The Rise of Queen Ravenna

thetropican · March 15, 2021, 05:47:38 PM

This text is an edited version of the first chapter of the novelization of the film Snow White and the Huntsman, written by Lily Blake.

It contains violence, sexual activity, female muscle growth, male muscle loss, and attribute theft.

The Rise of Queen Ravenna

It was the coldest winter the kingdom had ever known. Frost covered the gravestones. The rosebushes in the castle garden were nearly bare, their leaves shriveled and brown. King Magnus stood on the edge of the forest with Duke Hammond, waiting for the other army to arrive. The king could see his own breath. The slow, steady clouds expanded in front of his face, then disappeared into the cold morning air. His hands were numb. He didn't feel the weight of the armor on his back, or the way the chain mail pressed against his neck with metal so cold it stung his skin. He didn't worry about the enemies on the other side of the battlefield, and he wasn't afraid. Inside, he was already dead. Yet his army stood behind him. One of the horses whinnied through the fog. It has been nearly a year, he thought. he died almost a year ago. He had held her head in his hands, watched as the life left her eyes. What was he to do? Who was he without her? He sat in his chambers, his young daughter perched on his knee, but the cloud of grief was too thick. He couldn't hear a word she uttered. "Yes, Snow White," he'd say, his mind somewhere else as she peppered him with questions. "Right, my darling, I know." Far across the field, he could see the enemy army. They were shadow warriors, a dark clan gathered by some inexplicable, magical force. They stood in the morning mist as ghostly silhouettes—nameless and faceless. Their armor was a dull black. At times it was hard to tell where the forest ended and they began. Duke Hammond turned to him, his brows knitted together in worry. "From what hell comes this army?" he asked. King Magnus set his jaw. He shook his head, trying to pull himself out of the stupor that had lingered for months. He had a kingdom to protect, now and always. "A hell they'll soon revisit!" he yelled. Then he raised his sword, leading his troops to charge. They raced toward the enemy army, their swords aimed at the figures' throats. Soon the shadows were upon them. The warriors' armor was similar to theirs, but beneath it were black shadows that shifted and swirled like smoke. A faceless warrior ran toward King Magnus, his weapon drawn. The king swung his sword, and the figure shattered like glass, thousands of black shards flying out in every direction. The king looked up, stunned. All around him, his men were attacking the shadows, and one by one, each warrior exploded into the morning mist. The sparkling shards fell to the ground and disappeared into the hard, frost-covered soil. Within minutes, the field was empty. The king's troops stood there, alone, the sounds of their breaths the only thing left hanging in the air. It was as though the enemy army had never been there at all. The king and Duke Hammond shared a confused look. Through the fog, the king could make out a small wooden structure standing between the trees. He started toward it. When he was twenty feet away, he could see it was a prison wagon. He dismounted his horse and peered inside, noticing a woman cowering in a corner. Wavy blond hair cascaded down her back. A veil hid her face. She'd been taken captive by the army—who knows what they had done to her? The dark forces were said to have killed and maimed hundreds of prisoners, even some children. He swiftly brought his sword down on the lock, smashing it. "You are free now. You have nothing to fear from me," he spoke to her, reaching out his hand for the young woman to take. "What is your name, my lady?" Slowly, the woman turned toward him, her supple body becoming visible in the light. She rested her thin hand in his and lifted her veil. King Magnus stared into the woman's beautiful, heart-shaped face. She had full lips and heavy-lidded blue eyes, and two thin gold braids pulled her hair away from her high cheekbones. She couldn't have been more than twenty years old. King Magnus helped her on feet and was unexpectedly delighted to find that she was as tall as him.

"My name is Ravenna, sire," she said softly. The king was silent. Everything about her—her nose, her fingers, her lips—was intoxicatingly beautiful. In that moment, he felt the warmth of her hand. He could smell the fresh pine trees around them. He remembered clearly the day he'd met his wife, the only other woman who had ever made him feel this way. It had been summer, with dappled sunlight playing over the leaves of the apple trees. But in this moment, the sorrow finally lifted. As he stood there before Ravenna, his heart wild in his chest, he suddenly felt alive again. The king returned to the castle with the young beauty. The seasons changed. That initial joy only grew. King Magnus asked Ravenna to marry him. Each day he fell a little more in love with her, this young woman who had been taken from her home and kept by the enemy army. He was like a teenager in her presence—his cheeks flushed while she told him stories of her life before meeting him, how she'd lived on the edges of the kingdom with her late mother.

The king's daughter, Snow White, would sit beside them at meals, her chin resting in her hands as she studied Ravenna. She was a child still, only seven years old. Together, they were a family. It was what the king had always wanted. He would watch Ravenna sometimes, how she smiled at Snow White or took her hand and led her around the castle courtyard. She seemed so very happy with them....

When the day of the wedding arrived, Ravenna stood in the back of the cathedral. Through the wooden doors, she could hear the crowd shifting in their seats. Her cheeks were powdered. Her lips were painted a deep blood-red, and her dress was laced up the back so tightly that she could barely breathe. She watched her reflection in the mirror on the wall, the slightest curl on her lips. Tonight, after the ceremony, there'd be no more pretending. She would finally get what she wanted. "You're so beautiful...." a small voice whispered. She turned to see Snow White standing in the doorway, watching her. Snow White took the end of Ravenna's long white gown in her hands, pulling it up to keep it off the stone floor. Ravenna beckoned the king's daughter forward with a slight flick of her wrist. "That is kind, child," she cooed. "Especially when it is said that yours is the face of true beauty in this kingdom." Ravenna touched the little girl's cheek. Her skin was as perfect as porcelain. She had huge dark brown eyes and a hint of rose in her cheeks. Whenever she passed handmaids and soldiers alike, they were charmed, dropping down to one knee. The little girl looked up at her with eyes so innocent, so naive. Ravenna smiled down into the tiny face, knowing that this charade would end soon, and then she would right the wrongs that had been done to her and to her people. "I know it is difficult, child. When I was your age, I, too, lost my mother." She stroked Snow White's cheek. She could hear the orchestra in the front of the great cathedral starting up. Soon she'd walk down the aisle. It was all coming together as planned. As she waited for the music to begin, her thoughts drifted back in time to the day the king's men had just arrived in her village. She'd been so young. Ravenna had been in her mother's nomad wagon. They'd been together always, a small traveling clan, until the day the king's army came. Her mother had held a mirror in front of her face. "This is all that can save you," her mother told her. Then the older woman took her daughter's wrist and held it over a bowl of white liquid, whispering spells beneath her breath. With a sharp blade, she nicked Ravenna's wrist and let the blood drip into the bowl; the red shone that much more vibrantly against the white. Ravenna drank the potion quickly, swallowing it down. Sometimes, when she closed her eyes, she could still taste the strong, metallic liquid on her tongue. "Drink," her mother had said. "And with it, you will have the ability to steal the life-force of others. For that is your ultimate power and only protection." The king's men worked their way through each wagon, taking the nomads out of their homes and killing them. Her mother had put her hands on her forehead and whispered more spells, more words, putting a dark power that would bloom inside her.

She had escaped, but her mother had been left behind. The hair on the back of Ravenna's neck stood up as she recalled the way the soldier pressed the sword against her mother's throat. Her mother had spoken her last words, calling out to Ravenna as she was dragged away. "Be warned," she'd yelled, "by fairest blood it is done, and only by fairest blood can it be undone." Then her mother had fallen to her knees, the gash spilling blood on the grass. Within minutes she was dead. "Ravenna?" a small voice asked. "Ravenna? It's time." Ravenna opened her eyes. Snow White was standing behind her, spreading out the train of her dress. The wooden doors had opened. A thousand eyes were upon her, waiting for her to walk down the aisle. She straightened, her blue eyes darkening as they locked on the king. The little girl is right. It is time.

That night, as the last wedding guests drank and ate in the castle courtyard, Ravenna took the groom to his bedchamber. He was weakened by the day's festivities, his movements slowed from so many drinks. He was an easy target...

Magnus undressed clumsily and fell on the bed, drunk half with wine and half with lust. His eyes were fixed on Ravenna who stood still near the fireplace. She let her gown fall to the floor, revealing a body that looked as it had been carved from marble.

She motioned slowly towards the king, never taking her eyes off him, the muscles of her thighs tensing and contracting with each step. He licked his lips - eager for her to arrive.

King Magnus gazed at her lustfully "Who are you?"

"The bane of Kings." Ravenna purred as she slowly crawled onto the bed, rolling Magnus on his back. Her eyes gleamed in the firelight.

She sat up on top of him, taking his manhood inside her. "Now you are mine," she hissed triumphantly as she began riding him up and down.

Ravenna could feel the essence of the king's strength pouring forth, a well of energy just waiting to be tapped. She leaned back, letting it flow into her, filling her from her toes up to the top of her head. Magnus's muscles, built through years of rigorous training, began to shrink, becoming smaller and softer with each thrust. Swiftly his body ebbed to nothing while Ravenna's surged with strength and power.

He tried to playfully wrestle her off, but she grabbed his hands and held him down firmly, pinning his arms above his head. A fleeting worry crossed the king's mind, how could he be weaker than a woman? But it was swept away by a wave of pleasure.

"I will destroy you." she snarled, increasing her rhythm.

"Indeed, you will." King Magnus groaned.

"As my people were destroyed. As my family was destroyed. As I would have been destroyed." Magnus's opened wide his eyes, his face taken aback by confusion. He suddenly realized how much heavier she felt now, to the point where he was almost unable to breath under her weight. She arched her back from sheer ecstasy, shivering as she grew more and more, her whole body erupting with thick cords of bulging muscle.

"What...?" Magnus managed to croak in a voice that was more a death rattle. He tried to move but there was not an ounce of strength left in his body. The once mighty King Magnus was now just a helpless heap of skin hanging on brittle bones, gasping for air like a dying fish.

"First I will take your life, my lord," Ravenna whispered while glaring at the emaciated, shrunken man, savoring the terror in his eyes. "Then I will take your throne." In one swift motion, she wrapped her massive thighs around the king's decrepit body and crushed it with all her strength.

Ravenna strode out of the chamber and down the hall, leaving the broken corpse of the king twisted in the sheets. She moved quickly, drunk with the rush of power, descending the stairs to the castle's portcullis. Her strides were longer now as she had added part of Magnus's height to her own, and the muscles of her arms were about to tear through the once loose sleeves of her gown. Her army was waiting outside the latticed iron, the shadow soldiers barely visible in the moonlight.

Eager to test the power of her new body she went to the mechanism room next to the castle's gate. Inside it was a large steel wheel, the windlass. She knew that at least three men were necessary to turn a complete revolution on it, which will open the gate and raise the portcullis. She placed her hands on the metal bar and pushed, feeling almost no resistance. The gears and chains along the walls rattled and slithered, the counterweights moving and sliding as her entire body shivered with pleasure.

Outside she heard the groan as the gates opened and the rattle as the portcullis slid upward. The soldiers flooded inside. Within minutes, they'd descended on every inch of the castle. While the soldiers fought, Ravenna returned to her room. She could hear the cries of civilians downstairs, and the clinking of sword against sword as the soldiers locked in battle. One of her men brought in a huge mirror. It looked like a round shield of highly polished bronze. The air outside her room filling with shouts and yells, as she gazed into the mirror's surface. It was much bigger than the one her mother had held before her all those years ago, but it held even more magic. When she was alone she let her gown fall to the floor as she had done in the king's chamber, and stared at her naked reflection.

The sight aroused her immediately, she was no longer a woman, but a goddess. Her face had kept the roundness of womanhood, it even glowed looking more beautiful and youthful than before, but below her chin there was almost no trace of feminine fat left. Pulsating veins pushed against her ivory skin, crisscrossing massive muscles carved with striations. She had a perfect hourglass figure, with broad shoulders and a narrow waist, her lats flared out like the hood of a king cobra and her abdominals bulged like cobblestones. Her arms and legs throbbed with power, with thick cords of muscle popping at even the slightest movement. Her breasts had melted away, and in their place now stood the huge shelf of her pectorals. The two thick slabs of muscle protruded even further than her breasts had ever had, without the slightest sign of sagging. She made them bounce, and the muscles rolled like waves crashing on the shore.

"Indeed there is power in the blood of kings." Ravenna gloated as she flexed her arms making her biceps swell, their peaks rising past her shoulders.

Here was the complete summation of King Magnus's life-force. All he ever was and could have ever been, nothing had gone to waste. And it was all hers now.

She felt moist and hot in her nether regions as her hands wandered over her massive body. She was amazed by its hardness, it was like her muscles were composed of liquid steel.

"Mirror, mirror on the wall, who's the mightiest of them all?" she asked in a husky voice, leaning toward the polished bronze.

The surface of the mirror rippled. Liquid spilled onto the floor around Ravenna's feet, re-forming into a bronze statue nearly as tall as she was. The figure appeared as though it was draped in thick fabric, but it reflected back the room around her. The mirror man's face showed Ravenna's face just as it was. "It is you, my Queen," it said. "A kingdom falls to your glory. Is there no end to your power and beauty?" Hearing the mirror speak, Ravenna knew the magic her mother had given her was boundless. In her presence, kingdoms fell, men perished, and even simple objects took on a magical life, revealing secrets no one else could know. She raised her hands in the air, feeling the fight in her fingertips, remembering all that her family had given up to the king. He was finally dead. The kingdom was hers. No one could hurt her now, or ever again.

Ravenna stared again at the mirror man's flat face, and unable to contain herself leaned forward and kissed her own reflection on it. The surface was cool to the touch and impossibly smooth. "As it pleases my Queen." the mirror man spoke, its voice suddenly with a much higher pitch than before, in which Ravenna recognized her own. The shrouded figure changed again, reforging itself into a new shape. Within moments a golden copy of Ravenna stood before her, with a mischievous smile on its lips. She smiled back and nodded approvingly, the double then bowed and kneeled at her feet. Ravenna placed her hands on its shoulders, feeling the powerful muscles moving under its shining metal skin, the sensation was intoxicating. Cool lips and tongue starting kissing and licking her privates. An uncontrollable moan of pleasure escaped her mouth, followed by another and another, intertwining with the sounds of the carnage outside.

When the fighting ended and the courtyard was silent, she went back down the stairs. The shadow warriors were assembled in the stone courtyard. Blood was spattered on the tables and chairs. Plates were broken on the ground, the remnants of the celebratory dinner strewn everywhere. She didn't shudder at the sight of the bodies, some of them women, slumped over in their seats. The surviving wedding guests and nobles were lined up against the wall, held back by her troops. "What shall we do with these?" one general asked. The women clasped their hands together, begging for mercy. A few noblemen even teared up. They pulled their children close, trying, however uselessly, to protect them. Ravenna shut her eyes and remembered her mother—how the women in her village had been so brutally slaughtered. This was what was meant to happen. It had been the king's mistake—not hers. This was how it was supposed to be. "To the sword," she said, her voice flat. She stood tall and powerful, indifferent to the cool night air, gazing at the chaos swirling around her. Women were dragged outside to be killed. Noblemen struggled against the soldiers' grips. A little boy was screaming for his mother, his face tear-streaked and red. Ravenna turned on her heel to go, but something was amiss. "Wait," she said raising her hand, making her bicep stretch the fabric of her sleeve almost to the tearing point. "Highness!" said the brute, squaring his shoulders and clicking his boot-heels.

Ravenna looked at the general in the eye. "Where is Snow White?" The man was jolted as he had dreaded being the one to tell her.

"We... we haven't found her yet, your highness."

"You haven't found her yet?" She growled. The last loose end to tie up, the heir to the very kingdom she had overthrown. And these half-wits in armor had lost her.

Ravenna saw the panic in the eyes of the General and not without a certain satisfaction. The man was almost quaking in fear of the statuesque and furious woman that towered over him. She straightened, trying to keep calm before her troops, who had just fought so valiantly in her name, never questioning her commands.

"I have changed my mind, spare the lives of these wretches, for now." The man relaxed as if some great weight had been lifted from his shoulders. "One of them must know where the princess is, start interrogating them at once, I want answers." Ravenna ordered.

The general saluted again and marched off with his soldiers towards the weeping prisoners.

Ravenna could feel that she and Snow White were bound together, somehow, by a strange, powerful force. Something beyond the more practical matters of the girl's claim to the throne.

But despite the torments inflicted upon the prisoners, no answers were found.