Disclaimer: I don't own rights to Fable, nor do I intend to profit from this work of fiction.

Prologue:

When Memories Burn

Oakvale burned. A small town, off the south coast of Albion; it had been a small and inconsequential rural settlement, far away from corruption and sophistication, far away from anything remotely dangerous. But on this fateful day it burned, it was engulfed in flames that destroyed everything that defined its innocence, its simplicity. Every cottage, every thatched roof was consumed never to be the same again.

And in the midst of the destruction stood a boy no older than 10 years, utterly horrified at the site all around him. Bandits, criminals had raised the town, burning and annihilating everything on site no man, woman or child had been safe. The boy stood and stared with teary eyes at everything and tried to remember it all as it was, but his mind couldn't construct the image. It was a nightmare made real, the reality of which gorged his every wish and thought.

My family he thought, as he walked through the town, heading to the little courtyard that surrounded his home. As the courtyard came into sight for that first clear moment, despite the haze of orange and dark smoke, the boy's heart stopped beating. Sprawled on the dusty ground was his father Bromine the Woodsman. The boy neglecting his vigilance rushed to his father's side while tears fell freely from his eyes. He knelt over his father and tried to shake him awake but the man didn't stir, his body never giving away the slightest movement. His father had passed, and the boy's fear turned into sadness. He gripped his father's tunic like it was the last thing he would hold while stemming back a desire to shout, his thoughts then went to his mother and sister. Were they dead? Were they touched by the fire? Were they gone too?

As the memory of the peaceful quiet home he'd known began to filter back into his mind, the child cried as he'd never cried before or ever again. "What now?" were the words that drifted soundlessly through his thoughts before he opened his tear-drenched eyes as a man in dark armor, laying over the floor on his knees, as he had done as 10 year old nearly twenty years before.

The man looked around to assess his present condition and it only took a moment for recollection: the image of a screeching dragon streaking across his tired mind. It had breathed fire and brimstone unrelenting, but it had somehow failed to kill him. Battling dragons was the stuff of children's stories, but for Théoden Bloodsword – also known as Avenger- it had just been a frightening reality. It was not courage that drove his sword (Avo's Tear) into the heart of the beast but fear, and revulsion at the being that consumed the giant reptile, Jack of Blades himself.

Théoden walked away from the forge pit that served now as Jack's final resting place - his body racked in pain, and full of tension in places that seemed unharmed. His black plated armor with its small intricate patterns of crimson red was covered in the smog that pervaded the air of Archon's Folly. The armor itself was melted and seared in several parts and now felt cumbersome to wear. His exhausted limbs did their best to move his large frame towards the entrance out of the catacombs of Archons Folly, but their best involved a slow trudge through the volcanic soil of the dragon's lair.

The Bronze Gate - as it was commonly called - was the only door that led in and out of Archon's folly and when Théoden arrived at it he rested his hands on its sturdy frame before attempting to open it. The structure felt heavier than Théoden remembered as he leaned back and pulled open the heavy doors. Stumbling out of the opened gateway and falling on his knees, Théoden quickly removed his helmet and breathed in the unpolluted cool air of the Northern Wastes. He looked around at the foot path that lead into Archon's folly and away towards Archon's Shrine, in the distance he saw the narrow red silhouette of Briar Rose and standing next to her was the equally narrow frame of Scythe. Rising from one knee and suppressing the pain and fatigue that wrapped itself all around him, Bloodsword walked steadily towards the red scholar and the ancient warrior.