A.N. and SPOILER WARNING:
Hello everyone!
As for the update on my personal life that I promised, I am SO BUSY and the semester hasn't even started yet. Meet the teacher night is tonight and I'm trying to make sure I have everything in my library presentable. If it wasn't for my mentor I'd be scrambling, but she's amazing and always has my back and I couldn't wish for anyone better. I'm getting up at 5 am every morning and am spending a lot more time outside my house than I'm used to, which is probably a good thing. All of this does take a lot out of me by 5 pm. I'm ready for bed by 9-10 pm and always seem to wake up before my alarm clock, so I'll never be late unless I hit the snooze one too many times. I have a lot of work to do and have three large books to read in the next few months on top of all my work. I'm loving it and I hope caffeine and new job pep will keep me going through the semester. I have the most amazing and supportive coworkers and have big things planned for my school. All the changes I'm making are a bit different from what my Principal is used to but we get along pretty well so far.
Working two jobs it is cutting into my writing time just a little, but not my inspiration. As I expected, I've been brainstorming like crazy. With volume 87 of the manga being released in English, I was really able to add to what I have planned. I'm making myself giddy with all the prep and foreshadowing and I hope you'll all enjoy it too.
I'd like to thank KeturahDaine for reminding me that I was posting soon and needed to slow down to edit. Thank you and welcome to the new follows and favorites and thank you all for the reviews. Sorry if individual shoutouts get put on the backburner for a while. Settling in is taking up a lot of my attention and I'm a bit scatterbrained at the moment.
If you haven't read/watched the Dressrosa arc, you should. 1, because it's awesome, and 2, this chapter and several that follow contain spoilers. Doflamingo's involvement in the black market underground and his connections to Karmen and Pierce's pasts will be a common theme.
I hope you enjoy this chapter as we get to know Willow a little more. I'd love to hear what you all make of her.
After what feels like days of Willow, Ludovic, and Baldwin floating on a shrinking raft of seaweed, a speck appears on the distance that gradually grows larger. It looks darker than usual in the early gray of the pre-dawn light. "That blasted eel is coming back," Willow mutters, waving a limp hand in that direction. The men's eyes glance warily towards the horizon where she'd pointed. At this rate it would only be a matter of time before it dislodged enough seaweed to knock them into the water. It would be a quick meal from there. For some reason the creature is swimming on the surface in a straight line instead of the diving coils it had been doing for days. Slowly, they begin to suspect it may not be what they'd originally thought and push themselves into a sitting position.
"It's a boat!" Ludovic exclaims as they all manage to stand. They can see the distant flap of the canvas sails and the wave-carving wood of the prow. They can hear it creak and Willow can smell the distant scent of stew. It sends her stomach reeling with hunger pangs and she nearly doubles over in pain. The ship can't reach them fast enough. With its current path, it will pass right next to them. Surely they can signal for aid and finally be rescued from their floating hell, get a change of clothes, a warm bath, a hot meal. Willow longs for the comforts of a normal life so much it hurts. If it weren't for the eel being somewhere around, she would have dived in and swam to it.
It takes a full hour for the ship to pull up next to them. Willow finds herself flecking salt from her skirts and straightening her seaweed hat, trying to look as presentable as possible. Still, she knows she can't fix how terrible she looks or the smell of rotten fish and seaweed that clings to her like a second skin. At about five hundred feet away, the crew begins to draw up the sails and they drop the anchor. "Ho!" one of the men call in greeting. They assume this man is the captain. His manner of dress suggests self-importance, if the large shoulder tassels on his starched blue coat could attest to anything. "Who are you three and how have you come to be in such a predicament?"
"Who we are is of no consequence and we'd rather not say how we ended up out here," Ludovic states. "Just know that we've been out here for several days and we are in need of assistance." Willow stares at him. He should announce their titles proudly and these barbarian commoners should grovel for their miserable lives and feel honored simply to consider that Celestial Dragons boots should cross onto the deck of their ship. Ludovic's caution seems cowardice and idiotic to her. She's about to say something when a voice cuts her off.
"What kind of person doesn't introduce themselves to someone who might rescue them?" another man asks.
She takes this as her opportunity and steps forward. "I am Gallowcomb Antwanette Jenevive Willow of the Davenwell family of the Celestial Dragons," Willow announces proudly before anyone can stop her, straightening her back and squaring her shoulders to draw herself up to her full height. She's sure she doesn't look as impressive as her title declares, but these worms need to prostrate themselves at her feet and show the proper respect to their heritage. "I demand passage aboard your ship, a warm bath, food, and water."
Some of the passengers looked shocked and scared as she'd expected, but others, mainly the captain and officers and well-armed men aboard broke out into sneers and smiles. Relief washes through Willow. They're happy to see someone of their high standing. Excited, even. All the longing for pampering that she'd felt over the last few days come rushing back and she takes another step towards the ship. Ludovic puts a hand on her arm to halt her. She looks at him. His jaw is set and his eyes narrow a minuscule amount. He should be happy. He should be demanding to use a transponder snail. Why was he glancing at his empty acid tank? She'd never seen Ludovic like this and it confuses her.
"A Celestial Dragon, she says," one of them crones, elbowing the man next to him. "Wearing limp seaweed like a sunshade, of all things."
"Making demands from a stinking float of the stuff, no less," another chortles.
"I'd say this is a rare opportunity, don't you, Captain?" someone who might have been the first mate says.
"Aye," the man says with a nod. "I think there's only one honorable thing to do in a situation like this." The men look to him with hopeful eyes. "Sink them and rid the world of their disease." A mighty cheer raises from his crew. A few load cannons and aim them, not at the raft, but at them.
A cold chill of shock running through Willow and settles in her bones. How dare they.
Do those lowly humans even realize how grave of a crime they're suggesting?
The image of what had happened to the Donquixote family flashes through her mind. They'd tried to live on equal grounds with humans. They'd denied the fortune of their birth and stepped down from their divine status to be... dirt. Less than dirt. Utter filth to crawl upon the ground and toil and work and slave away to be... what? Human?
They'd been stripped of their Celestial Dragon title and gone into hiding. They'd been discovered by humans like these. Had this been their reception with commoners as well? Had this been what led to them being nailed to a wall, beaten and impaled, and left to die? Looking at these people, it doesn't look like they'll be given even that much of a chance.
The first cannon blast jars her out of her shock and the projectile is aimed straight at her head. She freezes, terror locking her legs and seizing her muscles. It's hard to even draw in a shakey breath. For the first time in her life, Willow believes that she's going to die.
Baldwin jumps in front of her, shocking Willow enough for her body to regain function. His fist jabs forward to meet the iron ball. She hears the bones in his knuckles crack as the cannonball shatters on impact. The shards fly in all directions, including towards her. She isn't fast enough to duck out of the way before one of the shards slices across her cheekbone with searing pain.
They'd cut her. They'd marred her face. Her beautiful face. It would leave an ugly scar. Scars are a disgrace. Scars are imperfections and Celestial Dragons can be nothing but perfection. Her mother had always said that to obtain a scar was to lower yourself to the standards of the barbarians. They showed weakness and the inability to rule effectively. She'd surrounded herself with guards and snipers and bounty hunters to prevent such an event, but out here on the open ocean she was alone, and now she'd been marred.
Would a scar cause her to be ostracized by the main family? Like the other World Nobles and the Elders, Willow had turned her head away when Doflamingo laid the head of his father at their feet, begging to be returned to the seat of a god in exchange for killing the deserter. How old had he been then? Nine? Ten? He'd been touched by the life of a commoner and they'd rejected him like one, ignored his pleas and disdained the desperation in his cries. It had driven him mad. Warlord status was the closest thing to divinity he could claim, but his rose-tinted gaze never left Mariejois. He'd always long for the family that rejected him.
Now Willow had been touched by commoner filth. It had sliced into her cheek and it aches dully against the pain in her chest. She would not let them take away her birthright.
The thoughts pour through her mind like searing metal and leave her filled with a burning rage that chills into a solid thought in her soul. They'll pay. They will know the wrath of a Davenwell.
Ludovic curses as Willow's hand rises to meet the warmth flowing down her cheek. It comes away red. Blood. She'd seen it everywhere they went, from the humans she'd shot, from the servants and slaves and businessmen she'd killed, but never her own. She didn't expect it to be red like theirs, but it is. How strange. Blood. It was all over the vineyards where their grapes are grown. It was in the soil and the water. It wouldn't be far of a stretch to imagine it had been soaked up into the grapes as well.
The grapes. The wine. The blood.
That's what attracted the predators to Valcour. That's what attracted the eel to their little float.
A dark smile thins Willow's lips as she picks up the shard of warm iron that had sliced her cheek. She holds it tightly to her palm and pulls hard with her other hand. Pain. Searing pain, followed by fast flowing blood, just like she'd wanted. She holds her hand out over the water, letting the blood drip down into the dark depths, and laughs her cruelest cackle. If they were going down, they wouldn't go alone.
Ludovic's eyes widen. "What are you-?"
A rumble cuts him off. A long, sleek form erupts from the water with a monstrous high-pitched roar. The eel. The creature looked down at Willow, eyes trained on the blood still dripping into the water. She lets some of it pool in her hand and flings it at the ship. The eel's eyes followed the droplets to where they splatter against the hull.
"I am Davenwell Antwanette Jenevive Willow of the Celestial Dragons. The eel is my family crest. Our totem. We devour those who stand in our way. We are gods among men. We will not be taken lightly."
It is as if she'd given the creature an order, unspoken but clear. The eel dives towards the deck, slathering jaws open, ravished, hungry. It consumes six of the crew right off the bat as it crashes through the wood, down through the levels, and through the hull below. Its mighty tail crashes down, splitting the ship in half. Debris and ruined supplies fly through the air as the screams slowly die out, one by one with each pass of the jaws through the wreckage.
Willow snatches a spool of rope from the air after the tail gives another destructive swing. She may not know how to weave a rope, but she knows how to tie a harness. Her hands move swiftly, artistically as she knots and weaves. Soon she has an adjustable fish harness.
Willow swallows. Karmen had always enjoyed a challenge, but she herself had always preferred something that submitted easily, something that couldn't give her a scar if things went wrong. Now, if something did go wrong, there may not be enough left to scar. Now there is no choice. If they want to reach land then she has to be fearless. Fearless like Karmen.
Try as she might to connect with her ward over the years, Willow had never fully understood her. Now, as she faces off with the giant eel as it swallows down the legs of one of the unfortunate sailors, she wonders if Karmen's stubbornness and quietly rebellious nature had come from her biological father, if her love for the ocean and all things wild and dangerous had come from her biological mother. It was hard to understand how people who had no hand in raising her could influence her so much. She'd never thought she'd end up wishing Karmen would grow up to be like her. It's hard for Willow to see anything other than a Celestial Dragon as a creature capable of emotion and worthy of consideration, but Karmen, who wasn't even a Dragon, had grown up loving fish riding. That much, she'd gotten from Willow.
She leaps while the eel is distracted, digging her heels in to gain traction on its rough scales, which is hard with her socks squelching and sliding in her boots. Only the knowledge of what will happen if she should fall keeps her upright and moving forward. She runs up its long back and dives for its head. She grips the sandpaper-like fringe of its dorsal fin with her knees as she throws the harness over the top jaw, miraculously managing to avoid cutting the rope on its sharp teeth. She quickly hooks the back of the harness over a couple dorsal spines to keep him from shaking it off. He tries, and Willow rides the bucking creature until it tires out, her already weak arms holding on with everything she has left.
The sun is low in the sky before Willow coaxes the eel over to the seaweed raft. "Get on."
"I'm not riding that thing," Baldwin declares, nursing his injured hand. "We just watched it devour an entire ship!"
"Meaning it has a full belly and now is our best chance to not be eaten ourselves," Ludovic says. He picks Baldwin up by the back of his shirt and sets him high on the eel's head. He climbs on himself and settles next to his sister. "Good work, Willow. I enjoyed watching them meet their end."
To her surprise, Willow realizes that she had found no joy in watching the crew be devoured. It had simply been. It had been the same with killing slaves and servants over the past few years. She was plenty capable of shooting someone and watching the life drain from their eyes without losing any sleep, but there had been no satisfaction from it. As Karmen had grown older, servants seemed to get out of deadly situations easier and poorly done work was drawn to her attention less and less. She still shot blatant troublemakers and disloyal cur, but she no longer sought out people to kill. She'd begun to find her husband's habit of taking slaves to the basement distasteful. She'd even been able to look at mothers and their children without wanting to put a bullet through them both.
She hadn't minded the idea of killing Karmen, so long as she was provided another child to rear. Someone to raise to inherit the empire she and Ikaika had built. Karmen's parentage had left them in a difficult position. They could leave nothing to her and if she were told the truth on her eighteenth birthday, as the agreement entailed, and she returned to her father and the Warlords and told them everything she'd seen growing up, if she'd learned any of the Dragon's secrets… No laws could keep heads from rolling. They had hoped Kuma's mind would be too far gone when the time came, but he had been as lucid as ever, if fraying at the seams. Their only hope was that someone with equal or greater power as Karmen's father could keep her hidden until the child was born. If they'd kept the marriage and child a secret, she could claim it as her own grandchild and leave DavenGallow to someone who would follow in their footsteps. With two failed weddings, their influence is crumbling. Their enemies are growing and their allies are all becoming turncoats. The cat is out of the bag and she doesn't know what will happen. She'd have to rely heavily on Ikaika and Ludovic in the months to come. If they could keep their heads above water they could survive this. If Karmen decided she wanted to come back for revenge, well, getting her out of the way was just a bullet or a call away. Maybe they could agree to go their separate ways and call it even. With how things are now, nothing would be gained by hunting down or killing the girl except for personal satisfaction or, at best, sending a message to anyone else who would oppose them.