Zaiha

Wind whipped through my hair as the boat skimmed across the choppy surface of the Vichtas Reservoir. It was the largest lake in the southeastern region of Ardin known as Vichtas Major —the drow homelands— and was home to innumerable species of magical creatures. A Magizoologist's playground.

It was eight months almost to the day since my first trip down Hellebore's gullet. I spent six of them as Hellebore's personal food slave. She devoured me more times than I could count, at least once a day, but sometimes two or three. Once, she grew a rare fruit that greatly enhanced my available magic, and she ate me six times. I woke up in her stomach on more than one occasion; I had to keep wards up at all times, or suffer the consequences. 

Over time, with each successful pass through her digestive system, Hellebore grew to treat me with a modicum of respect. Elves, she said, used tattooed runes to keep them alive through situations like what I was subjected to. Humans just die, most times. But not me. I survived, again and again, and I did it with nothing but my own wit and power, and that impressed her. Eventually, she even agreed to allow me to return to Calentra, with the stipulation that I come back to visit her at least once a year. It's strange to admit even to myself, but we parted as… well, almost as friends. About as friendly as a 50km diameter mass of hungry plants and their little food slave could be, I guess. At the very least, I no longer bore her any ill will. Hellebore was simply fulfilling her assigned role. She was nature, and nature consumes all.

Imagine my surprise when, upon my haggard return to the college clad in nothing but a borrowed blanket "poncho," a familiar face was waiting for me at my desk.

"We're coming up on her last sighting!" The drow at the helm said. Her white hair cascaded down her shoulders to the small of her back, billowing in the wind as she expertly navigated our little wooden craft through the waves. She wore a maroon bikini, her firm, muscular body truly a sight to see. She looked over her shoulder at me, catching me staring at her ass. A smug smile graced her black lips, and she gave me a wink with those unique purple eyes.

Yup, you guessed it. Olephia. 

The last time I had seen Olephia, she'd been nothing but a flailing lump in one of Hellebore's many throats, snapped clean out of the air by a venus flytrap just moments before. But the Olephia who waited at my desk was almost a different person. Confident, composed, and clothed, she explained to me that she was a member of the Vichtas Major Research Guild. Specifically, her group's field of study involved the, um, feeding habits of the larger species that inhabited her homelands and Ardin as a whole. She'd told the truth to me at the time; she really was working as a caravan guide, but her secondary objective was to study Hellebore herself. She had intended to pass the caravan over to another guide and venture into the oasis alone, but Hellebore had other plans.

"I took one trip through the creature's giantess form," she'd said to me at the time. "You took several hundred. The Guild needs people with your kind of experience in this field."

"No way," I'd told her. "I just escaped from constantly crawling through intestines, and I am not looking to go crawling right back down another throat. I just want to sit at my desk and write a paper about plant guts so I can convince myself that I didn't just go through hell for nothing."

"Twenty thousand gold for the past six months of data on the Nature Spirit, fifteen thousand for a sign-on bonus to continue your work with us, and another fifteen for every stomach you help us map out."

"...deal."

All right, I'm paraphrasing here, but the point is, the Vichtas Major Research Guild was one of the most heavily funded and underutilized guilds I had ever come across. Money was not even a concern to them. Anywhere I wanted to go, anything I wanted to study, they'd finance the whole trip. Just so long as I passed through some guts on my way from point A to point B.

And for my first mission, those intestines belonged to one of the most elusive marine species: a deepwater lake mermaid. 

The local fishing villages had dubbed her Kianni, a name that meant "star" in the old drow tongue. Supposedly, the only time she'd been seen above the surface was on clear, cool nights, when all the lights were off and the majesty of the night sky was on full display. Reports were a little muddied, and not the least bit scientifically accurate, but she was estimated to be around 18-20 meters long, with a four-and-a-half meter long upper body. That was considerably smaller than my main area of expertise, as Hellebore had stood approximately 35 meters tall (she let me measure her once, but I had to be standing on a platform looking down into her gaping throat to do it). This was going to be a tight fit.

Strangely, I didn't… really mind the idea of being swallowed that much anymore. With all the practice I'd gotten, I knew I'd come out of it unscathed, and guaranteed safety did a whole hell of a lot to calm me down about it. At the end of my time with Hellebore, I'd even come to enjoy it. Just a little, though, and certainly not enough to do anything about the way it turned me on. That was still an embarrassing fact that I tried my best to forget about. But the way her digestive tract massaged me, squeezing my entire body, the long, slow rides through the intestines… it wasn't bad. It was like getting a massage on a really slow waterslide. 

Olephia tapped the Drive rune on the dash of her little control console, and our boat came to a stop. Another rune anchored us in place, the waves gently lapping over the sides and sloshing in the bottom of the boat.

"We're here," Olephia said brightly. 

I stood from my seat in the shaded back of the boat, stepping out into the sun. My already tanned skin warmed with the late afternoon rays. The sun was beginning to set, the sky on the horizon lighting up in a brilliant display of oranges and pinks. In less than an hour, the light would fade and the stars would begin to shine through, weaving their elaborate tapestry across the sky. Perfect conditions for catching a stargazing mermaid. 

I had been given a white bikini. I don't know what it was made from, but it was so soft and lightweight I hardly even realized I was wearing it. Hence why I'd been hiding in the back. I felt naked, and with a specimen like Olephia in the boat, I felt a bit… inferior. I was in good shape, mind you. My physique was nice and athletic, with shapely legs, a cute little butt, modest breasts, and a defined line down the center of my abs, but Olephia was on another level. Her black skin was taut and firm, her muscles rippling underneath as she pressed her thumbs into her lower back and stretched. Her breasts, just a little bit smaller than mine, rose and fell with a deep, satisfied exhale. She was ready for the day's adventure.

"All right, standard safety speech," she said, shaking out her arms to get warmed up. "Mermaids are a part of the Fey alliance. As such, any offer made can be claimed as a binding contract. However, deepwater mermaids have little to no contact with anything but fish and other mermaids. She might not know or even care about Fey law. The purpose of this is to get an up close and personal look at her inside and out, but do not offer your body to her, just in case. She'd be within her rights to claim it. Permanently."

I swallowed the lump of fear forming in my throat. "Got it."

"We're going to her on her home turf here. Wards up, runes on, no lights, keep an eye out for large black shapes."

"W-wait, what? No lights? We're supposed to just… swim down blind?"

Olephia twisted her long, white hair up into a messy bun, and motioned for me to do the same. I grabbed a handful of my long, black hair, gave it a twist, and wrapped it up. Using just a little touch of magic, I wrapped the ends tightly around the base of the bun and tucked them in, so it would stay put in the water. My blunt bangs were a bit too short to tuck up, so they remained framing the sides of my face.

"The other main tenant of Fey law: be a good guest. Light is not a natural occurrence down there. Bringing it with us may harm her eyes, which would definitely be rude. Now. You have your Playback rune?"

I held up the little clay tablet. In the center, an intricate, swirling design that once broken, would record my experiences for the next forty-eight hours. The same design graced Olephia's collarbone, in white ink. Like most elves, Olephia had several runic tattoos on her hands, chest, and forearms, each one serving a purpose that I solved with a spell. I had wards, she had Shield. I had the breathing portal that got me through Hellebore a couple hundred times, she had Breath. I died if I got digested, she had Rebirth. 

Mental note: look into reformation spells, just in case…

I cracked the Playback rune with my fingers. A little green spark emanated from the severed edges, arcing from the clay to my hand. My vision turned green for a moment, then cleared. There. Now I was recording. As it was explained to me, the Playback rune captured inputs from the five main senses in a little crystal, which was stored on the boat. Someone puts the crystal in a special necklace, and they can experience the physical stimuli of your last 48 hours. Visual and physical sensations were the most important, but smell, hearing, and taste were also being tracked just because that's how the rune worked. So long as they didn't ask me to start licking the walls, I was fine with that. 

The downside to all this fancy runic technology was that the actual research skills that I had honed with years of study and several college degrees were basically obsolete. All the important scientific measurements and stuff would be done by Guild researchers in a safe, controlled environment where they could replay the parts they needed over and over and over again until they teased out every last, infinitesimal detail. I wasn't here because of my credentials; they just needed someone brave or stupid enough to go get the recordings. I did not consider myself particularly brave, but in this moment, staring down at the water I would soon be sinking into, I sure did feel stupid.

Olephia reached behind her and untied the strings of her bikini. Reluctantly, I followed suit. Hellebore was not alone in her distaste for clothes. It seemed most of the Ardinian giant races preferred naked prey, so, as willing prey to the beasts of the land, we had to work naked.

My drow companion's breasts were firm and perky. Her nipples were a darker shade of black than her skin, with clearly defined, perfectly circular borders. When she took off her bikini bottom, I saw that she had a trimmed patch of white pubes above her shapely and impeccably groomed pussy. Gods, this woman was gorgeous. 

"Looking good, Zaiha!" Olephia said. Her hand connected with my left ass cheek with a loud POP! I squeaked in embarrassment, and tried to shuffle out of ass slap range. 

The beautiful drow followed, purple eyes brimming with intent. Her hands went for my breasts next. She pinched my nipples, light brown and just a little larger than hers, between index and forefingers and rolled them back and forth. Her touch was electrifying. With only a few squeezes of her magic fingers, my nipples hardened. My back arched into her gentle, confident attention, my body betraying me as it pushed upward until her fingers sunk into my soft, perky breasts. I gasped, looking up at her beautiful face. She had a few inches on me, enough that I had to tilt my chin back to stare into her eyes. It had been a long, long time since anyone had touched me like this. I wanted more. Gods, I wanted more. 

Then she withdrew, sitting on the edge of the boat. My cheeks flushed; my face must have been redder than a stop sign. How had she gotten me so flustered so fast?

"Wha…?" I managed to get out.

"Sorry, got a little carried away." She didn't look even remotely sorry. In fact, she looked like she was contemplating doing it again. "I've heard mermaids can smell arousal pheromones in the water though, so… bonus?"

"W-wait, so I'm gonna be bait?"

"Okay one, we're literally going down there to get swallowed whole by her anyway, so what does it matter? And two, who says you're the only one who's turned on right now?"

"…let'sgetinthewater…"

I hopped off the side of the boat, hitting the surface of the lake with a loud splash. Goosebumps erupted on my skin as the temperature dropped by about 10 degrees. The sun had warmed the water some, but not enough. It was chilly! My already hard nipples started to hurt a little bit. If I'd kept my bikini on, I was fairly certain I could've poked holes in it. I activated my ward, and the temperature became a little more manageable. 

Olephia slipped into the water next to me with little more than a slosh, fucking elegant as all hell. She swam over to me, bumping her forehead against mine. Her purple eyes stared directly into my hazel ones. I blushed, fighting the urge to look away.

"Stay close. We're not going to be able to talk once we're down there."

I nodded. Add that to the list of things we had going against us. I didn't want to be a downer, but I just could not see how this excursion was supposed to bear any sort of fruit.

"Mostly blind, partially deaf, unable to communicate, and a hunting ground spanning tens of square kilometers. How are we even going to find her?" 

Olephia smiled. With her free hand, she caressed the Breath rune on the web between her right index and thumb. 

"We don't have to find her. We just have to get close enough for her to start hunting us." 

Well that was reassuring.

* * * * *

Olephia

My head slipped under the water, the smile still on my lips. The day's last rays penetrated the water, forming shafts of light as they encountered the silt and microorganisms floating close to the surface. I blinked a couple times, feeling the increased drag on my eyelashes. My eyes weren't as delicate as human or even other elf species'. My vision was unobstructed. 

Zaiha fluttered down next to me, her ward blocking the water. She could see too. We exchanged thumbs up, and started our descent into the darkness. I felt a little pang of jealousy, seeing her use magic like this. Us elves were once magical beings ourselves, until nearly a thousand years ago. 

Upon death, the greatest kings of the Zamari bloodline were brought back to life as liches to serve as advisors for the next in line. In this way, our kingdom continued to benefit from the wisdom of their experience until the day their bodies turned to dust. Then their phylacteries would be laid to rest in the mausoleum. Only the current reigning king was allowed access to the mausoleum, to call them forth in times of great need.

Then Vichtas the First came into power. 

A student of many styles of long-forbidden magic, Vichtas tortured the old kings into revealing secrets of the power of blood. One by one, he broke their phylacteries and absorbed them into himself, extending his life long past its natural limits. When he could escape death no longer, he performed the ceremony to be reborn as the undead on himself, using the ancient blood magic he tortured from the past kings. They say the streets of Calamen, capital of our lands and sister city to Calentra, wept red as he called upon the blood of the entire city.

With the unholy powers granted to him in his undeath, Vichtas spread an army of twisted, corrupted monsters across Ardin, slaughtering all in his path. He seemed nigh unstoppable, until the mages of Calentra turned to their own restricted practices, and came upon a ritual that would be his undoing. Vichtas fed on the power of blood. The more he killed, the stronger he grew. So they would strip our blood of power.

As we all know, they were successful, Vichtas finally starved to death, peace was restored to the land, blah blah blah. Every elf in Ardin knows the story. The name Vichtas became synonymous with my people, as our skin was stained black with the blight he poured onto our land. To ensure we never forgot the very worst of us, they renamed everything in our land after him. Vichtas Major, the Vichtas Reservoir. Calamen became Vichtas Minor. Even our own name they took from us, naming us Vichtasmar, as though we had not been brothers and sisters for millennia before, and have done nothing since. 

Except for Zaiha. An outsider to Ardin, she knew very little of the stories we'd grown up with. She called me drow. I didn't pretend to understand what it meant, but after a century of Vichtasmar, it felt… good, to not be looked at through the lens of an ancient royal's atrocities.

Even so, it was difficult to fully ignore the past when we were literally swimming around in an example of it right now. The Vichtas Reservoir was a strip mine during the war, producing iron for his abominable war machines. After the liberation of Calamen, dams were broken and rivers diverted into the mines, forming the lake. There were still hundreds of thousands of tunnels honeycombing the rock, bearing the rusted, decaying remains of the darkest time in our history.

So, like I said, hard to ignore. What wasn't hard to ignore, though, was Zaiha's shapely little ass as she swam her way down, just a couple meters in front of me. I decided it was a much better focus for my attention. 

I kicked forward, fluttering my feet behind me to propel myself down until I was alongside her. I let my hand come down gently on her butt, then slid it up her back. She burbled a little in embarrassed protest. 

Once my hand reached her shoulder, I turned her to face me. I put two fingers up to my eyes, then pointed down further and to the left. She turned and squinted, then shrugged. I shook my head, and repeated the gesture. She shrugged again. Couldn't see it, apparently. Human eyes were so weak in the dark. 

"Outcropping," I tried to say, my word whisked away in small flurries of bubbles.

Unsurprisingly, all I got back was a questioning look. I drew out a little stairstep in the water in front of me, and she seemed to get it. She gave me a thumbs up, and began swimming… in the wrong direction. I rolled my eyes and grabbed her hand, dragging her down with me toward the massive rock shelf. If she already couldn't see, this would be a lot more difficult. Sometimes I wished I'd taken the Waterbreathing rune instead of Breath. Then I'd be able to talk underwater. However, there were a lot more instances where I needed to breathe than just underwater, especially in this job. Breath worked in stomachs, Waterbreathing did not.

Twenty or so meters later, we reached the outcropping. My feet touched down on the sandy surface, kicking up little puffs. I pressed my nostrils shut and blew, equalizing my head pressure with the surrounding water. Zaiha seemed perfectly fine. Benefits of magic, I guessed. I estimated that we were only around 40 meters down. Rather shallow for a "deep" water mermaid, but apparently this one liked to spend time near the surface at night. Most members of her species didn't like to be near the surface at all, which is why it's so difficult to find them. The lake was much deeper than this. It went down almost 1000 meters at its deepest point, yet it seemed that Kianni preferred an area between 50-150 meters deep. 

This outcropping was actually one of her favorite haunts, if you believed the locals. I met a rather surly old elf who complained for almost an hour about how something big was breaking into his freshwater crab traps, but only in this specific portion of the lake. He put the traps out on this outcropping every week on the first day, and pulled them out busted on the last day. He said he'd tried avoiding that area altogether, but then something started knocking on the underside of his boat. Something big. He swore that one time he looked into the water, and in the deep, he saw two glowing eyes the size of dinner plates staring back at him. He hadn't missed a week since. 

The ground around me was littered with broken bits of crab trap. This was definitely the place. Given that her other sightings were all within a 5km radius of this little rock shelf, this seemed like the best place to set up shop and wait for her.

Zaiha let out a surprised bloop and began hopping around. I paddled over to her to see what was the matter. I gave her arm a reassuring squeeze so she knew where I was; she was blind as a bat. She pouted and held her foot up to me, swaying a bit as she struggled to keep her balance in the slow moving water around our little platform. A little white-shelled freshwater crab had a death grip on her pinky toe. 

I couldn't help but laugh, bubbles trailing out of my mouth and nose. I cupped the little guy in my hands, feeling his sharp little legs prodding my palm as he tried to both run away and continue his assault on the foot that invaded his home. His other claw was waving around, searching for something else to attack. I tried my best to steer clear of it. I didn't have a ward to protect me from this fierce little beast. His pinch might actually hurt me.

I leaned down, pawing through the bits of crab trap until I found a decent-sized stick. I introduced the stick to his waving claw, and he immediately latched on. Once he was secured, I began to wave the stick around, imitating the thrashing of prey or the indignant flails of a predator. Thinking he had something much better to attack, he released his grip on Zaiha's toe, and attacked the stick with both claws. 

I tossed him back on the ground then turned to give Zaiha a little smile. She pouted, but was looking at a spot that appeared to be the center of my neck. Even this close, she couldn't really make out my features.

I bit my lip, pondering for a moment. She was really cute when she was helpless like this. With her unable to see, I could pretty much do anything I wanted to her and she'd never see it coming. My hand left her forearm. She stretched her arms out and waved them around, feeling the water to see where I'd gone. I paddled back a couple paces, the displacement of the water giving her something to follow. She took a step towards me—carefully, as she'd learned her lesson with the crab—her arms still outstretched.

I let her get right up on me, then squatted down a little bit so Zaiha's groping hand caught me boob-first. She gave a couple little test squeezes, her face scrunched up in concentration, then squeaked as she realised what she was holding. I couldn't tell with how dark it was, but I bet she turned beet red. The laugh I was holding exploded out of me with a huge flurry of bubbles. She let my tit go and started to backpedal. I grabbed the back of her head before she could get away, pulling her forward until her face hit my chest. I used my upper arms to squish my breasts around her face. A trail of tiny little bubbles drifted up from my cleavage as she whined. 

As I held her there, letting her flail and get all embarrassed, I looked over the top of her head, out past the edge of the outcropping.

Two blue, glowing eyes the size of dinner plates looked back at me from the darkness.

* * * * *

Zaiha

It wasn't fair.

Olephia had way better darkvision than me. I didn't know if that was due to a rune or her drow heritage, but it was obvious from about 10 meters down that she could still see a lot better than me. I'd been… okay, around the 10 meter mark, but once we'd gotten down to the outcropping, my eyes had completely gone out the window. You'd best believe I'd be consulting my books when I got back to my office. There had to be a spell for this. What had I learned? Magelight! Because I wasn't concerned about being rude to fucking mermaids when I was going through spells! I was positive this wouldn't be the last time I'd be put in a situation like this, either. I was just waiting for the nocturnal giantesses. "Oh, you can't have magelight up because they'd avoid you and not hunt you!" Yeah, that's what normal people want to happen.

Olephia truly wasn't helping with my situation, either. Once she learned she could tease me with it, she started playing with me. Now I had my face mashed in her chest, soft breasts squishing my cheeks and making my lips puff out. I whined, struggling a little to try and get free. My hands grabbed at what I could reach, which wound up being her hips, and pushed, trying to get her off of me. Believe me, I was not complaining about the situation itself, but there was a time and a place, and this was neither. All I could think about was what she'd said on the boat, about mermaids being able to smell arousal pheromones in the water.

Okay, maybe this was the time and place, but if she was trying to turn me into a beacon of horny for Kianni to follow, then her reasons were wrong and I didn't want that either. I'd only known Olephia for a short time, but I was starting to really, really like her. I didn't know what it was about my tall, muscular, absolutely gorgeous companion, but she handled me in a way that no one else ever had. Like she could take whatever she wanted from me, but not in a malicious way like Hellebore. Like she knew what to take, and what I wanted her to take even if I didn't consciously know that myself. If there was going to be any of this kind of play, I wanted it to be genuine and born out of mutual feelings. 

Olephia's muscles tensed, her fingernails digging into my scalp and back. Okay, I learned something new about myself from that. I was about to wrap my hands around her waist in submission when she pulled me out of her cleavage and up to her face. All I could see was a slight purplish hue where her eyes would be. She yanked my head to the side, and put her mouth right next to my ear.

"EEAAAEE!"

The bubbles tickled my ear, the sound of her escaping air drowning out any sort of enunciation. When I didn't immediately respond, she wrenched me around and faced me in some new direction, as if, magically, that would get her message across.

"EE. AAA. EE!" she repeated, enunciating the syllables. It didn't help.

Wait, I actually could see something this time! I couldn't quite make it out, but it looked like there were some lights further out, past the edge of the outcropping. Maybe one or two. My brain wrestled with what was spoken, trying to connect it to what I was supposed to be seeing. Eeaaaee? Eeaaaee…

Kianni!

Just as it clicked in my brain what that light in the dark could possibly be, the sun exploded underwater. Searing white light poured into my retinas from the direction Olephia had pointed me in, instantly blinding me in an entirely new and unique way. I stumbled backward, shocked and blinking away stars and colorful swirls behind my eyelids. My entire vision had gone white!

Something connected with my face, sending me reeling back. I didn't get very far, as something else clamped down on my back. I felt the all too familiar rasp of taste buds sliding across my skin, and then the weight of lips settled around my shoulders. She was eating me! I fought back weakly, my hands delivering open palmed slaps to her cheeks, my feet trying to propel me in a direction that wasn't down her gullet. In the back of my mind, I knew this was all a part of the plan, but reality often didn't match what was on paper. It was a deeply ingrained human instinct to not allow yourself to be eaten, as it often meant death. And so I fought as best as I could.

Then Kianni bit down. My ward popped instantly, and her teeth dug into my skin. The pressure of the water rushed straight to my head, giving me a blinding headache. I cried out both from that and her bite, and went limp. How had she broken through my ward already? Fear crept back into my heart, as months of forced training at the hands of a hungry nature spirit collapsed in the face of a new challenge. No, it couldn't be like this! I couldn't do it! Let me out, please!

The pressure changed again as Kianni expelled the water from her mouth, and got to sucking on me. My headache vanished as the pressure in her mouth went to surface level, then past it. My ears popped once, then twice. Her tongue was really moving underneath me. My breasts were in her mouth, and she seemed to like their taste. My nipples responded to her ministrations by hardening again, the texture of her taste buds causing involuntary spasms in my abs. I was already turned on by Olephia, this wasn't fair! Why did my body have to like this so much? My mind hated it. 

I tried to reactivate my ward, but her teeth immediately shattered it. Blinded, unprotected, and facing the imminent swallow, I'm embarrassed to admit that I froze. It was like the first time in Hellebore's mouth, when my mind began to slip away from me. But this time, nothing was there to bring me back to the present. I wasn't a plaything anymore. I was nothing but food, hunted by a predator with no desire to even chat before consuming me. 

My vision finally cleared. I didn't know where it was coming from, but there was suddenly more light than there had been previously. That was both a good and a bad thing. It gave my mind something to focus on, to stave off the mental shutdown for just a little bit longer. Unfortunately, that thing was the gaping throat directly in front of my face. 

Kianni's mouth was dark red, just a few shades off from the plant maws Hellebore had. Along her gum line, just below her teeth, little bioluminescent dots were glowing with a pale blue light. The tongue beneath me was humanoid. It felt a lot more textured than Hellebore's tongue, and when she flexed it upwards, I found out why. Tiny little spines covered the papillae, all slanted backward toward her throat, a throat that was twitching and quivering less than a foot from my nose. With a diet of (mostly) fish, a tongue like that would help her grip their slippery scales. It also meant that anything she got her lips around could only move in one direction, and that was in. She certainly knew how to use it effectively on a human female; it felt heavenly on my nipples and the soft skin of my breasts. She was really good about keeping those spines from sticking into my skin, meaning I was treated to rough, but not painful, stimulation.

Back on topic though… 

The other thing I noticed, once I'd wrested enough of my mind back from the brink of despair, was how small it was. Kianni had my head, shoulders, and chest in her mouth, and my nose could almost touch her uvula. I felt the bottom rows of molars grazing the sides of my arms. At its widest point, the arch of her throat seemed only barely capable of stretching over my shoulders. My hips would be a real problem for her. Maybe they'd get stuck? She'd start choking, realize she can't swallow me, and let me go?

Yeah, maybe the fish would choke. Because fish breathe. Get it together, Zaiha. 

Suction on my body increased just as her teeth released me. My head passed through the arch of her throat, rounding the corner into the muscular tube. To my surprise, I slid right in with ease. The folds of her throat were deep, allowing plenty of room to expand and accept my head, shoulders, and breasts, then clamp down with such strength that it molded to my body. It pressed against my eye sockets, my nostrils, it even formed to the curves of my ears. The sound of her beating heart and the blood rushing through her veins drowned out everything else. 

Her lips settled on my thighs, that rough tongue working across my belly and pubic mound. I pressed my legs together tightly, in case that tip got to exploring. Unfortunately, that also put me in a prime swallowing position. With a wet squelch and a sudden lunge that nearly gave me whiplash, my hips joined me in her throat. A peristaltic wave rolled across my body, squeezing me hard enough to make my back crack all down its length. I squealed as the pressure on my sides threatened to pop my elbows backward. I'd somehow gotten my arms locked straight at my sides, the throat too tight to move them safely. I just had to endure until it was over.

Endure? Who was I kidding? There was nothing I could do about this. I was doomed. Once again, I had overestimated my own abilities with my damn stupid confidence, and then something came along and immediately proved my insignificance. I couldn't do this. I couldn't. There was no way, especially not when I couldn't even keep a fucking ward up. As despair crashed over me once again, my mind finally stopped trying to fight the shutdown, and I froze up completely. I barely even felt the final swallow, my legs slithering down her throat with ease. My head breached through the sphincter to her stomach.

It was so small. If I was a snack for Hellebore, I was a full meal for Kianni. The throat forced the rest of me through into the slimy, claustrophobic space, the stomach expanding to contain my entire body. I wound up laying on my back in the fetal position, hemmed in on all sides by the fleshy prison. I felt the zig zag lines of her stomach press deep into my skin, the churning muscle immediately getting to work to soften me up so Kianni's body could make use of my nutrition. And I couldn't even bring myself to care. The best I managed from my numb, uncoordinated limbs was a half-assed attempt to stretch out that was firmly denied as the walls clenched in again, squishing me into an even tighter ball. 

There I lay, my mind in limbo as my body was worked over by powerful muscles, reduced to a slowly wiggling lump behind a mermaid's abs. I had a vague hope, at least, that Olephia would possibly be able to save me. Assuming she got in here in time. 

I hoped she was having a better time than me…

* * * * *

Olephia

Thankfully, I did not have my retinas burnt out by Kianni's explosive flash. I saw the pale blue lights across her body flickering, and I knew something was coming. I turned away, closing my eyes and covering them with my hands just in time. A split second later, the world turned white, and I swear I saw the bones in my hands through my closed eyelids. 

Even without taking the full brunt of the photonic attack, I still had to blink a few times to get rid of the outline of my own skeletal hand imprinted on my vision. Gods, that was powerful. My mind stuttered for a moment as I tried to process through what had happened and what to do next. The spots in my eyes were already fading. I was fine. Zaiha… probably took that straight to the face. Poor girl. Let's see how she's doing.

I turned around, and was greeted by the sight of Zaiha slowly being swallowed by the giant mermaid.

Kianni was massive. Easily the 20 meters witness accounts had placed her at—maybe up to 25—with flowing jet black hair adding another 2 meters to her height as it fanned out in the water above her head. Her upper torso was a dark maroon just a few shades away from pitch black. A science fact I didn't even know I'd held onto popped into my head. A lot of deep water creatures had reddish coloration because red light waves are among the first to be filtered out in water. In the deep dark depths of the Vichtas Reservoir, she'd appear black; I was only seeing red because she was so close to the surface. On the other side however, the color of light that penetrates water the best is blue, and her biology had made use of that fact too. With her primary form of hunting being to essentially flashbang unsuspecting fish in the water, her bioluminescence producing blue light meant that her range of effect was greatly increased. 

Lines of these bioluminescent lights swirled across her skin in intricate patterns, casting an eerie glow on my little rock outcropping. They ran up her back, swirled over her abs, encircled her breasts and the gill slits on her rib cage, followed the curves of her eye sockets and ran across her forehead in a sort of pseudo-tiara pattern, giving her the appearance (or at least, my mind made this association) of underwater royalty. Her nipples glowed blue too. That was probably something to do with reproduction and making them easy for her children to find in the pitch black of her native environment, but all my brain could think was "heheheh. Literal headlights!"

Her tail at first appeared black, but then she bent it around to settle herself down on the rock next to me. Her scales caught the light from her patterns and reflected it, turning the floor around me into a dazzling carpet of mystifying lights. A secondary hunting strategy. Reflective scales, to create mesmerizing patterns. Fish were stupid. Something as simple as this would probably hypnotize the dumb little animals, getting them close enough for her to simply snatch out of the water with her hands or mouth. 

Speaking of her mouth, she gave a swallow just then, and Zaiha's head bulged out her throat. Her collarbones flexed, much more pliable than elven bones, allowing the sorceress to slip past and into the ribcage. Zaiha's breasts made little outlines on either side of the mermaid's trachea. 

Oh, fuck… I thought. I realized, to my surprise, that the sight of Zaiha slipping down her throat was sexually arousing to me. Her form encased in a predator's body, clearly visible from the outside like this. This was my first mission with a partner; I'd never seen someone else get swallowed before. It made me want to swim over there, put my legs around Kianni's throat, and grind on her as Zaiha slipped by. It also made me wonder how it would feel to have a shrunken nude sorceress sliding down my own throat…

Of course, I learned something scientifically as well, it wasn't all pleasure. Like the fact that Kianni had a trachea. Other mermaids did as well, as they had a complicated double-breathing system. Instead of the trachea branching into two paths for the lungs, it branched into four—two air lungs and two water lungs, which connected to the gills on their ribs. While underwater, the gills open and valves seal off the air lungs to act as swim bladders. The pull of the diaphragm draws water into the water lungs and forces it out through their gills in a process called respiratory ventilation. When they surface above the water, their gills seal, the water lungs are closed off, and the air lungs are back in business.

You'd think, based on this, that it would be a gimme that she'd have a trachea. But it wasn't. Deep water mermaids rarely, if ever, surface. It would be more advantageous for them to breathe solely like a fish, and fish don't have tracheas. Fish have a space in their mouths called a buccal cavity to which the gills were attached, and use their jaw muscles to pump water through their gills as opposed to diaphragm movements. Kianni, being a deep water mermaid, could have had a similar form of respiration. Now, a buccal cavity would likely require her gills to be on her neck, but hear me out. There's another option here. 

Her respiratory system could be separated from the mouth and oropharynx completely if she had something called spiracles, which are little tubes that take in water and ventilate the gills during feeding in some sharks and bottom-dwelling fish. She's already got the openings, they're called nostrils. There have been numerous models of theorized deep water mermaid respiratory systems in which the nostrils do not come through the oropharynx, but go around it. They run outside the throat, parallel to the carotid and jugular to each of her water lungs (her air lungs having become permanent swim bladders), supplemented by additional spiracles on her back. Voila, she can eat and breathe at the same time, and the evolutionary design flaw of food and air/water entering through the same hole is eliminated.

The existence of a trachea in combination with rib gills did two things. It disproved every one of those respiratory models, and it opened the door for Kianni to potentially have the same double-breathing equipment as her surface counterparts. And that meant, we might be able to speak with her. 

See? There was science going on here! It wasn't all horniness.

Speaking of horniness though, Kianni gave another swallow, and Zaiha's legs slipped down her throat. The outline of her hips deformed Kianni's chest for a moment, then her legs slid down smooth as butter. It was such a tight squeeze, I could watch her progress as she slipped into the stomach. The poor sorceress bulged out the mermaid's midsection, leaving a bump below her ribcage. The bump wiggled, tried to stretch, and was quickly forced back into submission by a flex of Kianni's powerful abs. 

I stepped forward, completely on autopilot. All I could think about was how much I wanted to press my body against that wriggling bump, to kiss and lick it, to feel Zaiha squirming underneath the skin. My pussy was on fire, and that lumpy little bump under Kianni's abs looked perfect to grind my clit against.

At that moment, however, something happened that put me right back into science mode. My poor pussy was getting whiplash. 

Kianni wasn't alone. As she settled in on the rock shelf, regarding me with vague curiosity, a swarm of about 10 other mermaids swam up from below the outcropping. My first thought was "children!" But no, the coloration was wrong; more surface mermaid than deep water. They seemed almost like remoras or wrasses, those little guys that follow sharks around eating parasites and leftovers. They were small; maybe 5 feet long, with the grey-blue tops and white underbellies common among more surface-dwelling mermaid species. 

The little mermaids got right to work, their little grey bodies almost translucent in the glow of Kianni's bioluminescence. Two of them latched onto the bump immediately, rubbing Kianni's full belly with a look of bliss on their little faces. Others picked a hand and a finger, nibbling along her fingernails, and one swam right into her open mouth. She nibbled her way all along the teeth, then, seeming upset at the lack of leftovers, began picking for scraps in the folds of the larger mermaid's throat until she was buried up to her hips in there, and I could see her squirming little form distending Kianni's neck. 

This was something I'd never seen before. As Kianni pulled the little one out of her throat, she gave her a kiss, and the small mermaid practically melted in her fingers. This looked to me like… friendship? A symbiotic relationship formed through bonds of affection. To be fair, I wasn't an expert on mermaids, either. I only knew the stuff I did about respiratory systems because there were interested parties at the Guild who wanted to know. Nobody had bothered to ask for or explain the intricacies of mermaid symbiosis.

I wondered how they communicated. The smaller mermaids, being surface-dwellers, undoubtedly had the standard respiratory equipment, to include voice boxes. I didn't know if that extended to Kianni. I had an idea of how to find out, though. I took a deep breath, the Breath rune on my hand filling my lungs with fresh air. I let that air out into my cheeks, filling my mouth to the brim until it exploded out with a big bloop. The bubbles caught the light from Kianni's patterns, seeming to glow blue.

Suddenly, I was now the most interesting thing on the outcropping. I got swarmed by about five different mermaids, their bright little eyes ecstatic as they watched the bubbles rise. I did it again, pursing my lips to form a small stream of bubbles, then cut it off with another big one. 

Bloop!

One of the mermaids around me giggled, a high-pitched sound that carried through the water. She opened her mouth, and let her own little bubble out into the water.

Bloop!

That was enough to turn the tide. Soon, I had all ten little mermaids pressing against me. I felt their little teeth nibbling along my sides, back, and thighs. It was a ticklish, though pleasant, sensation. One of the ones nibbling at my thighs went for something else down there, probably smelling the arousal in the nearby water from earlier. I felt a little tongue make contact, and I squealed, gently but firmly pressing her head away from there. Their skin felt rough at times; it was similar to shark skin, where it was smooth in one direction and like sandpaper in the opposite. All the while, at least one of them was releasing air in what was rapidly becoming a bubble blowing contest.

Bloop!

Bloop…

Blblblblblbl…

Bloop!

Bloop!

BLOOP!

The mermaids scattered from around me as Kianni released a bubble large enough to fit all eleven of us smaller creatures inside. She reclined back on the rock, smiling a self-assured smile that clearly said "I win." One of the remora-like mermaids submissively swam back over to her and started rubbing the belly bump again. Kianni gave her affectionate scritches with her fingernails. 

This was huge! If Kianni could expel air, that meant she retained control over the valves in her lungs, and they had not evolved into permanent swim bladders! She could breathe air, which means we could probably talk to her!

Excitedly, I swam over to her. The smile faded from her lips, and she regarded me with caution. I paddled myself to a stop just out of reach, though with her mini army of mermaid friends, I doubt that mattered. Gently redirecting another assault on my nethers, I pointed to my throat.

"Aaaaaahhhhh," I said, bubbles streaming from my mouth. 

Kianni squinted at me, unsure of what I was doing. Her glowing eyes flitted down to the mermaid on her stomach, who shrugged.

"Aaaaaaaahhhhhhh," I repeated, then pointed at her throat. 

Comprehension dawned in those big blue eyes. She leaned over me, opening her mouth wide. A furious blush overtook my face as I stared straight into the deep red interior and down her throat. That horny ass little fucker of a mermaid took advantage of my distraction and obvious arousal at the sight to get a full lick across my labia and clit. My abs twitched involuntarily, and I again tried to direct her somewhere else. 

"Aaaaahhhh," Kianni repeated, bubbles billowing from her throat and out through her lips. Some got stuck on her teeth, making a small pocket of air in the roof of her mouth. A couple of the remora girls stuck their heads between her lips and used that air pocket to refill their own lungs, which either became more bloops or their own attempts at saying "aaaahhh!"

"Oh my god, you can actually talk," I said. "We can actually talk to you! You have no idea the amount of questions I have for you! Do you speak Elvish? I know human Common and Vichtasmari as well!"

At least, that's what I meant to say. What actually came out was a long string of bubbles and vague gargling sounds. Kianni, of course, was confused as my attempts at communication burbled away on the underwater currents. She tilted her head, unsure of how to proceed until one of her entourage swam up to her face and started gesturing. The larger mermaid smiled, nodded happily, and gave the girl a big smooch that covered most of her torso. 

The massive mermaid rose from the rock shelf with a single wave of her tail, her scales glittering, their reflections dancing. She waved to me and her group of friends. I was seized by a dozen hands and brought before the giantess, where I was smushed against the wriggling stomach bump of Zaiha. Much to the dismay of the mermaid who was already there, who contented herself to latch onto a boob and glower at me like it was my fault she had to move. 

The rest followed suit, latching themselves to multiple areas across Kianni's torso and tail. The earlier association to remoras was a little more on the nose than I thought. Kianni's entourage placed their palms flat against her vast, maroon skin and immediately stuck in place. One of them snuggled up to my waist as she did so, acting like my seatbelt for the journey ahead. Her little teeth nibbled at my abs and the underside of my boob. I gave her a little pat, which she seemed to enjoy. 

And then we were off, diving down into the deep water of the Vichtas Reservoir. Water rushed past my face, loosening my bun and letting my long white hair loose. As we dipped into the black and the temperature of the surrounding water began to drop, I gave one last look to the rocky outcropping fading away into the distance. 

I sincerely hoped that this would not be the last time I saw it. And not just for my sake, either. I may have the Rebirth rune, but anything fatal to me would almost certainly be fatal to Zaiha, and she wouldn't be coming back from that. I gave the bump underneath me a reassuring rub, and it stretched out toward me. 

Don't worry, Zaiha. We'll be fine. I hope.

* * * * *

Zaiha

It was sweltering in Kianni's stomach. Sweat dripped down my features, coating every square inch of my body and mixing in with the various other juices that filled this tight enclosure. My skin was slimy from the mucosal lining being worked over my nude form every couple of seconds. The walls dripped stomach acid, drops running down to join a pool at my lower back. It covered my butt by this point, up over my pussy and to the backs of my thighs. I didn't know how long I'd been in here; it felt like hours. Fortunately for me, Kianni's digestive processes were slow. At least compared to Hellebore, and that snake boy from my first experience. It only tingled right now, though I did notice that my labia, clit, and vagina were tingling a whole lot more than everything else. Lots of nerve endings down there and all. Great. Not only was I awake and fully conscious that I was being digested alive, I was uncomfortably turned on as well.

Once, Kianni seemed to speak. The vibration of her vocal chords did not help with my current downstairs situation. I bit my lip, trying again to stretch my legs out. The stomach was very pliant, and offered me the ability to fully extend my legs, though it pushed my body down further into the acid pool. Then the abs clenched, and I was forced to curl back up. Still though, something told me I was not the largest creature to wind up in here. 

Every so often, I'd feel hands on the abs over me, and I'd reach out to them. They pressed against my side, rubbed along my ass and back. I couldn't be sure, but at times it felt like more than one pair of hands. Who else was out there? A weight settled on me for a good long while, only to be removed and replaced with another, heavier weight. 

We seemed to be moving. The abs on my back and side clenched in steady, rhythmic motions, as if she was using them to help move her tail. If I actually got out of here, I'm sure the eggheads back at the Guild would find all kinds of sciency stuff to discuss with regards to mermaid musculature. 

It occurred to me then that I didn't actually have to escape for that to happen. All of my experiences were being recorded by the Playback rune onto a crystal in the boat. And if I didn't wind up surviving, those conversations would likely involve the experience of mermaid digestion as well. 

Come on, Zaiha. I know it's scary, but you've survived way worse than this. You just gotta pull yourself together! One little ward, and you're safe! 

I couldn't do it. My mind had entered lockdown, and I wasn't going to be coming out of it. I knew that all it would take was a ward. I could do the ward in my sleep. But for the life of me, I could not overcome the mental barrier preventing me from doing the ward. The sheer power of Kianni's mouth had activated the Fight, Flight, or Freeze part of my brain, and it had chosen Freeze. It didn't matter how much experience I'd had in situations like this. Hell, worse than this. I was going to lie here until my brain decided the danger had passed, fully aware that the danger would never pass.

An indeterminate amount of time later, Kianni started speaking again. Immediately, something became apparent. Because of the tight space I was contained in, right below her diaphragm, the vibrations were much stronger to me than they had been when I'd only taken up a quarter of a stomach. As a result, I couldn't understand a damn thing she said. All I could do was make guesses about what was happening. From what I heard though, her voice was lovely. Midranged in pitch, roughly in the realm of mezzo-soprano, with a little grit. She sounded friendly. Whatever Olephia had done, it sounded like she'd managed to befriend the big creature.

They talked and talked. I couldn't hear Olephia's voice at all, so I was only getting half of the conversation, and could understand barely a quarter of that. Words like I, am, the, mermaid, and such were okay, but something about the acoustics in here made her voice rattle my inner ear to the point that I couldn't catch more than that. 

Sometime later (time had sort of lost its meaning to me at this point), I felt pressure against my body again. Gentle hands caressed the flesh above me.

"Zaiha?" Olephia's voice filtered through the skin and muscle between us. "Zaiha, it's me. Kianni and I had a chat, and she's willing to work with us. Are you okay in there?"

The genuine concern in her voice finally broke through the fear-induced apathy I'd fallen into. My entire body began to tremble. My breath caught in my throat, coming to me in stutters as I fought against hyperventilation. 

"I-I, I c-can't get a ward u-up," I half-sobbed, reaching out to her with my hand. The slimy, ridged stomach wall engulfed my hand and squeezed it. "I'm ha… I'm having a panic attack…"

"Oh honey…" She found my hand and pressed against it. Though we were only a few inches apart, the distance felt insurmountable. "Hang tight, I'm coming in."

Coming in? Coming in?! What good would that do me? Get me out! I gritted my teeth and closed my eyes. Breathe… just breathe. In and out girl, you can do it. 

Before I knew it, the sphincter opened up, and Olephia's arms came through. She felt her way forward in the pitch black stomach, carefully pulling the rest of herself in and on top of me. The walls of the stomach stretched to accommodate a second full-sized person, but as I pushed my knees apart to make room for her hips to settle between them, I realized that it still wasn't at full capacity. Tightly formed around us as it was, this was not the fullest this behemoth could be. 

Immediately, I latched onto Olephia with my arms and legs, pulling her to me and hugging her tight. My whole body shook from adrenalin and exhaustion. She was calm, firm, and steady, an emotional rock that I desperately needed right now. 

"Oh sweetheart," she said, her hands slipping underneath me to return the hug. "You're okay, I promise."

"H-how is this okay?" I blubbered into her shoulder. "I'm digesting alive in here. My skin is really t-tingly and I can't k-keep a ward up because I'm panicking, and I haven't been able to see since we left the b-boat… I c-can't do this, I can't, I thought I could, b-but the second something went wrong I—"

Olephia kissed me full on the lips.

My mind shorted out, blue screened, and rebooted. That was just the shock I needed to pull myself out of my rut. Her lips were soft and full, yet firm enough to hold their shape as the kiss deepened. I tilted my head and opened my mouth, sliding my tongue between her teeth as my fingers tangled in her long wet hair. She responded with her own tongue, skillfully engaging mine in a wrestling match. 

My hips arched up, my pussy coming into contact with her lower stomach. All the sexual tension over the course of this trip finally bubbled over as she held me in this passionate embrace. I hooked my legs around her back and started grinding on her. The tingling in my sore, needy pussy turned to throbbing as blood flooded the area. My free hand ran the length of her back to her taut, firm butt and grabbed a handful. 

Olephia pushed forward, aligning our pubic mounds. My legs were forced to open wider, stretching the edges of our confinement. My knees sank into the stomach walls, the ridges sliding across my sensitive skin in a way that made me whimper into her mouth. I brought both hands up to her cheeks and kissed her harder, allowing my desperation to show. The heels pressing into the small of her back imparting my need for her, body and soul.

Something poked me in the stomach. I thought nothing of it for a moment; we were basically a tangle of limbs at this point. Bound to be a bony part hitting a soft part here or there. Then it happened again, and curiosity reared its head. Her hands were around my back and in my hair. Her legs weren't on me, as she was between mine. What was that? A rock? Fish bones?

The third time was enough for me. I gently disengaged and pushed her off of me, conjuring up a magelight to see just what had found its way between us.

"What is—" A long, thick cock rested on my stomach. "OH…"

My cheeks flushed a furious shade of red. That sneaky little minx. My mind flashed back to watching her strip on the boat, and seeing that little patch of trimmed white pubes. Someone was hiding a rune under there. I wasn't intimately familiar with the practice, but a popular magical augmentation among the more risqué elves were Pleasure runes. These were multipurpose runes that came with a variety of uses, not the least of which being… well, this. The ability to grow a fully functional cock at will. 

And what a cock it was! I finally get to see again after what felt like hours, and this is the first thing my eyes landed on? With her hips pressed right up against my pubic mound, it almost reached my belly button. It must have been 6-7 centimeters wide, at least! I swallowed hard. I had serious doubts about my ability to take that much dick. This thing was going to go inside me? It seemed impossible. 

I tucked my chin to my neck, looking submissively up into her gorgeous purple eyes.

"Be gentle?" I pleaded.

"Of course, love."

She leaned down again, planting a soft kiss on my forehead. Her hips drew back, pulling her hard dick down the front of my stomach until it fell between my legs. I disentangled my hand from her hair, reaching down to grab it. It was warm and hard, the beat of her heart throbbing down its length. I rubbed just under the tip, and she let out a shuddering sigh over me. I bit my lip, held my breath, and aligned her cock at the opening of my love tunnel. The tip pushed into me.

My knees clapped together on her sides, back arching in a sudden and immediate orgasm. The breath I'd been holding was forced out of me in a shrill, high pitched whine of need. Waves of pleasure radiated through my body, making me squirm in the slimy, wet stomach. An almost pitiful spurt of love juice splattered on her pubic mound. 

"Haahhh… sorry…" I said through gasps, though I didn't know why I was apologizing. "St… stomach acid made me really sensitive down there… I've basically been edging the whole time I've been in here."

"I'll keep that in mind," Olephia said, and pushed forward. 

I gripped her biceps hard, my body going rigid. My eyebrows curved inwards, pleading, and my mouth was locked wide open. Her cock filled me to the brim, forcing my vagina to conform to its shape. My walls gripped onto it tight, not from any squeezing on my part, but from its sheer size. I was no virgin, far from it, but it had been a few years since anything but my own fingers had been in there, and even longer since I'd had dick. And no offense to my past boyfriends, but Olephia was much bigger.

To my surprise, I took it all the way to the base. Her pubic mound touched mine, every millimeter inside me. She held it there, allowing me some time to recover. My grip on her arms relaxed. My hips squirmed, ass sliding over the ridges beneath me. I couldn't hold still. Each movement while speared on her hard rod sent shuddering waves of pleasure rolling up my body, and each wave made me squirm more. My legs tentatively relaxed again, but the very motion of doing that made them clap right back against her sides. 

"P-please?" I whined.

"Not yet, love," Olephia chided, a warm, loving smile on her face.

I whimpered, trying to grind my hips on her. She pressed down harder, and I felt the tip run into the end of my vagina. I dug my heels into the small of her back, trying to force her hips to move, but she was rock solid. Those muscled thighs weren't for show. My breath caught in my throat, forced out of my mouth in a little squeak. I felt so full I could barely stand it. My pussy throbbed, gripping to her cock in rhythmic little squeezes as I tried to coordinate my twitching hips into some kind of humping motion. My legs shook.

"Fuck me!" I cried. "Please, fuck me!"

Olephia's hips started to move. Her thick, hard cock pulled back, the sensation making me go cross-eyed. She was so big, she almost formed a vacuum seal in my pussy, drawing my walls down after her. She thrusted back in, and a wave of warmth spread across my lower abdomen as I was filled again. I moaned, the sound reflected and amplified by the stomach walls. Olephia rested her forehead against mine, looking me directly in the eyes. Her hot breaths rolled down my neck and chest with every loving thrust. The drow wasn't rough with me. There was a tenderness to her thrusts, a softness in her eyes and the gentle caresses of her hands.

The world around me fell away. The groans and gurgles of Kianni's stomach receded into the background, the gentle sloshing of her stomach juices forming the backing track to our moment of love. This is exactly what I was talking about before: sex play borne out of mutual attraction. She wasn't just fucking me, she was making love to me. There was a deep emotional connection with her, comfort as she took care of me in my moment of vulnerability. Looking into those eyes, I saw affection, not attraction. Don't get me wrong, there was attraction too, but there's a difference. Attraction was wanting my body, affection was wanting me. I'd had enough sex to be able to tell the difference by now, and believe me, it made a difference in how deeply I was attracted to her. 

Oh gods, I'm falling for her hard… 

I didn't care. That didn't matter right now. All that mattered was the pleasurable sensation in my lower stomach and the intense fullness of her cock lovingly impaling me over and over again. 

"Feel good?" Olephia asked in my ear, her voice warm and heavy with arousal.

"It feels so good," I whimpered.

She leaned down to kiss me again. Though passionate, the desperation from earlier was gone from both of our lips. We had what we both wanted. The stomach squelched and squeezed, forcing us closer together. Her cock hit the end of my vagina again, and I squealed into her mouth. It didn't hurt when that happened, but it detracted from the pleasure. She kissed my cheek in apology.

I had recovered from my first orgasm, and was quickly building toward a second. It was going to be a big one, too. The pleasurable thrusts filling me to the brim, Olephia's soft, firm skin sliding across mine, the feel of her lips… it was all too much for my poor little body to handle. My breaths came out in short, needy moans. I began to gyrate my hips, working her shaft in a circle to change the angle of her penetration. Gods, even at this slow space, I felt like I was stirring my own guts with a ladle. Olephia moaned in my ear, a lusty demand for more.

"Goddess, don't stop," she whispered.

That was enough to send me over the edge. I bit my lip hard, my squeal of pleasure directed out my nose as my abs clenched. My ass lifted off the floor of the stomach, feet scrabbling along the slick walls in uncoordinated kicks. My foot got buried in a fold, toes curling and massaging the ridges as I gave in to the pleasure. 

"Fuck, why am I still so close?" I moaned.

Olephia took control. She pulled away, pushing the roof of the stomach up with her back. Her hands grabbed my thighs and forced them to my chest, fingernails digging into my skin. She matched my gyrations with her own hips, abandoning all subtlety and driving her thick cock into me. I moaned loud and unashamed, my voice mixing with hers in the tight chamber of flesh. Now we were fucking. 

Orgasm number three crashed over me less than a minute later. When the first wave of pleasure hit, I threw my head back and screamed. My back arched almost painfully, pressing my breasts up into the tops of my thighs. The second wave rolled over me, electrifying my skin and heightening my senses. I felt Olephia's cock spasming inside of me, shooting her cum into my tight little canal. 

On the third and fourth waves, I squirted. Two geysers of female ejaculate splattered across Olephia's abs, dribbling down her black skin to land in the pool below. I had never done that before. I didn't even know I could do that. Like most curious adults, I'd read about it at least once, and it seemed that trust was a huge factor in being able to do it. That made Olephia, whom I'd spent maybe a week with at this point, my most trusted sexual partner.

Don't think about it, I told myself, as the post-sex rush of oxytocin flooded my brain with images of the tall, muscular drow in a variety of sweet, lovey embraces. Just enjoy it.

Her lips found mine again. The cock inside me ejaculated one last time, and she withdrew it. I shuddered, the pit of my stomach sinking a little. I felt hollow now, without her firm rod filling me to the brim. Taking it had rearranged my insides, and now I wanted them to stay that way. I wanted that cock again, and again, for as long as the elf who owned it wanted to give it to me. I felt a long, gooey stream of her semen leaking down the side of my butt.

Oh, shit, speaking of…

"I'm not gonna like…" I began.

"Don't worry, love," Olephia replied, giving me reassuring kisses along my jaw. "It may be a part of me, function like a real cock, and cum like one, but the semen isn't fertile. It's a Pleasure rune, not a Babymaking rune. Though there is an inscription you can encircle the rune with for couples who want babies."

An image of me as a doting mother to 5 or 6 half-elf children popped into my head, and was just as quickly squished back into my subconscious. My deep-seated infatuation with Olephia notwithstanding, motherhood was a long way away for me… 

"Okay, good."

Olephia settled herself back on top of me. She propped herself up on her elbows, using her fingers to tease at my nipples. The stomach draped around her like a tent.

"Now I don't mean to interrupt your afterglow here, but we are still in a stomach…"

"Y-yeah… you said Kianni would work with us, right? Does that mean… Can I come out now?"

"Well, I'll give you the choice." Olephia pinched my nipple, making me twitch. The dull tingling in my pussy kicked up a notch, again. "Mermaids have two stomachs, and two sets of intestines. The fish stomach and intestines are down in her tail, and are a lot shorter than the torso intestines. If you stay in, I'll let you go through the fish intestines. There is another stomach involved, though, and this one's tougher. You'll need your ward to go through it. 

"Or, Kianni can let you out right now, but you'll have to be swallowed again to come do the torso intestines." I began to object, but she silenced me with a peck on the lips. "Kianni's a doll, don't even worry about it. I'll help you with the swallow this time, and if you freeze up in the stomach again, I'll come down and send you back up the throat. Okay?"

"Okay… I…" I looked down. She really had me between a rock and a hard place. Tough it out now for a shorter trip, or get a taste of freedom only to be sent right back down the throat?

"I need to come out… I'll try going through the torso intestines, b-but I can't promise anything…"

"Attagirl," Olephia said. She put her hand on the wall, giving Kianni's stomach a series of short and long knocks. 

Our world rocked, then turned upside down. The stomach squeezed and ground against our sensitive nude bodies, flipping the two of us around. I was briefly set on top of Olephia in a position like I was riding her dick, but then the stomach floor opened up and she was sucked down into a secondary throat, washed along with the pool of stomach acid down to what I assumed was the tail stomach. She was gone before I even got to say goodbye. 

The floor sealed back up, then rose to engulf me. I was squished on all sides by rough, ridged muscle. My head breached the sphincter, and I was launched right back up the throat. Light hit my eyes through the silhouette of lips. I bonked my head on Kianni's teeth, then spilled out onto a surprisingly dry rock with a wet splat.

I had been expelled into some sort of cavern. It looked manmade, or rather, elvenmade. Magic torches lined the walls, filling the chamber with an everlasting yellowish light. Water took up half of the chamber, and in that water was Kianni and about 6-10 other little mermaids. 

"Hello," Kianni said, her voice much more lovely now that I could understand her. "She'll be in there for at least half an hour, so we're going to have some fun while we wait."

"Great…"