the actual torture.