Dawn has come - Fable 3 fanfic
Just a little thing to say before getting started - this story is meant to be a little longer, maybe 3 or 4 chapters or so, unless it turns out that people like it.
At this point I just have to make sure everybody knows following - there will be people dying (later on), therefore the Teen+ rating. There will be some linguistic mistakes sincen I'm only a Dane, so I don't know every nice word, idiom or phrase in the English language, which makes the language in my story rather identic all the way through the story. And there will be spoilers, since this story takes place AFTER Fable 3 - before the DLC's - so now you're warned. If you don't want to know how everything ended in the original game, I guess you'll have to go finish it first and then return if you still want to read this.
I don't own the Crawler, the Darkness, the Hero of Brightwall (/the new King (- spoiler)), The Hero of Bowerstone (Sparrow), Hammer, Elise, the Malanga fruit, the whole concept and places of Fable 3 or anything like that.
My own characters include (at this point) only Damien, Eric, Commander Farrell and Private Evans, though more are to come. The smaller concept of this story, including the force "The Hammer of Dawn" (no reference to Gears of War at all), the ship "Elise's Hope" and the iguana sausages are my own 'creations', to put it that way.
Anyway, let's get on with the story. In case anyone actually likes it, I'll possibly let it go on.
Chapter 1: Looming Darkness
When I woke up this morning, I would never had thought, that I was supposed to do this. I had never thought ever in my life that I would end up on the frontlines, fighting against an enemy nobody really knew anything about. The new King, the Hero of Brightwall, had held a speech in front of the entire army just a few days ago. He had told that our enemy, the Crawler – or the Darkness as it was practically reduced to now after its leader's death – was a powerful entity, capable of doing practically anything and with powers that surpassed anything that he had previously thought possible.
Only by the chance of luck, the King had defeated the horrific being and thereby saved Albion from its worst enemy ever. Now, after the destruction of most of the army, he had ordered a newly trained squad to enter the Crawler's lair in the Auroran desert and make sure that no remnants of the Darkness remained. He knew, that some of the Children had survived the perish of their father – or mother, in case the Crawler turned out to be female, in which case I would be a bit more intimidated by her extremely bad looks and the fact that she spoke like one of the bouncers from the 'Cock in the Crown' inn in Bowerstone.
But seriously, he had the scariest voice I've ever heard and the darkest one too. Man, I didn't even dare to enter the inn, when he was around. But back to my point!
The King knew, that some of the Children had survived, since he had come across several of them in the Auroran desert after the encounter with the Crawler, even though the latter was nowhere to be found. Not that anyone, maybe except for the Children, would be sad about that. Well, I could see no reason for anyone else being sad for that reason. Actually, people had been celebrating the death of the Crawler for a couple of days now. If I just hadn't had to be in this squad, I had been celebrating with them but I wasn't that lucky. All the men from my neighborhood – the outskirts of Bowerstone market and a couple of guys I knew from the Industrial – had been asked, or rather 'forced', to join the squad. We really hadn't much of a choice. I mean, I like the King, because he saved us and he's a Hero and a good guy and stuff, but by asking the poor studs of this city to join the army and promising them money from the royal treasury if they should succeed, I'm not quite sure what to feel anymore, especially not with the "if they should succeed"-part.
I mean, when you're aboard a ship sailing towards Aurora, a land of which you have heard the most terrifying tales ever, you hear even more terrifying tales. The men in my squad, most of them are as frightened and unknowing as I am, but some of them claim to have been hiding in their houses when the Crawler attacked Bowerstone that night. They claim that they saw the King fighting against those creatures and that they now know how to deal with them. Or not to, depending on whether they would be capable to do so or not.
The creatures that most of them have seen are what I've earlier referred to as the Children, and I believe most of the rumors I have heard about them to be true. Both the men and the King himself have spoken of them and from those pieces of information I have collected over the last few days, I have learned this:
The Children are shadowy beings without flesh, barely being solid. They appear like humans, though being dark and ghastly, transparent imitations of us. They are just about the same size as us, most of them a bit smaller and have black wings protruding from their backs. It seems that they are armed with shadowy weapons created from the same matter as them, and they have superhuman strength. One of them might be as strong as up to ten men – the numbers differ from story to story – but they are very fragile, just like glass. One hit from a weapon or a glimmer of daylight, and they are torn apart. Sad thing is that you normally don't get close enough to hit those things, unless you use a gun. The King said that they were ferocious, without fear for anything except light, which seemed to burn them, and would just keep swarming in until they had torn you apart. Their numbers were always at least double your own, since the Crawler constantly created new ones. Good thing that he's not around any longer.
A sudden twitch in my stomach dragged me back to reality and I looked around on the ship. The wind hadn't blown for real since we left, so the waves weren't unendurable, even though nausea had come to me anyways, with me as one of the only men struck by it on the entire ship. I don't know why, but whenever I get near the ocean, I get seasick, even when I 'm not on a ship. I basically just have to look at the water and then my stomach is doing somersaults while screaming "holy shit, you shouldn't have eaten that two-days-old lump of bread you found on the floor before going down here, but you did anyways. Retard."
And if you have to ask, then yes, my stomach calls me retard, and it makes up worse and worse curses every time I get near water. And here I am, aboard the vessel "Elise's Hope", as the King named it for some reason. I don't know who Elise might be, but he cried when we left port, so I guess she's somewhat special to him. Or was, depending on her current condition.
Then I was ripped out of my thoughts again by the sound of a familiar voice.
"Hey, Dame, are you still puking from the evil waves?"
If you at this point wonder "is your name really Dame," the only thing I can answer is no. It was a nickname given to me – and not one of the kind ones – probably caused by my lack of skills when it comes to close combat. I'm more one of those 'hit-and-run'-kind of guys. My real name is Damien.
"What does it look like," I asked the guy, who approached me. "It's not like I'm fishing over here."
"Not unless you use liquid, rainbow-colored bait, that smells pretty much like a mixture human barf and our lunch for catching those fish." The guy had a rather triumphant smile on his lips, which shone out brightly through his dark brown full beard.
"Why do you only make the good jokes when I'm the victim, Eric?" I looked at him a bit disorientated, trying to focus on something else than the movements of the ship.
He looked me in the eyes. Eric and I had been comrades-in-arms since we arrived at boot camp just about two weeks ago, and he had always been the better one. When the rest of my squad found out that I practically had no skills when it came to fighting, they gave me the nickname "Dame". As a matter of fact, I could as well had been a woman, if we were to judge by my fighting skills. No, that would be unfair to the women. Especially for those who had heard of Hammer, the comrade of the old Hero Queen, formerly known as Sparrow or the Hero of Bowerstone. I had heard, that she was a female warrior monk, who had also been a Hero
Hero. The Hero of Strength, if I am not mistaken. And now that I mention it, the old Queen herself had quite a knack for fighting too, so comparing me with a woman is pretty unfair to them.
"What do you mean," he laughed. "I make some good ones about other people sometimes."
"Like when," I asked with a raised eyebrow.
"Like…" He thought for just about half a minute, before he said, "Okay, couldn't remember one of those times right now, but that doesn't mean that I never made one."
"Whatever you say," I said, leaning over the railing once again, letting out the last parts of my lunch.
"I really wouldn't want to stand next to you during a storm Damien," he said. "If these one-inch waves make your stomach erupt like this, you ought to explode when the wind really starts blowing.
"Thanks for those picture," I said, trying to defeat the urges to spoil the nice paint job on the sides of the ship with more multi-colored vomit.
"Always at your service," he said and saluted me. Then he turned serious as fast as the weather changes from bright sunshine to hard rain, when you start thinking that you want to do something fun in the nice weather. "What do you think it'll be like, when we get there?"
"What it'll be like? You mean Aurora or that temple, where the last remains of the Darkness reside?"
"Both," he answered. "You know the tales of the temple AND the Darkness, hell, I'm sure everybody does. But the land of Aurora. Man, I've heard the weirdest tales of it. I even saw an Auroran once. She was completely dressed in robes and this weird hat that looked somewhat like a mix of what you just sprayed on the side of the ship and a clutch of tomatoes."
"Doesn't really sound so beautiful," I replied.
"Nah, it was pretty damn hideous. But the woman herself, she was all exotic and stuff," he said eagerly. "She brought exotic fruits with her, she looked exotic, she smelled exotically, and her hair was like…"
"Exotic," I asked with a sly smile.
"No, brown. And it smelled like, I don't know, those animals they ride down there. She brought one of those too, and it smelled like… well, like her hair, but then again… like… horseshit, actually."
"She sounds attractive," I said sarcastically.
"Aww, come on, you don't mean that seriously," he said with a laugh and punched my shoulder so hard I almost lost what was left of my balance. "Oh, sorry dude."
"No problem," I replied, only being able to stand because I was holding the railing. "But I sure hope that it was only one of them that smell like horseshit."
"You never know," he said and looked unto the ocean. The sun almost set far to the west, on the right side of the ship, making the ocean sparkle with an amber glow.
For a short moment, none of us spoke. I was the first one to break the silence.
"What do you plan on doing with your money," I asked him.
"My money," he asked. "I think I'll bet everything on the chicken races in Brightwall. I heard that one of the chickens have odds 253 to 1 or something like that. With all the money I'll win, I can buy the Cock in the Crown Inn and I'll have all the beer I want."
"You know that those high odds mean that he is most likely to lose, right?"
"Of course I do, but if I survive this, I have proven my luck."
I raised an eyebrow.
" I'm just fooling around with ya," he said, punching my shoulder again. It was beginning to get sore. "No, I'll use the money on something more realistic. Firstly, I'll pay my bills and then reinstate the house. The poor little kid at home doesn't have a proper bed to sleep in and my wife's birthday is coming up, so it'll be a pleasant surprise for them both to find some new furniture. If the reward is big enough, I'll buy the property so we don't have to pay the rent. If there's anything left, I'll buy the toy gun that kiddo always wanted."
I sighed. I never realized that Eric had so much to return to when he came home. I mean, we were given a decent amount of money for our families, but not nearly enough for them to thrive for the four weeks in total, in which we were abroad. Well, I didn't really have those problems.
"So, what about you?"
"What," I asked him, not having heard his question.
"What are you planning to do with your money? Anything you want to buy for your family, moving to another house, investing in trade goods?"
"Well, I don't really have a family to buy anything for, and I don't think moving would be a good idea. I'm fine where I am right now. And with my luck, nobody would ever pay the same price for the goods as I paid for them. If I buy anything, the only thing its price will do is fall. I'm not much of a businessman."
"Boy, is there anything you actually can do," he laughed. "Except paint people's ships or carts puke-colored."
"I play the lute," I said. "And I…"
I went silent for a moment. What else could I do?
"Well, I can cook a bit, I guess. And I used to work at a smithy. I think that's just about it."
"Then I really hope that you know what to do with that money, because otherwise you're screwed," he said with a serious look on his face. He knew as well as I did that without a real job and some useful skills, I wouldn't make it for the winter. Another reason for me joining this thing.
"At least I can call myself a war veteran, once this is over," I joked. It was one of the only good things I could come to think of. I still had my doubts about whether I would survive or not.
"Yeah, that's one of the better parts of this job," he said. "When we get back home, we're heroes. Not heroes like the Heroes, I mean," he said gesticulating wildly as he tried to make me understand what he meant with all those heroes. "But we're heroes nevertheless."
I looked at him in some sort of fascinated way. Despite my negative attitude and the fact that we were about to face the many perils of the Darkness, he never doubted that he would return home. I guess that attitude and way of thinking was what kept him from breaking down. One or two of the other guys on the ship broke down crying yesterday. Sadly, we are had been on our way for three days now, and there was no heading home. Otherwise, I would have faked a nervous breakdown too.
I looked at Eric again. I think his secret was his good attitude. He was always optimistic. Maybe I should try it out? I mean, if he could manage that way, I sure could too.
I let go of the railing, stretched my back, tried to look confident and looked at Eric again.
"You know, I think you're-"
I never got further, because he grabbed my shoulder and pulled me closer to him, pointing at the horizon.
"Dame, look," he almost shouted! "I can see Aurora!"
I had no choice but to look at what he wanted to show me. A dark line of rocks far to the south formed the unknown shore, we were travelling towards, and I was delighted. I was finally able to leave this boat. But at the same time, I was filled with fear. I now knew that in the next few days, I would be fighting for my godforsaken life in some godforsaken ruin in a godforsaken land, where nobody would be able to find my godforsaken corpse. But then I forced a smile on my lips. If Eric could keep his chin high, by being optimistic, then so could I.
The ship slowly disappeared into the shadows cast by the big cliffs on both sides of the vessel. We had reached out destination.
"Why do you look so serious?" Eric looked at me. We were sitting at a small, round table at the local inn, facing each other. The remainder of the inn was filled to the limit with the rest of our squad. Everyone was chatting and eating their weird meals with some distrust, and I still hadn't had any of mine. Eric on the other hand was almost done with his portion, chewing heftily on the last mouthful of meat.
"C'mon, relax. Eat your smelly iguana-sausages. They don't taste as bad as they sme- Oh, sorry!" He spat some of his own thoroughly chewed sausage on my cheek and quickly wept it off my cheek.
"You know how gross you are when you eat, right," I asked him.
"Hey, at least you don't have beard. Smelly sausage-pieces in your beard are not worth wishing for. It's so hard getting out from there, once it gets stuck," he said while waving his fork in the air. "And it smells pretty bad after the first two or three weeks."
I looked at him in awe. "You've had a smelly sausage in your beard for three weeks?"
"No, four," he replied.
"Four weeks?"
"No, you dumbass, four sausages."
I hid my face in my palm. "You're simply unbelievable. That's gross Eric!"
"Worst thing, Dame, is that he's proud of it," a guy from the table next to ours said. I recognized him as the leader of our squad, Commander Farrell. He wore our characteristic half leather-half metal armor, with solid leather boots, gloves and jacket with buttons of brass, covering his metallic breastplate steel. The boots and gloves were reinforced with steel plates as well, and the insignia of our squad was clear on his back – a bright, golden sun encircling a hammer.
After all, our squad is called the Hammer of Dawn. I don't know why our King chose that name, but if I was to guess, I'd say it had something to do with us breaking the Darkness in the name of the light or something like that.
"Hey, I'm proud of being who I am," Eric replied Commander Farrell. "Most people deny their own identity, trying to fit in. I don't think that's the way to do it."
The commander shrugged and drew his attention back to his sausages, which he poked with the fork. "It seems that they are edible, judging by Private Muller's behavior," he said to the other men at his table, pointing at Eric, though they didn't seem too satisfied with either the look or the smell of their dinner. I don't think that any of them even tasted those sausages.
If I just hadn't been puking for three days straight, I would never had even tasted those sausages, but I don't think my stomach have ever growled so loudly before. I seemed that Eric noticed it too.
"Come on Dame, eat your sausages. I can hear your stomach from over here, and I'm almost ten feet away!"
"You're sitting one arm's length away," I said.
"You're ruining my point," he said, waving his fork in the air. I don't know why I wasn't surprised to see one of my sausages on his fork. It wasn't exactly the first time he had eaten some of my food. I was slowly getting used to it. He could just keep on eating as long as there was food in front of him. No wonder that his family was rather poor, if he spends that much money on foods as I think he does.
Without noticing, I led my fork to my mouth, with one of my smelly sausages impaled on it. I had no idea what my stomach was planning against me, until it was too late, and I took the first bite of the sausage.
"Holy shit," I yelled and spat the piece of sausage back on the dish. "Eric, how can you make yourself eat this?"
"It's not that bad," he said, knowing everybody in the inn, including the personnel, had their eyes resting on us. "But at least you tried it. Unlike everybody else," he added in a slightly louder voice. The numerous soldiers on the tables around us suddenly froze. They realized what he just did. Now they were supposed to taste their food, since the personnel of the inn now remarked, that none of them had touched their food yet. Most of them looked like I thought that I did, when eating their sausages, but I can't blame them. It didn't taste like I smelled. I tasted worse!
"Do you think I could get something else to eat than this," I silently asked Eric.
"I don't know. Why don't you ask one of the people who work here?"
He was just about to whistle at the nearest of the Auroran waitresses, but I stopped him immediately.
"What are you doing," he asked. "Didn't you want something else?"
"Yeah, but not without having eaten my sausages."
"But…" He looked at me with a puzzled look. "Man, you're confusing me. I thought that you wanted something else."
"I do, but not before the sausages are gone. That's where you come in."
I saw as he slowly started understanding, while nodding as a pigeon and with a wider smile than ever that day.
"You know, I think I finally got your point there, pal," he said and quickly stabbed my one sausage with his fork and ate it in two bites. The following two came down just as fast, an act which all the men around Eric seemed to be rather eager to bear witness to, even though a few, including Commander Farrell, seemed a bit like they were going to throw up. It seemed that they had already tasted the smelly iguana meat.
It didn't take him long to finish, and he even made sure to make it look like I had some of the sausages too. I didn't take long for him to make a whole lot of noise calling the personnel either, asking them if they had anything else than iguana, 'cause we would be interested in trying out some other of their exotic foods. I'm not sure how he did it, but he actually said it with such eagerness, such happiness that the barmaid smiled at him and brought us a plate of small, round fruits that looked somewhat like a mix of apples and pears, though their surface was smoother and slightly orange with green spots. I asked them what kind of fruits it was.
"Why, Malangas of course," the barmaid answered with her characteristic, Auroran accent.
I still had no idea, what she was talking about, but I could at least taste one. They didn't smell like the iguana meat, so they couldn't be that bad, could they?
For once this week, I was happy to be right. The fruit was nice and juicy, and tasted somewhat sour, though it was still very sweet. Chewing on it was like chewing on a peach. Same consistency. The only bad thing I had to say about it was the pain in my teeth, when I hit one of the four stone-hard seeds in the middle. Eric didn't seem to mind, though. He was already competing with himself in how many Malangas he could fit in his mouth at once, but every time he reached to and a half, he had to gulp up the last half one and then eat the two he already had in his mouth, before trying again. He just swallowed the rock-like seeds.
"You know," I said, "From now on I'm going to address you "The Churn", right?"
"Suits me fine," he said, swallowing another Malanga.
People on the tables around us seemed to have had the same idea as us, even though most of them still had that skeptical glimmer in their eyes. Eric had eaten even the iguana-sausages, so they couldn't be all sure that the Malangas didn't taste like crap either. Anyhow, some of them were daring enough to try it, others saw that I ate them too and they knew off my picky eating.
Then my eyes fell on one of the other recruits from our squad, Private Evans, who was sitting all alone in the corner eating an iguana-sausage with a slight look of discomfort. He had always been silent and never really spoke to people. He just did what he was told and didn't start an argument. As a matter of fact, I never really think that I had spoken to him. Most of the time, I just speak with Eric or get mocked by the other soldiers, but I never think that Evans was one of them. And if he was, he had just been standing in the background, watching.
I felt a sudden urge to walk over to him and talk to him, because he seemed rather lonely. His sparring partner, whomever that might be, had chosen to sit at another table it seemed. But then again, he seemed just as silent and content as always, so why even bother disturbing him?
As if fate had decided the same thing as I did, a familiar voice from the table next to ours broke the low humming of the numerous friendly conversations.
"Men," Commander Farrell said. "We will be leaving the town early tomorrow. The sun after noon can be pretty harsh, so we will leave as soon as everybody has packed their equipment and is ready to move. The last one to show up on the eastern road out of town will be carrying the first three people's bags, you understand?"
"Yes sir," the collective yell sounded from all across the tavern, as people saluted Commander Farrell.
"Good! Then let's head to bed everybody. It's gonna be a long walk tomorrow, you can rest assured on that."
People started leaving their seats and headed towards the upper floor of the inn, where the rooms were. We were supposed to sleep on rooms for three men each, and I was surprised to see Evans in the room when Eric and I arrived.
"Hey there buddy," Eric said as the first one to say anything. "You're supposed to sleep in here too?"
Private Evans lifted an eyebrow. As always, he wore his tattered linen headband to encircle his short, auburn hair and his bluish grey eyes shone out distrust.
"What else would I be doing in here," he asked in a harsh, rusty voice. He almost sounded like some pre-puberty boy trying to sound older. No wonder he usually kept silent.
"Good point," Eric answered before Evans' bad mood spread, and headed for the bed directly opposite of Evans'. "I'll be sleeping here," he said, dropped everything except his underwear, jumped into the bed and fell asleep practically before he got under the sheets.
The room suddenly got all quiet, if you ignored Eric's snoring, that is. Trying to break the awkward silence, I tried saying something clever.
"Well, what did you think of the iguana?"
Yeah, it didn't work out exactly as planned. The mood in the room got even more awkward and tense and Evans didn't even bother to answer my question, he just lied down in his bed and turned his back to me. He didn't even undress either, but I didn't mind asking about that. I guess he would answer me anyways.
I removed my own clothes, except for the underwear, just like Eric, and went to bed. The only one left was in the furthest end of the room, between Eric and Evans. On the way I once again remarked that if I were to compare my size and Eric's size, his shoulders was almost one and a half times mine, and he was almost one head taller than me. He was almost born to be a fighter. Me, on the other hand, I was born to be… a fisher or something… I was too skinny to be most other things that required physical strength, though the last couple of weeks had hardened my body nevertheless.
When I then lied down in my bed, I remarked how dreadfully tired I was. Sleeping on a boat when you keep waking up due to nausea, that's not really sleeping you know. I actually almost felt like I was weightless, when I put my head on that pillow. My eyelids felt like stones, closing my eyes shut, and then everything went dark.
Dark. The best word to describe Shadelight. For centuries, this temple had been left untouched; no light had able to gain entrance in the hallowed halls. But then that Hero from Albion and his aging follower had gained entrance and desecrated their home. The home of the Children. But now it had to come to an end. The Children knew that somewhere in the land of Aurora, a force bringing the dreadful Light was coming for them. They thought that they could destroy the Children now that the Crawler was gone. They didn't know that the Children already had begun preparing for their intrusion.
But they were prepared. Those filthy bringers of the light could rest assured on that. And when those bastards dared to show up, they were in for a big surprise. No man ever escapes the Darkness.