For Mercury Shine it had started off as just another day when she heard knocking at her door. It was bad timing as she was in the middle of working on a rather delicate potion on which she had to focus all of her attention. One false move could cause the potion to fail in some way, she knew from experience the results were often not good. Mercury had levitated a vial over to the mixture when she heard the knocking again. Sighing she called out “Just a minute!” Turning her attention back to the vial, she had to very carefully pour just a single drop into the bubbling liquid. The young alchemist slowly and carefully tipped the vial until the red liquid inside was nearing the edge, only a little bit more and she’d have the drop. The knocking came again and that coupled with her frustration at visitor’s impatience was enough to distract her, accidentally pouring far more into her potion than intended.
“Oh sh-“ Mercury started. There was a bang and smoke began billowing out of the flask. Ears ringing and face covered in soot, Mercury was all too used to the feeling as she coughed and tried to wave away the smoke. She used her magic to open a nearby window and set the failed potion on a shelf under it, the smoke lazily floated out of the window and off into the sky. Once again, the insistent visitor knocked.
“Hold your horses!” the unicorn shouted at the door, using a cloth to wipe her soot covered face. Answering the door she found it was a courier who had been waiting on her. Strange, she wasn’t expecting a courier as she had nothing on order that she was waiting on. Then Mercury noticed his uniform, this was one of the royal couriers.
“Important delivery for Mercury Shine.” The pegasus took the scroll from his saddlebag and motioned for Mercury to take it. Within her magical grasp now, Mercury closely examined the scroll, it had Princess Celestia’s seal on it. “I was only told your services were required. It’s best not to keep them waiting.” He paused before finishing with “Have a nice day.” The courier tipped his hat and took off into the sky, likely heading back to Canterlot.
Looking back down at the scroll, the alchemist simply stared in disbelief. After a few moments she managed to collect her thoughts and went back inside her home and locked the door behind her. The potion she had left by the window had stopped smoking, but had turned murky green and had gone rancid. Mercury ignored it and retreated to her study with the elegant scroll.
The unicorn sat down at her desk and set the scroll on it. Mercury Shine had difficulty containing her excitement, but she managed to calm herself down by taking a few deep breaths. But just as soon as she had calmed down, she began getting excited again thinking about all the possibilities at what it could be. She broke the seal and read the letter, once done she paused a moment and read it again and a third time after that. They were hiring her to make an Appetite Potion for Princess Luna, who according to Celestia’s letter, has been having trouble eating lately. The only specifications that were given was that it needed to be powerful enough to work on an Alicorn and they needed it by dinner the next day, though sooner was better.
While she felt sympathy for Princess Luna’s plight, Mercury still saw the opportunity to help increase her business. Though the alchemist had no idea how the Princess had heard of her, doing work for them this one single time alone might be enough to generate some new customers, but if Mercury could prove herself to the princesses, they might return for more business themselves in the future!
It was only nearing Noon when Mercury rushed from her study and got to work. She lined up sixteen brand new flasks along her work area and set up all the equipment she needed. Then she got her personal recipe book out from its hiding place, which contained all her secret recipes. Luckily for Mercury, she had needed an appetite potion in the past and had concocted her own brew. With some modification she could make it potent enough for an Alicorn. Keeping note of how she made this alternate appetite brew, Mercury worked without being disturbed for the rest of the day.
When all was done, she put the cork stopper in the final bottle and looked at the teal mixture sloshing about inside. Final thing she had to do was test it, there were a few drops that had collected in a jar she put under the spout to prevent it from dripping on the counter. She poured a drop on her tongue and swallowed, in nearly an instant she felt incredibly hungry. Satisfied with her work, Mercury made some dinner for herself before heading to bed early.
The next morning when Mercury awoke, the first thing she did was pack the potions into her saddlebags as well as the letter. She closed the latches designed to look like her Cutie Mark and left for the Train Station. It was already nearly noon by the time she arrived in Canterlot, she took no detours and let nothing distract her as she made a bee-line for the Castle. Arriving at the gate, she showed the guards her letter, after a few moments another guard had arrived and lead her into the castle.
Mercury had never been in such a place before and the sights amazed her, she hoped her work would be up to the princesses’ standards so she may visit again in the future. They entered the throne room and stopped at the bottom of the steps leading up to Princess Celestia’s throne. Taking the cue from the guard beside her, Mercury bowed in respect as he did.
“Welcome, my little pony, you must be Mercury Shine.” The princess spoke gently with kindness in her voice.
The unicorn arose “Yes I am, Princess. It’s truly an honor.”
“When discussing the issue, my chef recommended your services. It seems he faced a similar problem once and you were there to assist him.” Princess Celestia explained “The guard will lead you to Luna’s quarters. We appreciate your timely response.”
Mercury wasn’t knowledgeable about formalities regarding royalty, so she simply responded “It’s my pleasure, Princess” and bowed again before following the guard.
Soon they arrived at Luna’s royal quarters, immediately Mercury could tell that Luna wasn’t in a great mood and she would likely have to tread carefully around the Princess of the Night. As the guard began to introduce the alchemist to the Princess, she interrupted and ordered him to leave. The guard tried to protest leaving the princess alone with a stranger, but she put her hoof down on the matter and he left. Alone now with the princess, Mercury couldn’t help but feel the pressure of being in the presence of royalty. She was pretty sure her mane would have turned grey had it not already been that colour.
“You can drop the formalities. You have the potion, right?” Luna said bluntly, though Mercury was sure there was no rudeness intended.
“Yes I do, princess. I brewed up an entire batch of them!” Mercury removed her saddlebags and set them on the floor and removed one of the flasks from the bag. It was labeled “Appetite Enhancement.” The unicorn took the potion to Luna., who in turn took it in her own magical grasp and examined the bottle before popping the cork out.
“Before you drink that, I had to increase the potency for it to be able to have an effect on you, but I wasn’t able to test it because if I had, I would likely still be at home gorging myself. I recommend not drinking the whole bottle at once, just a little at a time until we can figure out a good dosage.”
Without response, Luna tipped her head back and began drinking the potion, with no intention of stopping. Mercury had a feeling drinking so much at once could be very bad. There was still half the bottle left and Luna seemed far more ravenous than she should be, likely due to the potion already taking effect. Mercury weighed her options and decided it was best to try to stop Luna, even though it would likely be considered assaulting her. But that would be better than letting the princess drink so much that she could potentially gorge for days.
Mercury knew she would regret it, but she reached up and physically pushed the bottle away from the princess using her hooves knowing her magic wasn’t strong enough to beat Luna’s. The nearly empty bottle clattered to the ground without breaking, its contents spilling onto the floor. Back down on all fours, Mercury blew a sigh of relief and then remembered she just assaulted a princess.
“I-I’m so sorry, Princess!” Mercury fearfully said.
Luna’s only response was to lick her lips. She lowered her head to be on Mercury’s level and came face to face with her. In a quick motion before Mercury even had the time to react, Luna opened her mouth impossibly wide and wrapped it around Mercury’s head. Instinct kicked in for both ponies, for Mercury it was a natural fight or flight response as she tried to pull her head out of its fleshy prison and for Luna it was an unnatural hunger that drove her to pull the pony father into her. The princess used her magic to push against the unicorn’s rump to force her deeper into her throat, taking Mercury up to her shoulders.
Hind legs still on the ground, Mercury tried to pull herself out, fur already wet from the saliva and the warm confines of the throat only making her more fearful. Powerful throat muscles coupled with the magic pushing against her backside pulled her deeper and struggling only made it worse. Mercury’s forelegs were trapped against her body and she barely had any room to move, except deeper into the princess. Mercury could feel the throat muscles working at swallowing her again and tried to fight it, which only caused her to slide deeper down, her head and forelegs finally reaching the stomach and splashing into the acid. Her forelegs were free from being pinned at her side and she could feel her rump was still sticking out of Luna’s mouth, but there came what seemed like pause, nothing happening one way or the other. Luna was likely as shocked at the situation as was Mercury, who was more or less stunned into a brief paralysis at the realization she was being eaten alive.
The moment had passed and Mercury could feel Luna raising her head, to allow gravity to do its job, sure enough she could feel more of her body sliding into Luna’s mouth and deeper still into the stomach. More and more of Mercury’s hind legs slipped into the mouth of the princess until both were completely enveloped and all that remained sticking out of her mouth was the tip of Mercury’s tail, which soon enough vanished within Luna as well. She called out for help but received no response from the princess.
Any hope to get herself out of this situation had just vanished, as Mercury wasn’t powerful enough to teleport, nor would she be able to even if she did know the spell due to the caustic environment. Her hind legs were worked down into the stomach by the throat muscles as well. Already the stomach acid had started to make her skin tingle and the digestive organ only grew tighter around her, restricting her movement. Mercury thrashed about in a vain effort to escape, but only succeeded in covering herself in more of the stomach acid. Thanks to her frantic efforts in escaping, she was now drenched in the acid, which gave a tingling feeling to everywhere it touched. Mercury’s legs were folded under her and were completely submerged in the acid, but managed to keep her torso and head out for the time being, though the tingling in her legs soon gave way to painful stinging and eventually burning as the digestive process did its job.
Mercury thrashed about again as the pain got more intense, but this only served to sap her strength and energy. From the outside, Luna occasionally saw her distended belly push out in places at random as the pony-turned-impromptu-meal inside her struggled futilely to escape, each time the alchemist thrashed about seemed weaker and weaker than the previous time. In the dark abyss of the Princess’s stomach Mercury couldn’t see a thing, but she was sure the skin had already been stripped from her legs by the powerful digestive acid, Mercury had assumed that was the case as the burning faded into numbness. She lost nearly all strength in her legs and her belly began to dip into the acid, with a last ditch effort to cling to life the unicorn reoriented herself so her upper half was out of the acid at the cost of her rear being in it. Mercury could feel how much of her was submerged and knew if she somehow miraculously made it out alive, she’d likely lose her Cutie Mark, which was completely covered in the caustic liquid.
Soon her breathing became labored and the only thing she could hear for the time being was the groaning of her fleshy prison and the slosh of stomach acid. It seemed like an eternity already, though in all likeliness it had only been a couple hours at most. Mercury began to lose all feeling in her rear as it slowly dissolved away, it brought a strange calmness to her as she teetered on the brink of consciousness, the rhythmic beating of Luna’s heart was somehow reassuring to her. In her growing delirium as she fought to stay awake, Mercury could swear she heard a familiar voice, though it sounded muffled.
“I see someone’s feeling better! You look as if you ate a whole pony!” Celestia exclaimed, happy for her sister’s recovery.
Luna used her body to hide the saddlebags from her older sister, using a wing to cradle them. “Yeah…Ha ha…A whole pony.” She rubbed her belly which was groaning as it digested its meal while she used her other hoof to push the bags farther back against the wall.
“Well I’m glad see you’re doing better. Do you know where Mercury went?” Celestia inquired.
Mercury’s ears perked up when she heard her name, she tried to do anything possible to make her presence known to Princess Celestia, her last hope for rescue. Even as she pushed against the fleshy wall of the stomach with all her might, she could hardly budge it an inch by this point. Even without using it, Mercury Shine knew her magical strength had been greatly diminished as well, she tried to use a luminescence spell. It was dim, only enough to barely light up her confines and not enough to shine through Luna’s body to alert the princess. Finally getting a look at herself, Mercury could see just how extensive the damage to her body was. Fur was burned away in patches anywhere the acid had touched, leaving behind only weakened and reddened skin. When Mercury Shine lifted a leg out of the acid, flesh sloughed off in mushy chunks. Seeing that combined it the lack of oxygen, the blood loss and straining herself to use even the most simple of spells caused her to faint into unconsciousness.
Luna felt the pony within her belly go limp, assuming she had finally passed on. “I believe she said she had to return home because she already had a list of orders she needed to finish.” She answered.
“That’s a shame, I would have liked to thank her for her assistance.” Celestia replied.
Luna’s stomach groaned again as it continued to break down the pony within. Luna excused herself deciding to take a nap to sleep off her meal. Once alone in private again, she hid the saddlebags with the remaining appetite potions for future use before flopping down on her bed to rest.
Mercury was brought back to consciousness a couple hours later with renewed pain, she was laying on her belly now within the stomach. Most of her front half was out of the corrosive liquid, but along the bottom of her torso up the middle was burning. She managed to roll herself onto her back and prop herself up slightly using her magic to light the space again. Part of one of her hind legs was sticking out of the stomach acid, though it was nothing but bone which itself was breaking down like the rest of her body. The bone of her other leg ended in a dull jagged end, the rest of it having broken off at some point. In fact, everything from her pelvis down was nothing but bone. The burning along the middle of her chest left a V shaped opening terminating near the middle of her ribs. She couldn’t keep the light spell going.
She knew her wounds weren’t survivable, but Mercury still refused to give up and tried pulling herself away from the digestive acid, this disturbance was enough to cause any organs near the opening to slide out of her and into the stomach acid. With the last of her strength gone, she could no longer prop herself up and instead just lay there as she was physically unable to do anything more. Soon enough she realized she was very slowly sliding back towards the corrosive liquid that had dissolved the rest of her body away. Inch by inch she slid closer until the opening of her torso met the stomach acid once again. It ate away at her as she slowly slipped in, peeling the layers of fur, skin and muscle off the bone with increasing efficiency. From within Luna, Mercury could hear the princess snore. Luna rolled over causing the rest of Mercury to slide into the acid all at once. Completely submerged, her eyes, ears, nose and mouth all burned in unison as they were painfully dissolved away as the stomach acid attacked her heart and lungs directly, heartbeat losing all rhythm as it pounded frantically. Unable to struggle in the slightest as the flesh burned away from her face, Mercury didn’t even have the clarity of mind to have a proper final thought outside of the blistering pain, unable to even scream. Her heart finally came to a stop and the stomach acid continued to digest her lifeless remains, stripping her down to the bone.
By the time Luna awoke the size of her belly had drastically decreased, though she quickly noticed her ass had gotten a layer of fat on it as she slept. She strode over to a tall standing mirror in her quarters to examine herself. Before she even reached it she could tell there was a clear difference in the way she walked and even unconsciously began to sway her hips slightly as she walked. Luna admired her body from all angles, the added weight and curves accentuating her form just the way she liked. Her stomach grumbled and she remembered her meal from the day before. Only bone remained of the unicorn within her and even most of that had dissolved away. The Princess, feeling around her belly with a hoof, found something. Using her magic, she teleported the object out onto the table before her to examine it. It was Mercury Shine’s skull. Princess Luna hid it away and went to request a servant to fetch her some water. She washed off the skull and hid it away in a secret compartment in her room that only she knew about, a sort of keepsake of her victim.
After a couple days a report came in that Mercury Shine hadn’t been seen since her visit to Canterlot, the assumption being that she had disappeared somewhere between there and her home and soon after the streets of both Canterlot and the alchemist’s hometown were covered in posters looking for information on the missing unicorn.
Author's Note
First time writing something like this and first time posting something here. There's probably some errors.
