Silver Axe bounded and scrambled like a flea across the mountainous back of a Sea King, forced to watch not only the beast beneath his boots but also the swipes and crashes of the other giants all around one misstep and he'd be pulp.
At last he reached the highest ridge of scaled flesh.
He shaded his eyes toward the source of the voice, drew a spyglass from his belt, and searched along the line of that haunting song.
"That is…"
Far off ten, maybe twelve kilometers by his guess someone sat astride the head of a titanic Sea King.
"What a terrifying ability… Luring men into that voice without them noticing, even bending Sea Kings to her will. A Devil Fruit, surely."
He grimaced. "At that distance… am I supposed to swim?"
He swept the horizon for any other approach.
Then he froze, eyes bulging, and whooped with relief. "That's Captain John!"
They were saved.
Through the glass he caught a lone figure cutting the sea like a blade, streaking toward the Sea King that bore the singer.
Ten minutes earlier.
Captain John had heard the same unearthly song a voice too beautiful for a place so empty. In a sea where almost no men passed, that sound slammed into his instincts like a warning bell. He changed course and swam hard.
Soon he saw it all: Sea Kings in a blood frenzy, his ship trapped among them, and at the far edge the singer. He arrowed that way.
When he neared the colossal creature, John sprang, landed on the living slope, and ran upslope as if on rock.
Moments later, he crested the back and saw the woman's profile.
His blood ran cold. His pupils pinholed. "Her… her head why is it full of green snakes?!"
Her "hair" writhed: pale-green serpents flicking forked tongues, whispering sibilant sssss… The vertical pupils fixed on him and every hair on his neck stood straight up.
The woman turned. Her mouth stayed at the conch pressed to her lips, the song pouring on.
And her face
John's stomach flipped. The features were all wrong. The eyes were far too big massive, nearly half the face and not human: lattice-gold "whites" webbed around a dead-black pupil that held no light at all. The nose was nothing but two holes, no bridge, no wing. The mouth stretched almost to the ears. Blue-black scales armored the skin.
John steadied himself, drew both blades, and leveled the glittering edges at her. "You're one of the Sea Fiends too, aren't you? Stop singing. Put down the shell. Now."
She didn't answer. The serpents coiled above her brow arched and twisted.
Suddenly, the snakes spat beams narrow lances of blue light.
John's face tightened. He sprang and weaved back. Wherever the rays touched the Sea King's hide, the flesh flashed gray and hardened stone spreading at a speed the naked eye could follow.
"A Devil Fruit user!"
His expression darkened. He whipped both blades shup, shup and flung twin arcs of steel-bright flying slashes straight at her.
The woman merely raised a forearm.
Both slashes pinged off those dark, scaled arms with two crisp ting, ting and caromed away.
"Oi, oi… what in the hells she batted my slashes away with her arm?" John barked, then snatched up his flask and took a bracing pull.
"Flame Breath!"
He exhaled; a gout of fire roared at the woman.
She toed lightly aside, opening space, the flames licking empty air.
John seized the beat, flashed forward, and crossed the ten-plus meters in a blink. Both blades fell in twin gleams.
Hissss… hissss…
The serpents lengthened like spears of living iron, crossing to catch the blades.
They didn't just block.
They coiled snakes wound around both swords and surged for his face, fangs bared.
Blue rays lanced from open mouths.
John chose in an instant he let both swords go, kicked backward hard, and let the beams burn the air where his head had been.
What in blazes is she? Snake hair that fights on its own and spits petrifying light?
The blades clanged away across scaled ground.
No time to think.
The serpents stretched longer dozens of green shafts unfurling into the air, weaving and looping until they ringed him like the ribs of a cage. Needle fangs glinted, all aimed at him.
Unarmed, John juked left and right, refusing to let them close. One bite would be trouble enough worse were those stone-making rays.
"What is with this sea monsters, every damned league!"
"And she's still singing while she fights… that's the part that's obscene." Frustration gnawed at him. Underwater he'd met Slardar and been outclassed. Now he'd run into something just as foul on the surface.
If she stopped singing and threw herself fully into the fight what then?
The serpents spread wider, umbrellaing until he stood at their center.
John yanked the flask up and upended it swallowed deep. His frame swelled again, muscles knotting into devil-cord, as if fat had never existed, only iron sinew.
He turned into a walking anatomy chart of violence.
A second drought. "Flame Roast!"
Fire hammered outward in a ring. The closest snakes hissed back, buying him a moment to breathe.
They hovered, circling, cold eyes fixed. A few feinted like king cobras, bodies snapping straight
John had to spit fire again.
His jaw set. This isn't good. They feared flame, but the woman had adapted. Some serpents prodded from the edges, looking like they'd strike forcing him to burn them back. She'd already judged it: once he emptied the flask, he'd have no more fire. No more threat to the snakes.
His mind raced, hunting a way to crack a cage of living serpents that could lengthen and shorten at will and spit rays that turned flesh to stone.
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