Angela carefully flitted and swam amongst her burgeoning kelp harvest. The mermaid woman was overjoyed at the repeated bounty of her land. Every day, she diligently pruned her undersea garden of pests, harvesting the edible crabs and mussels she happened upon. Years of steady agriculture work had left her humanoid upper-half toned and athletic, and her finned, scaly, fish-like lower portion matched in muscular development. Angela hoped that if her bumper harvests continued rolling in smoothly, she'd have a chance at having her eggs fertilized by a merman. Mermaids had some male members among their ranks, but they were much, much rarer than the females, and were jealously hoarded by ruling mermaid matriarchs. Even having a small clutch of her yearly roe fertilized, was a mighty steep request for a mermaid of as low social station as Angela.
However, when the desperate rulers of the Sargasso Confederation needed her contribution most, Angela did not shirk her duties. A rolling draft was issued for all able-bodied mermaids not needed domestically, pressing Angela into military service. A rampaging horde of Underfolk from deep below, in the Dark Zone, were invading their peaceful realm, and Angela was to join her city's defense militia. The training was short and inadequate, Angela fumbling with a shell-spear and trident far more than she did her kelp-rake, but her physical stamina put her far and above the common, conscript rabble's capacities. When the feared time came, and the unstopped horde finally reached their patch of ocean paradise, the city of Macoram prepared to defend itself.
Angela stood in a line with her nervous warrior-sisters, letting the gentle ocean waves soothe her anxious nerves as they braided each other's hair. Soon, each fit young mermaid was sporting the braid of a shield maiden, signaling their new status as stoic, unyielding defenders, or so the generalissimo of Macoram hoped. The Underfolk had been attacking with such unparalleled ferocity, none returned from the lands that been invaded to tell tale of the destruction unleashed upon them. Only deserted, destroyed ruins of once-vibrant mermaid settlements stood testament to the systematic destruction being unleashed on her people. Every mermaid in the region was in fear of what horrid new warbeasts the denizens of the Dark Zone had tamed for battle, that allowed for such total victories.
As the bony, jagged exoskeletons of Underfolk scouts were seen scurrying across the ocean floor, the city mustered its defenders. No other clan from the confederation volunteered troops to aid in Marcoram's defense, each member state having been bleed from the seemingly endless string of defeats. The remaining member states were unwilling to commit more troops to an unknown foe. The only thing Angela saw of foreign intervention, were fast-swimming scouts from neighboring lands. The outsiders seemed present only to observe the coming battle, refusing to make contact with Marcoram's sentinels as they grimly observed from considerable distance. Angela questioned whether she should flee her lands, as many others had done, but the thought of abandoning her pristine, high-yield kelp fields filled her with grit and determination. The invaders had to be stopped somewhere, and they would be stopped here, if the fierce mermaid warrior woman had any say in the matter.
Angela formed a wide-spaced sphere of mermaids, encircling the outskirts of their lands. Though they assembled into an isolated, dispersed formation to mitigate the risks of whatever secret weapon awaited them, she felt comforted by the fact that her own kelpstead was only a small ways away from her current defensive position. Staring out from among the jagged coral reef spires, Angela held her trident firmly as the battle-matriarch blew a conch shell to signal maximum readiness, enemies spotted. Angela gazed forward at her approaching foes, and gasped silently to herself. The Dark Zone invaders had massive, blind sharks with cruel hooks embedded in their sides, connected to a pulley-system of chains that hoisted forwards a massive, obscuring net of billowing kelp-cloth, and other debris.
Angela tried to peer through the huge, obscuring shawl, but could not discern what lay behind it, as the grim procession slowly approached their position without hesitation or pause. A nervous buzz spread through the assembled mermaid warriors, who primed themselves for the carnage of battle. The remaining defenders were few, each knowing how hopeless their defiant stand was, but Angela could not be prepared for the visceral, electric panic that filled her body. Suddenly, as her fingers clamped painfully tight around her spear, Angela realized that the sensation was entirely physical, and coming from an outside source. She struggled to crane her cramping, seizing neck around, and noticed similar distress among her sisters, an ominous crackling filling the water that surrounded them. Angela tried to steady herself, but her body refused to obey her, as she spasmed helplessly among the sharp coral rocks.
Suddenly, the sensation intensified, radiating out from the Underfolk's procession in radiating waves. Even their deprived sharks shuddered and struggled from the waves of electricity scorching all through the ocean zone, as Angela struggled even to stay conscious under the shocking assault. As the great sharks seized and contorted, their obscuring burden fell away, as an unfathomably horrifying sight greeted the paralyzed mermaids. A massive eel, of terrifyingly disproportionate physiology, was calmly swimming towards their position, its huge body effortlessly radiating an unbearable field of electric torment. As the huge, ominous eel approached, its massive jaws moved apart, unhinging bizarrely. Angela realized its maw was extending many yards in each direction, forming a huge, cavernous chamber. The gulper eel opened its huge maw wide, and sucked a whirlpool of water through its obscenely spacious mouth, powerful jets of expelled water exiting its flapping gills. Angela was still too paralyzed to resist, as her body was pulled by the artificial current towards the creature's waiting mouth. Her equally immobilized battle sisters were caught in the current too, joining her ignoble trajectory towards its gaping jaws.
Initially, the pain of her proximity towards the electric source obscured Angela's discomfort, the overwhelmed mermaid barely noticing as her view of the ocean floor was replaced by enveloping, black eel flesh. But, when her scaly tail began helplessly flapping against the slick, rubbery flesh of the massive predator, Angela realized she was already desperately defeated. She felt her sisters pressing into her from all sides, the paralyzed 'army' smashing together as they settled deeper within the rapidly bloating eel. Deeper and deeper she sank, each foot of descent forcing her into more uncomfortably close contact with the other doomed mermaids. Their spasming, muscular bodies tangled into a gyrating mass of squirming fishfolk, as the eel's rippling throat insistently urged them deeper. Angela felt unable to endure the increasingly tight, uncomfortable conditions of her consuming predator, but there was nothing she could do, but suffer the humiliation of being ingested alive.
The conditions were indescribably horrific as Angela finally settled into the eel's distended stomach pouch, jammed so tightly with the other mermaids that she couldn't shift an inch. Slimy, dilute stomach acids slowly sluiced over her defenseless body, as Angela wondered just how long she'd be forced to endure this torment. She bitterly regretted paying the price of this horrible defeat, as her fleshy quarters just grew more inhospitable as the eel glutted itself on squirming mermaids.