When left alone, humans could build absolutely remarkable structures. No other creature on the planet constructed anything quite like the metropolises they created from mere dirt and water.
Elegant pillars of marble and granite, enormous temples filled with statues to their strange pantheons of gods, and even bustling collections where humans congregated ostensibly to… Do something.
Thalassa had observed the city-state for quite some time. She marveled at how quickly human laborers could put up a completely functional box of stone, where they typically resided for long periods of time. She surmised that the structures served to protect the weak, puny, and quite frankly delicate little things from the elements of the harsh surface world.
She could empathize with them; the sun was not exactly good for her either. Thalassa spent the vast majority of her time in the water, where she was free to swim about and observe the precious little things in secret. She had to be especially careful when they set out into the seas with their rickety vehicles hobbled together from pieces of wood, which were just buoyant enough to float on the surface and with the aid of the wind and oars, propel themselves forward.
Occasionally a human would catch sight of her on the days she was too careless. Rarely did they ever get a glimpse at all of her since they were so laughably small compared to her, but once in a while a little wooden raft with an adorable human in it would accidentally bump into one of her many tentacles as the enormous arms churned the ocean to push Thalassa around.
Such incidents no doubt left quite the impression on the poor little things, who always seemed very scared afterwards no matter how gentle she was. On one particularly embarrassing occasion, a slightly bigger boat not quite the length of one of Thalassa’s fingernails had gotten itself stuck on one of her tentacle suckers and she had to remove it with her hand.
Fortunately the wooden raft thing was sturdy enough for her to handle without it completely breaking, but the humans on board had actually tried to jump off for some reason! After she slipped back beneath the waves to watch them further, they got back on the raft, but it could have ended far worse.
However that one incident did leave an impression on Thalassa as well. She desperately wanted to know how their civilization worked, but worried that if she tried to introduce herself they may be frightened and try to run away. Perhaps they could be moved somewhere more suitable for her to admire them…?
The citizens of Atlantea were awash with panic as the normally calm, tranquil waters of their idyllic coastline churned and eventually transformed into powerful waves that slammed some smaller fishing boats into the sandy shores.
None of their oracles had foretold of a storm, and furthermore the skies were as clear and cerulean as the magnificent ocean on which they had elected to build their grand civilization.
Moments later the citizens realized what the source of the tidal waves were, when they saw a colossal figure emerge from the bottomless depths of the sea. Countless ships and boats were caught in Thalassa’s long lavender hair that stretched down her back like a waterfall and clung to her cheeks. A bulbous dark mantle framed the rest of her face, and glistened in the sunlight.
She was a strange creature, although her beauty was undeniable to all those who found themselves cast in her shadow that stretched across the entire city-state even as she appeared distantly in the horizon. Her skin was human enough to be nearly mistaken as such, if not for the unique very light-purple color of her very feminine, remarkably curvaceous torso.
Her pupils were strangely shaped, with horizontal slits and an amethyst hue around the sclera. As she swam closer to their glorious city-state, the locals realized where the stories their fisherman had told them came from. Rather than propel herself with legs, Thalassa maneuvered her enormous body forward with several absolutely humongous squid-like tentacles, each one covered in suckers. Just one sucker was bigger than the largest war ships in all Greece, they realized.
Oh dear… I think I hurt some of them. Thalassa realized as she noticed the few tiny, pitiful ships that had gotten caught up in her massive strands of hair which had effortlessly splintered and annihilated most of them where she had chosen to emerge. Hmm? What’s that sound?
As she frowned and looked out at the city that she intended to collect for herself, Thalassa noticed the gleam of shiny bits of metal against the morning sun. She recognized the humans garbed in their unusual metal suits, and the pointy sticks made out of the same material. Each hoplite was trained from birth to protect the city, regardless of the threat.
They gathered up in formations with one another, while the humans not in the same ensemble began to flee. Thalassa felt a little bad about the humans she had accidentally killed with her mere arrival, but supposed as long as she got the majority of them to their destination unharmed it would still work out just fine.
Thousands of feet below the surface of the water, completely invisible to the humans who believed they had seen the largest of her other suction cup covered arms, Thalassa used far larger and thicker tentacles to drag herself along the ocean floor now that she was in this much shallower part of the open sea next to the coast line. Her tentacles completely destroyed the entire reef there, and the lesser sea creatures swam away lest they be crushed.
At her waist near the waterline, hundreds of ships scrambled to make a hasty retreat back towards the city. Some were significantly faster than others, whilst more decided it was worth it to lose their cargo to speed up. Oarsmen and slaves desperately rowed for their lives, incentivized both by the lash and the hopes of getting away to push their bodies to the absolute limit.
Thalassa thought these humans looked rather cute, especially the male ones with sturdy bodies built from a lifetime rowing. Easy does it now… I’m just going to take you somewhere nice and safe!
With one of her ‘smallest’ tentacles, which was about the same width across as a giant granite pillar in the temple to Zeus, Thalassa selected a fishing boat at random. The sailors on board screamed and many jumped overboard, only to be immediately crushed between the colossal arm and the side of the boat. Thalassa did not even notice, nor did she really care since she managed to trap most of the cuties inside the boat where they could not escape.
Some on the deck were not so fortunate, as her massive tentacle surged and tightened around their boat. A viscous, slimy liquid that secreted from the bulbous flesh ensnared several hapless sailors and caused them to stick firmly to the arm. Any sailor unfortunate enough to be stuck face down in the mucus like substance quickly suffocated, while the rest were trapped like beasts in slick tar. Thalassa wiggled them all around for a bit to confirm the boat was nice and stuck to the tentacle, then wrapped the organ around the boat a few more times until all the humans were effectively glued still like statues from the slime she produced.
Left with no way to move or escape, the surviving humans on board looked on nervously as they were raised high into the air by the tentacle. Prayers were uttered as they looked out to see Atlantea now thousands of feet below them, a mere speck on the archipelago.
That’s one down! And it wasn’t too difficult either. Thalassa thought, proud of herself as she observed how the boat still had more or less a full crew of little treasures for her to play with later. “Now for the rest of your fleet…” She said to herself, and set about ensnaring the rest of the fishing boats, along with any pesky stragglers that thought to get away.
Her arms surged across the ocean to eagerly draw in more ships, boats and even small rafts piloted by the poorest fishermen. With a bit of conscious effort, Thalassa could supply the tentacles with some more slime that made them extremely sticky, and in mere minutes hundreds of ships were stuck to the arms like insects on the tongue of an anteater. Fat globs of slime provided some measure of protection from the crushing pressure of the ocean depths, and miraculously avoided a slow drowning while stuck within.
By now the Archon of Atlantea had called for an immediate evacuation, although his citizens were way ahead of him and had already began to run further across the island to the northern shoreline. The titaness had appeared from the populous southern coast, their only hope would be to take the ships docked elsewhere and retreat into the open water before she realized what was amiss. Unfortunately for them, Thalassa had no intentions to let any of her new adorable little friends go anywhere.
A few fishermen that had heard the commotion from the otherside of Atlantea decided to sail back out to sea to the north, only to find themselves face to face with an unbelievably massive tentacle, covered in suckers thousands of feet across in diameter.
The enormous arm emerged from the depths and coiled possessively around the entire island, and to their horror the humans that had made it this far realized the creature was much bigger than they had originally realized. Some of her bigger arms that lurked deeper beneath the waves were large enough to surround the whole archipelago.
They worked so hard to make these box things. I should take them as well! Thalassa decided as she espied the strange structures constructed of wood, stone and thatch that dotted the city. The humans spent most of their time inside of them, similar to how certain fish made homes inside of shells.
Each house was completely unique, and some were more sturdy than others. The wealthier merchants and nobles in the upper class had foundations built of granite that were connected deep into the earth. Others were essentially just shacks that kept the rain away. In the distance further up the mountain at the center of Atlantea, numerous temples and stone pillars comprised the most magnificent of their architecture.
Thalassa neared the now abandoned sandy shores, and it was then that the humans came to the conclusion she was amphibious. Some humans that were too slow to beat the crowds of desperate cityfolk streaming back behind the relative safety of the walls tried in vain to hide behind trees and fishing stalls. Tentacles surged over the beaches hungrily, and dragged the humans kicking and screaming across the sandy surface into the depths along with their beautiful buildings on the ports.
Where exactly they were destined once the smaller tentacles disappeared below the waves was a mystery to all but Thalassa, who was more than happy to store them in a very special place for the time being. Each tentacle returned to a particularly sensitive erogenous zone located beneath her mass of colossal, sucker covered arms. The water closest to Thalassa’s genitalia was abnormally warm, and the water was quite slick with her arousal.
Hundreds of tons worth of stone buildings and wooden docks along with no small number of humans were then forced through a comparatively narrow slit. Indeed these were a set of ‘lips’, although not quite the ones the humans there worried they had been deposited into. Regardless, once inside they were more or less safe in the inky cavern, with quite a number of their homes surprisingly still intact.
Across the island, more tentacles emerged from the waterline and soared across the forests in order to completely ensnare the entire civilization. The Archon from his temple at the highest peak of the island watched in amazement as numerous enormous arms stretched for what seemed like miles and approached his beautiful city. The suckers acted as a powerful adhesive to bond whole residential districts too.
Thalassa hoisted herself onto the now barren shores of Atlantea. Her tentacles had effortlessly drawn in most of the civilization outside of the city, but she was determined to take more of it. Some of the structures built behind the protective outer wall were much more delicate, since they were not designed to weather storms or possible attacks from other city states.
She would need to take a different approach.
Those who had made it back to the shelter of Atlantea heard an all-encompassing roar as something enormous approached at an impossible speed. Thousands looked up in terror to see a single proportionately dainty feminine hand cast the town in shadow. The massive fingers splayed out like a net, then made contact with the sandy earth. Effortlessly Thalassa dug her fingers deep into the soil, oblivious to the attempts of a legion of hoplites dispatched to attack her fingers.
Their bravery was for naught, since even their sharpest blades could penetrate her extremely thick outer layer of skin which protected the oceanic leviathan from the crushing depths. Thalassa purred like the distant roll of thunder as she removed a chunk of the city and all of its inhabitants. She held the piece of land up to her playful eyes and observed the countless humans that looked up at her in horror.
To her surprise, they began to act very strangely. Many dropped to their knees and made gestures similar to what they would do in the temples from time to time.
Are they worshiping me? Thalassa thought in bewilderment. A quick glance at the armor-clad warrior statue in the center of the district she had lifted from the earth was enough to confirm she looked pretty much nothing like one of their gods.
Humans communicated in a somewhat similar manner to Thalassa. They had vocal chords and could make a limited assortment of noises whenever they spoke. Thalassa was fairly confident that with enough time she could pick up on their extremely primitive language, but there was enough time for a cultural exchange later. She opened her mouth to display a row of slightly razor sharp teeth, designed to slash through big chunks of whales and other sea leviathans.
No doubt the action soiled a few breeches, but Thalassa was not particularly hungry. However, to take so many people into the depths safely would require a bit of creativity. The giantess slurped up the patch of city like a noodle, and swallowed it all whole in a single gulp. Later when she found a place to store them all, she could simply regurgitate them.
This is taking a bit longer than I thought. I wonder if they need this island in particular for anything? Hmm… Thalassa observed that she still had around half the island left to seize, but most of it was the less populated larger temples that seemed especially delicate. She had seen how easily they could be knocked over before.
That only left her with one option.
Atlas watched the she-leviathan return to the depths, but not before she had seized more than half of his kingdom. Although his family and top generals begged for him to evacuate, the Archon refused to abandon the city his family had worked so hard to build.
For generations they had heard stories from the sailors about a sea monster that lurked around the archipelago, but Atlas was a logical man who believed them to be the typical nonsense peddled by seawater addled old coots. The ‘kraken’ was a myth, or that is what he believed until he saw her emerge from the tropical waters.
Still, she looked nothing like that he had imagined. For one, the kraken seemed to have the upper torso of a maiden blessed by Aphrodite, with sinful curves and a heart achingly beautiful face that blotted out the sun. Perhaps she had her fill, and now left them with a solemn warning? The oracles would need to interpret the meaning of this assault…
It was then that Atlas felt the island itself tremble again. He feared for her return to finish what she had started minutes prior, but no woman appeared. Instead enormous tentacles larger than entire nations emerged and stretched so high into the sky Atlas imagined they would be visible from Mount Olympus for all the gods to see.
Swiftly they descended from the heavens and wrapped around the island, and to the horror of Atlas, he realized that the entire city was beginning to sink into the sea underneath the weight of the tentacles as they relentlessly pulled deeper.
Seawater flooded the streets and temples as Atlas shut his eyes to await the inevitable, moments before Atlantea was erased from the island, which vanished beneath the waves altogether. And thus the legends of the underwater utopia were born.