Chapter 16: Love

The clouds were a heavy dark, and growing thicker still. The air grew humid. People have felt this sensation before. There would be a storm. Yet, this one was big. Bigger than most had ever felt, and it stretched across the globe.

“Come and embrace the waters I command. I’ve blessed them with my power.”

She wiggled her tentacles and commanded the waves to surge. The few vessels of the navies still intact were pulled underwater. Those who fell in the sea, or were simply splashed by the water, began to notice changes. Their skin tingled; it changed tones to grey, green, or bluer shades. Their necks began to hurt till slits completed forming. Gills. Their ears grew pointed, finned, and fins jutted from their elbows, shoulders, and backs. Their voices and ears would work in the seas now.

Sailors and those on the coast, hit by the waters, looked to their fingers to see fleshy webbings between them. Those unshod noticed the same between their toes.

“You’ll be changed into beings that can live underwater, who can live in my kingdom. Into people that can live among me~”

People noticed, and many began to flee the waves that lapped at their shores. Even a drop’s worth was enough to cause changes.

“Don’t worry those of you far inland. Even those of you who had never had the pleasure of seeing the ocean will join me. My rains will reach you. I command the storms and well as the sea. All of the water is mine to command, now become of the water, and become mine!”

She clapped her hands together. A great clamor of deafening thunder rang out from the dark-gray clouds stretched across the globe.

Rain began to pour.

The torrential precipitation was unrivaled, a new record. Streets flooded with it. Yet, all those touched by it too noticed changes.

People ran screaming in the streets all across the globe. They tried to cover themselves with umbrellas or coats. They fled inside their homes from the ‘cursed’ rains. However, all it took was a drop and the changes began. Once the changes started, they would finish.

“Enjoy your new bodies. They are better than the old. My mastery of the sea lets me change you all, adapt you all to your new and future home.”

Some people didn’t resist the changes though. These were, ironically, often very inland tribes, towns and the like. They and many other settlements looked upwards towards the rain, arms outstretched, and accepted what they viewed as a blessing.

“But do not weep for your mountains, your hills, your forests. I see the value in these things of land. I’ve tasted the succulent fruits you grow from the ground. All I mentioned and more will have a part of my new world as well. I’ll bring the very terrain of the land down with me. All the land has to offer will be mine.”

She made another gesture with her arms and the storm increased further. The wind whipped. Waves rose higher and higher as the rains fed the seas. The water level of the oceans began to rise. Coastal cities were flooded, then swept into the seas themselves.

As this went on, Alurel grew. She grew to twice her old size, than triple. She grew so large that she could see above her own storm. She could see through it, though, as the storm was an extension of the power. At this level of the storm’s ferocity, and at her level of power, she could make out many details of all her dark clouds covered.

“I myself will drag you down. I’ll hug you to the depths to make you mine faster~”, she said.

Proving the point, the absolute megalithic Alurel stretched tentacles towards the Afflelands. The limbs kept growing with her as she contained, but they also changed. Some of her suckers had turned to razor-lined mouths, and in-between them were green-irised eyes coated in a protected membrane. As the tentacle landed across thousands and thousands of people and scores of buildings, the sharp teeth of the mouth-suckers dug into the land. It gave her a better hold.

“I can see you beneath me. I can’t save you all, that’d be too much effort. But those of you walking between the suckers of my tentacles, alive, know that a great new world awaits you if only you can persevere longer.”

With her hold on the land, Alurel pushed downwards with her tentacles. She was shoving landscapes down towards the ocean. The entire country of the Afflelands quaked from the process, and the waters had an easier time of flooding the country’s lands.

“No.”, she said. “I can’t quite shove you down yet. I need to be bigger. Bigger.”

She closed her eyes, focusing. Her body shined bright as she called upon yet more of her power. Her entire tentacled form shot upwards even farther. She grew past the 100 mile mark. She grew so big she could see entire countries outright and laid out before her.

“Yes!”, she shouted. Her voice roared as loud if not louder than the storm she had weaved.

Said storm still raged on around her and around the planet. It only grew fiercer the bigger she was. Water levels were rising fast.

“Room. I need to make room for you all. The ocean isn’t deep enough for my new queendom. I’ll make it deeper.”

She clenched her fist and willed the sea to become deeper, to expand downwards. Fast moving currents swarmed the seafloors. She used the power of erosion to rub away the sand and rock. It dissolved, making more sea. She did this process to push the depth of the sea close to the planet’s vore core.

“Yes.”, she said. “It’s working, as I knew it would. Finally. Finally you are all mine!”

Everyone alive was touched by her waters by then. The level of the sea had risen to flood entire countries.

Giggling with glee, Alurel stretched her massive tentacles out across continents. She pushed down with all her might, crushing the land into the depths: her depths.

The deep layers of stratum the continents rested on were crushed and eroded away. She cared only for the very surface, which she pushed down beneath her rising waves.

Alurel’s laughter increased, she had never felt so jubilant. It reached a crescendo when she saw the tallest mountain on land at last fall beneath the waters.

She had done it. Her dream was done. All on land belonged to the sea now, and thus to her.