Chapter 15: Might

“Brace yourselves! She is up to something!” shouted a captain of a ship. His was one of those unlucky hundreds above the oddly shifting waters.

Yet, all ships knew there was danger coming. The white clouds above them grew a little darker, thicker. Although, the sun still broke through.

Almost every ship began to shake. Something was coming up.

Massive waves roiled out from the epicenter of the circular disturbance. Countless tons of sea water rose up, then fell down in roiling, foaming crashes. It fell from a massive object, thousands of feet across.

It was Alurel’s head. She was rising from the waves, far, far bigger than she was before. She was on the order of miles in size now.

Entire ships found themselves lifted up by thick purple appendages. Some realized in horror what it was.

Her sea-anemone like hair. It was now as thick if not thicker than her tentacles once were.

A great noise accompanied Alurel’s reemergence from the sea. It was a loud vibration, more loud than all the war-horns of humanity put together.

“Aaaaaaaa~”

She had emerged mouth open, uttering a taunt which vibrated their bones.

Water raced towards her gaping maw. Ships tried with all their might to steer away from it, but the pull of the water was too strong. It rushed to fill the space her open mouth had made for it, and took dozens of ships up as it flooded into her gob.

More than a fleet’s worth of ships had passed her lips. She curled her tongue, sending them on tumble throughout the living cavern. The waves were made not only of the sea-water there, but also of her spittle. Droplets of it fell atop many a ship, sinking them from the force of it.

Many ships managed to navigate the waters of her mouth, as she was a little gentle with them on purpose. It was all for naught; all they managed was to last a little longer. Whether whole and intact or broken, trending water, all the ships and sailors were going to the same place.

Alurel sealed her lips, tilted her head, and gulped nosily. Dozens of ships passed from her illuminated mouth to her throat which glowed with that same golden hue.

As she had swallowed, many ships crashed into her ruby red-ish lips, bouncing off the flesh were some damages received. They were moments away from being sucked in themselves. She looked down, having something in store for them as well. Her mouth opened once more.

“Ahh~”

She released a sigh in their direction. Her sweet and humid breath ripped into the ships like a gale. It was enough to send many capsizing in the churning waters.

Giggling, her voice once more rocked their bodies. She pursed her lips and blew the few remaining, upright ships right over.

After that, she continued to rise. Slowly.

There were ships who were almost sucked in that didn't crash into her lips. They were by the left or right edges of her face, and were able to veer out of it.

Alurel, of course, would not them simply get away like that. Many crashed into her light-purple ‘hair’ tendrils, but there were those that didn’t. She simply stretched out those sea-anemone-like appendages to gather them up herself. At least a few ships could be held by each.

Since she grew, so too did those appendages on her head, and so too did their stingers. The needle-like main stingers on the limbs were now big enough to puncture through ships, catching and ‘sticking’ them with ease.

On top of that, the spear-thick stingers could now easily pierce through crewmen as well. Sailors found themselves impaled on the once-minute stingers. As they bled across the shafts of the needle-like things, they were still stung. Each stinger itself had little stingers on its shaft which also delivered the toxin. Thus, even impaled they were not spared from the painful, paralytic, digesting substance.

In fact, such Alurel had grown, the toxin only passed into them faster. Many sailors became un-impaled simply by their toxin-afflicted bodies slushing right off the big stingers.

Alurel turned her eyes to look at her ‘hair’ best she could.

“Look at your cute, delicious little ships. Come over here. Aaa~”

She moved the sea-anemone-like appendages into her mouth and sucked off the treats they had snagged. Ships were ripped right through by the stingers as the suction of her mouth pulled them deeper into her gob. Her tongue licked them right up and off her ‘hair’, and the tendrils left her mouth free of prey, though with a thin coating of her own saliva to dry away in the air.

Her emergence continued. Her shoulders rose up from the waters, and all the ships got an even better idea of just how massive she was: miles. Though the figure of her upper-body was still lithe, she was so big that her width stretched more than around a thousand ships side by side.

There was not much time to lament their position. Waves as tall if not taller than ships spread out from her body as it rose. Her perky breasts broached the surface soon after. Ships that couldn't’ escape in time found the water beneath them fading, giving way to the soft supple flesh of her bosom as it emerged beneath them.

The ships tumbled off her breasts, many crashing into her pink nipples before falling down hundreds of feet to heir doom.

The fleets were scrambling to try and sail away from her, many tossed under as she simply rose more out of the waters. They saw a navel that could swallow them all whole.

Entire fleets of ships found their vessels lurching up. Alurel had positioned her palms beneath scores of some ships. The waters sifted through her fingers, leaving the ships stranded on the skin of her hands in mere puddles of sea water.

Giggling down at the scores of ships, she brought her hands to her mouth, one at a time, then tipped them in.

The ships plummeted in a free fall into her mouth. She swallowed fast, taking them down. The journey down her illuminated throat was a rough one, and one filled with visions of slimy flesh, squeezing their vessels down with ease.

Entire fleets worth of ships were devoured. The ones that were intact sailed the churning waters of her stomach juices. Every shift of her body, however subtle, shifted that new, acidic ‘sea’ of theirs. The churns themselves whipped the area into an uproar. Towering waves of corrosive chyme capsized vessels dozens at a time.

Falling overboard was a death sentence, as sailors and broken ships were caught in veritable maelstroms whipped up from the activity. The waves kept their heads under the surface, where they choked and drowned on the acidic fluid as it worked to dissolve their bodies.

Alurel smacked her lips and let out a pleased “mmm~”. She reached up her arms for a stretch, followed by another booming, all encompassing sigh that echoed over the world.

It had only been a short while, but she had emerged from the sea much as she had liked. In the process, that simple movement for her wiped out a large swath of the navies just doing so. However, she was hardly done churning up tumult.

All of her upper-body and some of her lower, octopus-like body stuck out of the water. Her tentacles still dipped mostly beneath the waters. The idle wriggles of those appendages kicked up ferocious tidal waves that engulfed ships while heading on a path to ravage the coast of the Afflelands.

The very front of her form and those tentacles were all the navies had to shoot at. They, of course, didn’t leave even a scratch on her. They couldn’t before, when she was much smaller. Now, at a leviathanian scale, she defeated entire fleets with mere shifts of those limbs. Ships were cast out of the water as a tentacle rose below them. They sailed down the slope of the limb, crashing into the waves broken and beaten.

Alurel raised one of her frontwards tentacles high up and stretched it out.

“Aah, I truly am immense now aren’t I? Human ships were always delicate things, but now you so very fragile compared to me. It’s so cute! I can’t help but want to snatch you up.”

She giggled.

“How silly to think you could stand against me. You humans are like plankton now, atop the decks of your little ships. So very cute and small~”

She shadowed a swarm of fleets beneath the shadow of that tentacle, then brought it down for a slam. Scores of ships exploded on contact. Others were hit smack dab by the suckers lining the limb. They tightened, squeezing the ships to bits that way before relaxing and letting the debris fall.

Smirking, she began to wiggle and shift her tentacles through the waters. All the ships around her seemed smaller than the smallest fish to her now, and like such puny fish they were caught in the currents of her movements. They were whipped into the frenzy of crisscrossing waves she had made.

Without even moving anything other than her tentacles, she was destroying a vast swath of the ships sent to attack her. Those ships not crushed by the thrashing and flailing of her monolithic tentacles were torn apart by the fierce waves the limbs whipped up.

“It didn’t have to be this way. All you sailors could have stayed on land and bowed to me. Humans are stubborn though, that I know. Countless times a cargo ship has tried to resist me, back when I was smaller, when I lacked the power of the sea and storm itself. They’d fight to the dying breath at times to save cargo and companion. It was so endearing, but always pointless. I always won; I always win.”

She eyed a swath of ships sailing away from here. It was hundreds strong. She pointed her hand at them.

“Look at what I can do now. The powers I wield and deserve. The powers of a real queen!”

She wiggled her fingers and lightning surged forth. Each arc of the stuff blasted entire ships apart. She kept moving those digits in a cute little dance, pelting the fleet in a chaotic fashion. People were scorched to crisps. Burnt corpses and wood tore through the hulls of neighboring vessels that were soon blasted apart themselves.

“The sea answers my whims. It obeys me. I am its mistress!”, she shouted. “You try and resist me, but you are already sailing on my domain!”

She turned to the other side of her body. Another large swath of hundreds of ships lingered there. She twirled her finger in the air, and water began to swirl around those vessels. It spun faster and faster as a giant whirlpool, leading downwards.

The vessels tried to maintain their stability in the maelstrom, but it was too big, and too fast to last for long. Complicating matters further was the storm cloud she had whipped up right about the whirlpool. It released bolts of lightning to strike the more lucky or skilled pilots, whose ships had not yet capsized into the maelstrom’s center. Those that did, of course, where crushed by the spinning pressure and drowned if they survived.

She giggled as she watched it: her green-irised eyes tracked the movements of the ships, round and round. Eventually, she grew bored of it.

“You’re nothing but my meals, my toys. It’s the purpose of a subject to serve and entertain they queen right? Lest they are disposed of~”

She clenched her left hand into a fist. The whirlpool collapsed in on itself. All within it were crushed to bloody bits, their vessels smashed to splinters. That little storm cloud she made near was gone too.

She laughed, and it carried across the world via the sea and clouds much as her voice did. To her front, thousands more ships were sailing away from her, towards the coast of the Afflelands.

“Are you going back to coast? You think you can fair better there? Incorrect, but I think I will go there myself. You can accompany me, if you’d like.”

She started to move towards the fleets.

“In my stomach, that is.”

Giggling, she lifted her hand in an upwards gesture. Beneath all those ships, the very water began to rise up in a great column. The ships sunk into the shaped water, which was flowing up out of the sea and towards Alurel.

It reached towards her face, and she opened her mouth.

The torrent of sea-water flooded into her maw, and she drank it down along with all the ships in it. Those in her stomach who had managed to stay afloat thus far were in peril. A sudden surge of countless thousands of gallons flooded the living, lit chamber. The salt water rained from above as a flood, sinking all the ships already in her stomach while more plummeted down like deadly debris.

With all those ships swallowed down, there was now once again almost nothing between Alurel and the Afflelands capital.

She quickly swam back over.

Her earlier departure had given the people of that country some hope of normalcy returning. They thought the arrival unified navies, as she had implied, would have defeated her. However, seeing her colossal figure moving back over sunk hopes back down lower than ever.

Before she returned came massive waves. They inundated the already ravaged coastal region of the capital. As if that wasn’t enough, she giggled, speaking to them again.

“You sought to resist me, but failed. Why do you resist your queen? Come play with me. How about a bit of splashing~”

She moved one of her tentacles back, then pushed it forward through the depths. In this way, she pushed an extremely large wave straight towards the settlement.

While she laughed, the enormous tidal wave poured over the coastal region deeper into the city itself. Buildings were swept up in the waters. People were swirled around, drowning. The wave receded, as waves often did, and pulled many of the buildings and people and mess back out into towards the sea.

Alurel raised her hand and dashed it to the side in the air. The motion coincided with her flexing her powers to create another wave. This one traveled sideways along the coast and much of the settlement, washing away most of what survived her first wave.

“Come on, you sent your ships right? That must mean you wanted to get close to me in even just one sense.” I’ll bring you closer. Embrace your queen~”

She scuttled up to the shore. Her front tentacles stretched out and curled around entire chunks of the city. Buildings and streets were swept up by the limbs and moved towards her massive body. What stuff wasn’t rolled over by those limbs was brought up to the front of her form. She was so big, they couldn't even comprehend her up close. The surviving people were crushed against the somewhat rubbery skin of her octopus-like half.

“Yes.”, she said. “It’s so good to feel your culture up close. I want to feel more~”

Another tentacle went in and slammed over a few streets. It curled around some buildings, bringing them up to her naked chest where they were promptly smushed into. She cooed at the sensation.

“Ah, so that’s what it feels like to have entire buildings crumble against oneself. I never knew till now.”

She repeated the gesture, destroying the next tentacle-hold of buildings against her taut tummy instead.

“There is something I always wanted to try. A special building you humans have. A real, human castle. A true treasure of your culture.”

She spotted it. The castle of the Afflelands. It was were its king lived. She stretched a tentacle towards it, but it was just out of reach. With a pout, she let the limb sag and crush all in its shadow.

“I guess I have to get closer, don’t I?”

Using her tentacles, she once more scuttled onto land. Only this time, she was far, far bigger. Her massive form crushed all she moved over. Nothing could resist the bulk of her form. All left in her scuttling wake was flattened buildings, ruined stone streets, and the crushed remnants of humans.

She giggled.

“Land feels so funny beneath me, you know. It’s weird to think of how you humans spend all your time on it. I guess you won’t be for much longer.”

She was close enough to snag the castle with her hands, and did so. Leaning down, she scooped it up along with chunks of its very foundation.

She held it delicately in her palm. Inside was the king Ethan had told of her of, as well as numerous guards no doubt. They stayed huddled inside, not showing themselves, but they spoke somewhat close to a small coating of wetness on her hand: wetness from the sea. That let her pick up some words here and there, focusing, and thus able to realize the castle hold someone who thought themselves a king.

Of course, she didn’t consider him a king. The moment she had the Trident, she considered herself the only rightful ruler of any domain.

She leaned her head towards her hand.

“A castle. A whole castle. Once this structure might have been bigger than me, yet not I can hold it in my hand, as tiny as a little guppy.”

She giggled.

“I always wanted to treasure a castle. This is far more dour than the Atlantis palace though. Mostly bland stone. Still, there’s an appeal to having it in hand.”

Alurel raised it up towards her face.

“Now, to see what a castle taste like~”

Alurel cupped her palm to her open mouth and lapped the castle right up. She swallowed, quickly gulping it down. Those inside her stomach could see the entire fortification fall down into the chyme, already crumbled from the squeezes of her throat.

Alurel licked her lips. “Very stony flavor.”, she said, laughing.

She looked ahead, seeing hills and other such features of land far in the distance. Focusing, she could see more settlements far off. She could sense all those of the world beneath her clouds.

“It’s so tempting to move even more in-land, to see the sights you land-dwellers have to offer. But, there is no point to that.”

She turned around and scuttled back towards the sea. Her voice continued booming across the world.

“It’ll all be mine soon. Yes, don’t worry. Despite attacking me, I will let you join my undersea domain still.”

She reentered the sea. Up above, the clouds began to darken.

“I’ve had a lot of fun fighting you all, but I’m not here to kill you all. I plan to unit the land kingdom into mine, not destroy it.”

She waved her hand and the clouds darkened further. The light over the world began to grow darker.

“Yes, despite your rather rude treatment, I forgive you. I know it’s just cause you humans are so silly. You need guidance. You need a strong and loving queen to watch over you. Enjoy you. Treasure you. Some may think it overly magnanimous, but I forgive your attacks, yes, you will still join me. You will still get to live beneath the waters.”

She focused her powers. The clouds shifted darker once again.

“You will get to live beneath your new queen.”

The clouds were swirling. Thunder roared across the world. A storm was brewing.