Rapunzel's Tangled Misadventure

[corncobby]

From http://subscribestar.adult/darkstories
A tale based (very) loosely on the animated series from Disney

Chapter 1: Betrayed

Cassandra eyed Rapunzel from behind as the eighteen-year-old princess skipped along the path next to her ever-faithful boyfriend Eugene. She was laughing at something Eugene had said, swinging her tied locks of shining blond hair around and grinning at him in delight.

“That’s so funny, Eugene!” she sang out in delight, her dainty bare feet leaping across the ground. “Oh, what a perfect day!”

Cassandra shook her head in disgust. Every day was a perfect day for Rapunzel. Had there ever been anyone so happy, so optimistic, so in love with life? The princess was the kind of girl who thought that behind every black cloud was a rainbow and around every dark corner was a magical new adventure. She was as close to Cassandra’s opposite as it was possible to be.

The lady-in-waiting couldn’t remember when she had begun to hate her best friend. Perhaps somewhere deep inside of her, she had always hated her. But recently that hatred had overtaken her completely, the result of the long weeks they had spent traveling together on the road from Corona. And now, finally, she had decided to act on her feelings. Around the next bend of the road was not a magical adventure but the one person who hated Rapunzel as much as she did, Baron Grievel, the leader of the vicious Karrion Gang. Rapunzel had driven the Baron from his position as self-appointed ruler of Vardaros, driving him and his gang out of the city. She had foiled his daughter’s marriage with Eugene and almost killed him with poison from the Kai spider. His desire for revenge against the Corona princess knew no bounds.

Cassandra had betrayed her friend for three bags of gold, telling the Baron exactly where they would be on the road at the appointed time. Grievel intended to capture Rapunzel and kill her friends. Then he would take the young princess back to his stronghold and exact a slow and painful punishment, before handing her over – for a considerably larger sum of money than he had paid to Cassandra – to the Duke of the Dark Kingdom, whose uses for the magical young woman went far beyond mere personal revenge. Ahead of the endlessly optimistic young woman lay a fate much worse than death.

“Come on, Cassandra! Keep up!” shouted Rapunzel, waving her hands behind her.

She turned round with a huge smile on her innocent young face, beckoning her friend closer. Cassandra waved back with as much enthusiasm as she could muster, keeping her eyes on the bend ahead of them where she expected to see movement in the trees at any moment.

“Just coming, Raps!” she called. “Just coming!”

A moment later, the spears flew. One struck Eugene through the throat, killing him instantly with a gurgle and spray of blood. Two more struck their companions Hook Foot and Lance. A fourth hit Rapunzel’s faithful horse Max while a fifth landed at the stunned princess’s feet. From her position ten yards behind, Cassandra watched the trees part to reveal Baron Grievel, his sadistic thugs Wiesel and Vexis, and his daughter Stalyan. Stalyan moved quickest, striding over to the stricken Eugene, the erstwhile love of her life who had broken her heart by choosing Rapunzel over her, and silently closing his eyes. Then she turned to Rapunzel, still standing in mute horror, her purple dress stained red with the blood of her friends.

“If I can’t have him, you can’t either,” she said.

Rapunzel opened her mouth to protest but a hard fist from the Baron’s daughter smashed into her belly and took her breath away. As the young girl doubled up in pain, a pair of rough hands grabbed her arms from behind and tied them together tightly with a length of rope. The huge figure of Baron Grievel then showed himself. He looked down on the bound young princess, towering over her like a giant. Rapunzel looked up in shock and terror, tears springing to the corner of her large green eyes.

“You look surprised to see me, princess. Did you think I was dead?”

The girl let out a sudden moan of pain as Stalyan drove another mailed fist into her stomach. The Baron looked at his daughter approvingly.

“As you can see, I am very much alive. Unfortunately for you.” He smiled maliciously and turned his head toward Cassandra, who was still lurking some yards behind. “You upheld your part of the bargain, girl,” he called over to her. “Weasel will give you your gold.”

Rapunzel stared at her friend, her eyes wide open with disbelief. “Cassandra, no! You didn’t…?”

The black-haired girl shrugged coolly. “I did, Rapunzel. Sorry. The Baron offered me gold and, well, it was worth more to me than you are.”

Tears now ran down the princess’s face. “But we’re best friends! How could you? How could you?” Her voice died away as sobs of anguish took over. “They’re dead, Cassandra! They’re all dead. Because of you.”

Cassandra shrugged again. “I never liked them anyway.”

She smiled at Rapunzel’s devastated expression. “You’re going to see that life is not all one magical adventure, Raps. I don’t know what the Baron and his friends have in store for you, but something tells me it won’t be pleasant. Good luck! Who knows? Maybe I’ll see you around someday. I wonder if you’ll be so insufferably optimistic by then?”

She laughed coldly, giving one last glance at her former best friend before collecting the three bags of gold the vile Weasel was holding out to her. Just for a moment she imagined the terrible things Weasel and his fellow thugs were going to do to the innocent young girl and felt a tiny pang of guilt at what she had done. But then she felt the weight of gold in her hands and the unpleasant feeling passed. She slung the heavy bags over the back of her horse and jumped into the saddle.

“Bye Rapunzel!” she called before she galloped away down the road.

Baron Grievel watched the girl disappear from sight before turning his attention back to the golden-haired young princess before him. She was on her knees, her face a picture of anguish. Grievel’s men had already dispatched her wounded friends and horse and now she was completely alone, surrounded by five sadistic thugs and the Baron’s daughter whose wedding she had destroyed. They surrounded the tiny young girl in a menacing circle, grinning with evil pleasure. Baron Grievel reached down and grasped a handful of her shining yellow hair, pulling it upwards violently.

“Get on your feet, girl. We’ve got a long way to go.”

He jerked her up, holding her in place as his daughter drove another vicious punch to her tiny midriff.

“I don’t think she needs this lovely purple dress anymore, does she, boys?” the Baron said to his men. “Shall we make her look a bit more humble?”

Weasel and his comrades hissed their agreement and the Baron produced a gleaming knife from his belt. He cut the lace down the front of the dress until it fell from her shoulders, exposing a thin white slip beneath that barely reached the girl’s thighs. He ran his hands over the gentle swell of the adolescent girl’s breasts and laughed at her gasp of fear, shock and outrage.

“What’s the matter, Rapunzel? This can’t be the first time you’ve had a man’s hands on your body, can it?” He pressed his fingers together to squeeze the soft, sensitive mounds of flesh. “Did you and Ryder never fuck, princess?”

[corncobby]

Rapunzel was too distressed to attempt a reply and the Baron chuckled sadistically. “Don’t worry, Rapunzel. If you are still a virgin, you won’t be for much longer. Isn’t that right, boys?”

There was a peal of laughter and cheers from the men, and then five pairs of rough hands were on her, pawing at her breasts, her waist, her bottom and her thighs. Weasel reached between her legs and rolled down her undergarments, exposing the girl’s delicate, hairless private parts.

“You won’t be needing these anymore, darling,” he sneered.

Rapunzel was still too stunned to protest. She tried to wriggle away from the men’s touch, squirming in horror and disgust, until yet another fist from Stalyan cut off her resistance. She choked desperately as the thugs continued to grope her, tears streaming down her pale, freckled face.

“All right, boys, there’ll be plenty of time for that later,” said the Baron, ending the gang’s fun. “Tie this little whore to the horses and let’s be on our way. Weasel, you lead her. Vexis, you make sure she keeps up the pace.”

Rapunzel could do nothing as the men dragged her over to the horses and tied her hands in front of her, attaching them by a rope to the saddle on Weasel’s horse. They bound her impossibly long hair to the saddle too, keeping it away from her back which they wanted clear for the ordeal to come. The thugs mounted their horses, save for Vexis who remained on foot next to their young captive. He was a giant brute of a man, more than seven feet tall with arms as thick as Rapunzel’s waist. As he looked down on the tiny princess, he drew a three-foot horsewhip from his belt and cracked it hard across her shoulders. He laughed at the whelp of pain it drew from the young girl.

“This is to keep you moving,” he growled. Then he drew back the whip and cracked it against her with such force it made her stumble forwards. The pain was so great it literally took Rapunzel’s breath away. “And that is if you move too slowly.”

If there had been any doubt about the ordeal that lay ahead of her, the two brutal lashes settled it. The princess tried to stifle her terror as the full horror of her situation hit her. She had been betrayed by her best friend; her boyfriend and protectors had been killed; and there was no one from Corona who had any clue to her whereabouts. She was alone in the hands of the most vicious bandit in the entire continent of Palgravia, one who held a deep and personal grudge against her. As Vexis cracked another line of fire against her shoulders for a third time, the young girl knew her pain was just at a beginning.

As the sting from the third lash seared into her flesh, the party moved off, the Baron, his daughter and his men all spurring their horses into a trot. Weasel did the same and Rapunzel suddenly found herself running as the rope wound tightly around her wrists jerked her forwards. The Karrion Gang had no fear of enemies on the road, being the strongest bandits in the area by far, but Baron Grievel had no intention of advertising his capture of the Corona princess to the world and so they immediately moved off the road and headed into the trees of the Vardaros Woods. There were paths through the woods that the Baron and his men knew well, seldom used by ordinary people but clear enough for the horses to move through at pace. They were just wide enough for Vexis, running alongside his captive, to swing the three-foot horse whip across the young girl’s back.

“Look alive now, girl,” he warned. “The route is going to get harder later so we need to keep the pace up.”

With that, Weasel gave his horse a quick tap with his heels. Rapunzel felt a violent tug on her wrists as the horse doubled its speed, forcing her to lift her legs up into a run. Vexis, twice the girl’s size and as strong as an ox, kept pace easily, swinging his huge right arm back as he ran and snapping it against her with a resounding crack. Rapunzel let out a cry of agony as she felt it bite through her thin cotton slip and into the delicate soft skin of her back.

“I hope you have plenty of stamina, princess, because we have a whole day of this. Now pick up your knees and run!”

Rapunzel did have stamina and she was used to being in the woods barefoot. But running with her arms bound to a horse was far more difficult than normal and the winding forest path pulled her this way and that, wrenching her shoulders and twisting her hips and thighs until they burned with pain. For the huge Vexis, running freely, there were no such problems, and again and again he found time to swing the whip against his victim, the force of the strikes pitching her forward toward Weasel’s horse and cutting lines of red-hot pain into her back. After twenty or thirty lashes, the blood was already soaking through into her white cotton slip and they were barely a mile into their journey.

Rapunzel knew Baron Grievel was intending to torture her once they reached his stronghold. He was a notorious sadist, infamous for his punishment of anyone who got in his way. His usual policy upon taking his prey – be it a small group of travelers or, in the case of Vardaros, an entire city – was to kill the men and capture the women, giving them over to his vicious cohorts for their cruel enjoyment. His stronghold, somewhere deep in the mountains around Vardaros, was rumored to be a place of terrible suffering where captives were held in cages in the open air, taken out only to satisfy the vile lusts of the Baron and his gang. Rapunzel could only assume that whatever terrible things were done to the Karrion Gang’s ordinary prisoners, the fate awaiting her would be a hundred times worse.

“Pick up your legs, slut! If you fall, you’ll pay the price!”

Vexis could see the young princess beginning to tire. Her chest was heaving hard as one mile of running had turned to two and two had turned to three. Sweat poured from her in the heat of the midday sun, mixing with the blood now running in streams from her back, buttocks and thighs. He gave her five savage lashes with the whip, putting all his strength into the blows and sending her stumbling forward toward Weasel’s horse. She kept herself upright with only the greatest effort but could do nothing about the hidden bed of thorns on the ground beneath her that now impaled her bare feet. She let out a cry of pain and fell flat on her face, her arms almost wrenched from their sockets as Weasel continued to keep his horse at a steady trot.

[corncobby]

Baron Grievel saw his prisoner fall but responded to Weasel’s questioning look with a malicious smile. The sadistic underling gave his horse a kick to goad it into a quicker pace, dragging the helpless girl along the ground by her arms. The mounted men openly laughed as the young girl was pulled through the rough underbrush, her body bouncing against the trees on either side of the path and scraping over dirt, rocks and twigs. The skimpy dress that hid her modesty was soon torn away, leaving her to be dragged along naked, her skin tearing from her flesh as Weasel quickened his pace further.

“We told you to stay on your feet, princess!” the Baron called down.

Rapunzel could do nothing as she was thrown around, the sharp turns on the path smashing her body from side to side. She could feel her skin being flayed away and when she struck the unforgiving trees and rocks on either side of the path, her bones bruised and cracked. When Weasel swung his horse around a particularly sharp corner, Rapunzel was flung violently against a rock, the impact tearing her shoulders from their sockets with a sickening crack and striking her ribs so hard she felt them snap inside her chest. The breath was knocked out of her and when she tried to suck in a gulpful of air, the pain was so excruciating she was almost sick. “I’m going to die if they drag me much further,” she thought as another brutal turn sent her smashing into a tree, breaking her jaw and knocking out three of her teeth with a gush of blood.

Eventually they stopped, Weasel coming to a halt so abruptly that Rapunzel’s lightweight body was flung against the horse’s back legs. It kicked her instinctively, audibly crunching bones in her ribs and leaving her bloody and bruised. She had been dragged for more than three miles and not one inch of her naked body remained free of wounds. She lay groaning in agony on a hard stretch of path, gasping for air and struggling to contain the pain that enveloped her from head to toe.

Baron Grievel leaped from his horse and strode over to his prisoner, smiling down at her with undisguised pleasure. Far from showing any sympathy for the terrible state to which she had been reduced, he drew back his heavy black riding boot and kicked her hard in the chest, sending her sprawling across the path. She was stopped by the rope still holding her to Weasel’s horse, her visibly dislocated arms pulled upwards. Grievel kicked her again in the ribs and stomped down savagely on her flat stomach.

“Crawling in the dirt suits you, Rapunzel,” he hissed. “You’d better get used to it because that’s where you belong now.”

The desperate young girl looked up with tears of pain running down from her big green eyes.

“Please stop…”

Her words were cut off by another thunderous kick to her chest that lifted her clear off the ground and left her choking and vomiting blood.

“You don’t get to speak without permission, girl,” the Baron snarled. “Next time you open your mouth, I’ll gag you with bane nettles. You got that?”

In between desperate gasps for air, Rapunzel let out a sob that was half-pain and half-anguish. She looked up at her tormentor just before he stamped another boot into her stomach.

“Now get on your feet, slut, unless you want us to drag you the rest of the way.”

Resisting the urge to kick her once more time, Grievel took a horsewhip from his belt instead and began to rain down lashes on the girl’s naked body, slashing her back, her thighs, her waist and her developing breasts. With her hands tied, Rapunzel had no way to defend herself. She desperately tried to scrabble up on her knees, ignoring the excruciating agony ripping through her broken ribs with each movement of her body. Grievel whipped her a dozen times before losing patience and dragging her up by her arms. The girl screamed at the pain in her shoulders, receiving another vicious lash to her breasts as punishment.

If the eighteen-year-old princess had thought the first few miles through the forest were hard, the rest of the day passed in a fog of torment and exhaustion. Although Weasel slowed the pace of his horse after running proved impossible for the girl with her broken ribs, battered body and lacerated flesh, she was still forced to job constantly, picking up her feet to avoid impaling them on the many rocks and thorns that lay on the way. But just in case the reduced pace might be seen as an undeserved mercy, the Baron made up for it by having Vexis whip her with even more ferocity than before, striking her on each side of her body alternately with lashes so hard the crack echoed through the trees. Rapunzel’s increasingly shrill cries of pain echoed alongside until the Baron made good on his threat of gagging her with bane nettles, a virulent poisonous plant that grew in great quantities in the forest. The nettles, stuffed into her mouth and throat and held in place by a cloth tied tightly around her, stung her like white-hot needles, adding to a torture that was rapidly becoming unbearable.

“Don’t worry, princess. You’ll have plenty of chances to scream once you reach my home,” said the Baron. “There’ll be no one to hear you there except the wind.”

Grievel could barely wait to get the girl into his prison at home. He had tortures planned for the little whore that would turn her golden hair white with horror. His deal with the lord of the Dark Kingdom required him to hand the princess over in return for a very large payment of gold. But there was no specific time frame for the transaction, giving the vengeful gang leader several months at least to punish the arrogant Corona whore for every single offense she had committed against him and his family. He was going to torture the little princess in ways the world had never seen.

Hour after hour, Rapunzel was forced to jog through the forest, her feet soon torn to shreds by sharp rocks and twigs and her body lacerated by Vexis’s whip. Several times she collapsed in exhaustion and Weasel urged his horse into a gallop to drag along the ground before the men hauled her up, striking her with their fists, boots and whips as punishment. By the time darkness fell, the helpless captive was in a terrible state, too exhausted even to stand, her body nothing but wounds and pain. Baron Greivel ordered the gang to make camp, having Rapunzel bound to a tree by her hands and feet, still tightly gagged.

“Nobody touches the princess tonight,” he ordered to the disappointment of his men. “We’ll save that for when we get home. For now, we’ll give the bitch over to the forest. Her blood should attract plenty of friends.”