A Tentacle Romance Novella

Content warning: This story is exactly what it says on the tin. Readers looking for straight up porn are likely to be disappointed. It's close to 30,000 words long, and there's no sex at all for the first two thirds of that. Readers may also find the romance unacceptably vanilla. The entire story is an exercise in extreme self-indulgence, and I'm not sure if an actual audience for this even exists. That said, I'm sharing it publicly in the hope that someone out there will enjoy it.

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Fingers aching, Melina chalked down the last mark of the summoning circle. She knelt back, breathing heavily, closing her eyes and forcing herself to take a minute of rest before looking at it again. She gave her measurements a final check, then erased the stroke and redrew it again, adjusting by a few minutes of arc. That was as perfect as it was going to get.

She looked over her work. A twenty-six vertex star, with over eight hundred sigil instructions. Technically not the most complicated summoning ever attempted, but that wasn't a lot of comfort when a full eight of those sigils were practically untested. If everything worked as intended, the circle would locate, summon and contain a living being from another world, a place unreachable by any measure of distance.

Expecting absolutely everything to work as intended would probably be wildly overoptimistic though. Every part of it ought to work in theory, but it was probably still too much to ask for a novel and ambitious summoning function to work perfectly on the first try. Still, just demonstrating clear progress ought to be enough to impress the advisory board.

Melina took a sip from the now-tepid mug of sweetened milk she'd prepared to steady her nerves. She was going to be too tense to eat dinner until she'd actually tested this. If the spell went off without a hitch, she'd be famous. If there was some minor flaw in the execution, she'd looking forward to days of intensive troubleshooting before her presentation. If there was some major technical obstacle to the method, if she could at least figure out what it was in time, she could probably secure funding for the year.

If it was something worse... she forced herself to drain the mug, fortifying her depleted blood sugar. She was almost completely certain the circle wouldn't explode and kill her on activation. And the functions to make sure it wouldn't target some creature powerful enough to break through the seal from the inside had been thoroughly experimentally vetted. The circle should protect her from practically any means by which a summoned creature could harm her from inside, and if she stopped actively maintaining the mana supply to the spell for more than a few seconds, it should automatically abort and dismiss the summon.

No, if anything went seriously wrong, it would be something completely outside the scope of her ability to anticipate.

Melina stood, drawing herself up to her full, imposing height. If the spell was going to work at all, it would probably summon something small. In fact, if ecological principles held between worlds, she'd most likely be looking at something on the scale of an insect or a rodent. Whatever ended up inside the circle would probably be much more scared of her than she was of it. Rather than dwelling on the vast space of the unknown opening up before her, she tried to focus on the thought of a cute, otherworldly mouse appearing inside the circle.

The final step was as simple as breathing. Just a small flow of mana would bring the circle to life and unveil the results of years of research. Melina activated the spell.

The space in front of her imploded.

Melina had a fraction of a second to register the thunderclap roar, and the column of darkness opening up before her, before a blast of rushing air hit her like a wall from behind. The floor fell away beneath her feet, and the cautionary distance she'd put between herself and the summoning circle vanished in an instant as she hurtled towards the black space ahead. She had no time even to brace herself in anticipation before it swallowed up her vision as she was sucked through into starless empty space. After a couple seconds of reeling shock, she tried to see if her lab was still visible behind her, but with no ground beneath her feet, she was left helplessly flailing at the air around her with no way to turn her body and look.

At least there was still air around her. She breathed it in in panicked gasps, wondering if she'd trapped herself in endless void. She had only a moment to consider the possibility before she caught sight of a glimmer of light ahead. Soft and yellow, more like a firefly than a star. Only a pinprick at first, but growing quickly. Within a second, it shone like a lamp glow in front of her. Another second, and Melina realized she should brace herself for impact. She flinched and shielded herself with her arms as it rushed up to overwhelm her field of view.

Despite her apparent speed of travel, Melina's feet settled softly onto solid ground. Her legs gave out under her regardless, her knees jolting with the impact against hard stone. The light which had shone so clearly in the void was now nothing more than a faint glow illuminating her surroundings: a cave of smooth dark stone, with columns of rock stretching up to a high, domed ceiling far out of reach. The source of the light was a crystal sitting at the top of a tall cylindrical pillar, shining with a steady yellow phosphorescence.

She struggled back to her feet, trying to regain her bearings. Where was she? No, more importantly, what had just happened? If she could figure out what had gone wrong with the spell, that might allow her to figure out not only where she was, but how to get back. But was figuring that out even possible? She cast around her surroundings. The summoning circle she'd so painstakingly created was nowhere in sight. Either it had been left behind in her lab, or worse, destroyed when the spell malfunctioned. Without having it to check her work, there was absolutely no way to tell what had gone wrong.

In that case, trying to figure out where she was first was her only option. She walked up to the stone pillar, and ran her hands over its surface. It was hard to make out in the dim light, but it felt smooth, almost polished. That was enough to give her a glimmer of hope. The pillar, and the crystal on top, were probably man-made. Whatever this place was, people had been here. Maybe she could find someone she could ask for help.

She stepped back a bit to get a better look at the crystal, puzzling over the fact that it had been placed somewhere so hard to reach. Even if she jumped, Melina's fingers wouldn't be able to brush the top of the pillar, and for most of her life she'd never even needed to go on tiptoe. So, whatever it was, someone had wanted to make sure people couldn't easily get their hands on it. Focusing her senses, she could clearly feel a glow of magic emanating from it, but at this distance, it was impossible to get a read on its function.

She turned her back on the pillar. There was no sense getting preoccupied. It was easy to focus her attention on the crystal, since it was her only source of light in this unfamiliar place, but that was an easy problem to fix. What she needed now was to find other people. She held out her hand and called up a flow of mana to create a light of her own.

Her knees hit stone again, knocked off her feet by an overwhelming wave of vertigo. Her stomach heaved, and she retched up a mouthful of the sweetened milk she'd drunk only minutes before, coughing it out across the cold stone floor.

A cold, smothering panic settled over her. She huddled on the floor, gasping for breath, the already dark cave now swimming in her vision. Tentatively, she made another attempt to call up a flow of mana, a tiny current, only enough to create a faint flicker of light. Another wave of nausea. She let out a whimper. Had the malfunctioned summon interfered somehow with her ability to use magic? If so, she was completely helpless. Not merely stranded in some unfamiliar place, but probably as good as dead. No way to fend for herself, no chance to reverse the spell and return home, no way even to make a light to find her way out of this cave.

A sudden sound echoed through the darkness. A rustling noise, like dry leaves shifting over stone. Melina froze, choking down a sob. What was that? It might be a person, but under the circumstances, that could also be a danger itself. But then, could anything really leave her worse off than she already was right now? She considered calling out for help, but as the rustling sound returned, louder and closer, her voice died in her throat. Whether she called out or not, whatever it was, it was already coming.

As the noise continued to grow closer, her hopes that it might be human dwindled; the sound was impossible to place, but it certainly didn't seem like footsteps. And unless the echoes of the cave deceived her, it was loud enough that it must be something large. Her eyes darting back and forth across the cave, she tried to make herself small against the ground and keep her breath still, but she knew hiding was probably hopeless. She was already illuminated in the glow of the only nearby light source, wearing white laboratory robes against the dark stone of her surroundings. Whatever was approaching was sure to see her before she could see it, might even have spotted her already...

Finally, her eyes caught a hint of movement in the darkness. She saw the source of the noise, moving closer. Its shape was... impossible. Her gaze had passed over it at first, dismissing it as another of the stone columns. Pitch black, even darker than the surrounding rock, and toweringly tall, less like an animal than a moving tree. It seemed to glide along the stone as it moved, its trunk swaying slightly. Even taller than the pillar which supported the glowing crystal, a mass of undulating branches rose above the creature, casting a writhing swarm of shadows onto the ceiling. Three large eyes shone out, eerily green in the darkness, in a triangle set into its trunk. All of them were locked unmistakably on her.

Melina shuddered on the floor, squeezed in the grip of uncontrollable dread. The sight of the creature did far more than confirm her worst fears. Even when she was a small child, told stories to frighten her into good behavior, she'd never imagined an end like this. The creature's form, towering higher and higher above her as it moved closer, was unlike anything from her own world. Three thick limbs snaked down towards the cave floor; not branches, but tentacles growing from the top of its trunk, reaching down to grab her.

The summoning spell must have somehow backfired and sent her to a completely different world. To everyone who knew or cared about her, she would simply have vanished, lost to the unknown. She was going to die in this alien place, torn to pieces and eaten, without a single person to mourn for her. Somehow, the thought of being eaten was even worse than the thought of death itself, triggering a primal dread far older than the abstract fear of mortality.

Time seemed to slow to a crawl as the creature moved within reach, its tentacles winding down towards her. One to each of her sides, and one towards her face. Not even a hope of escape. It had the reach to hedge her in from every angle. And besides, she couldn't even force herself to stand. She was past the point of struggling for survival, or even hoping to die with dignity. She only half-recognized her own voice, sobbing with terror, or muttering incomprehensibly, or, somehow, both at the same time.

After what seemed like an eternity, the creature's tentacles made contact with her body, brushing against the thick fabric of her robes. Its touch felt gentle, like it was examining the unfamiliar texture, rather than binding her for a kill, and it struck Melina suddenly that she must be as strange to the creature as it was to her. That barely offered a glimmer of hope though; it would probably still kill her once it realized she was helpless. It ran its tentacles over her arms- they felt firm and powerful through the fabric, and the third reached out and touched the bare skin of her neck.

She tried in vain to choke back her sobs. This was probably how it killed its prey, winding its limbs around their necks and strangling them, or even breaking their spines. It certainly felt strong enough, the surface of its tentacle gripping at her skin like firm rubber. It reached around the back of her neck, and began to run the end of its tentacle up and down along her skin. The sound of her own incoherent murmuring grew even louder in her ears.

A sudden shock of confusion struck Melina. Her breath hitched, and the sound of her own sobbing stopped, but the murmuring continued. It sounded unmistakably like her, and yet somehow, it seemed to be coming from the creature itself. She let out a gasp, and heard it clearly layered against her own voice.

As confusion started to impede on her terror, another realization dawned on her. It wasn't because of her fear that time seemed to slow to a crawl. The creature really was moving that slowly. She could feel her heart racing in her chest, but the tip of the creature's tentacle traced soft patterns against the back of her neck, as if it was... stroking her?

No matter how she focused, the murmuring sound seemed identical to her own voice, but it was definitely coming from the creature and not from her. It was impossible to pick out words, and yet... It sounded like the voice that she'd use to comfort a frightened animal, or a small child.

Painstakingly slowly, the creature looped its tentacles under her arms, and gently lifted until she was sitting up straight. With her kneeling, it still loomed nearly as far above her as when she was huddled on the cave floor, but it leaned its trunk down towards her, its large green eyes fixed on her own. She couldn't make out any sort of mouth beneath them in the darkness, nothing like a human face at all, and yet, she thought she could read an expression of concern in its eyes.

But only for a moment. As the tension started to drain from her body, Melina's vision blurred. The flood of adrenaline dwindling from her veins, her body went slack between the creature's limbs, and her thoughts dissolved into nothingness.

~~~

Melina came to her senses awash in a vast sea of blanket. Mossy green, thick, and fluffy like felt, it was bundled over her and stretched out several times the length of her body in every direction. She tossed around awkwardly disentangling herself as she tried to sort out where she was and how she'd gotten there.

She had a headache, dry mouth, all her muscles were sore, and she badly needed to pee. Hangover then? That could explain why she had no idea where she was, but why did she have a hangover? And why was this place so strange? There was no bed under the blanket, just firm floor. The walls and ceiling seemed weirdly distant, as if she'd fallen asleep in a cathedral, but her surroundings were a soft and cozy brown, almost like bare wood. There were large, unidentifiable objects all around, like enormous furniture, too high to see the tops of, and windows letting in light, far too high for her to see outside of. The thought came to her that this might be what it would be like to have a cat's-eye view of a house.

She hadn't been shrunk somehow, had she? She'd often regretted her height, had she gotten drunk and decided to do something about it? That couldn't be right, could it? She tried to dredge up yesterday in her memory.

She'd been putting together the last elements of the experimental summoning circle she'd been working on all year. She was in a time crunch with her upcoming advisory meeting, so she'd wanted to test it as soon as possible. She wouldn't have gone out and gotten drunk if it had failed, that'd mean a whole lot of work to get done in a few days. So... it'd worked then, and she went out to celebrate?

No. She hit a snag as she scanned her memories, a point where she suddenly departed from ordinary life. The summoning had failed, catastrophically. It must have somehow reversed, flinging her into another world. She'd ended up in some strange cave, and then encountered some giant creature which had-

A shuffling sound grabbed Melina's attention, and she turned to look, almost tripping over the blanket bunching around her feet. As she found her balance, her eyes shifted from the floor, up far above the level to meet another person's gaze. Her mind reeled, and she gave a moment of thanks as she realized that she'd remembered the creature, and how it had apparently saved her, just in time to avoid wetting herself when she saw it again.

Outside the dim yellow lighting of the cave, she realized that the creature wasn't pitch black at all, but a deep, vivid ultramarine. Its shape was similar to a tree, or maybe closer to a sea anemone, with tentacles extending out near the top of a long stalk body. Its trunk was smooth but rippled, as if it were composed entirely out of lean muscle. It stared down at her with wide eyes which, in daylight, were not eerily green, but a striking sky blue. It moved smoothly across the floor with three undulating root-like "legs," surprisingly quickly considering its body shape looked designed to stay rooted in place. To the top of its trunk, where its tentacles radiated out, it stood well over twelve feet tall, more than twice Melina's height.

The creature made a noise as it approached which Melina found impossible to identify- a warbling hum which flickered from deep to high pitch faster than she could follow. It was too different from the sounds of any sort of familiar animal, let alone human speech, to read any sort of emotion from. But it stopped short of the edge of the blanket, and gently laid down three objects carried in its tentacles on the floor. It gestured at them, then backed away, so that she could investigate them without coming within its reach.

Strange as the creature was, it was hard to believe at this point that it had any intention of hurting her. She walked across the blanket to inspect the objects. On the left was a folded rectangle of white cloth. As she touched it, she realized with a start that it was her own laboratory robe, freshly cleaned. It was so much more natural to wake up without it on, she hadn't even realized that the creature must have taken it off of her. Having slept with the rest of her clothes on while bundled up in the blanket, the underclothes she was wearing now were damp with sweat, and it was a relief to think that the creature must have some way of cleaning them, even if she wasn't exactly comforted by the thought of handing them over.

In the middle was what seemed like a ceramic mug of water, scaled up enormously beyond practical size for a human. The handle was approximately the same shape to be held by a hand, but too thick to wrap her fingers all the way around. She gave it an exploratory tug. It felt as if it were bolted to the ground. Filled up with water, it was probably more than half her weight. Since she wasn't about to stick her head into it like a horse, her only remaining option was to cup the water in her hands. It was cooler than the comfortably-warm room, and tasted like completely normal fresh water. She drank enough to soothe her parched throat, conscious of the pressure on her bladder, before moving on to the third object.

The last object was a high-rimmed bowl, or something similar to a bowl, although it must have had a different function for the creature, since it was much smaller than the mug. It was filled with some sort of warm thick, pale green semisolid substance, which smelled savory, and slightly sweet. It was almost certainly some sort of food, and although she couldn't be sure it was safe to eat, she couldn't afford to starve either. From all the signs so far, she could probably at least trust the creature not to feed her anything dangerous on purpose.