Chapter One: Albion
Sergio stretched and twisted about his bed relishing the feeling of waking up, and the knowledge that it was Saturday.
He rolled onto his stomach and sniffed his pillow, it smelled of him. But one thing his mind only sluggishly registered was the fact that the feel of the pillow wasn't the same. Slowly, he opened his eyes and noticed that the color of the blanket that covered him, the mat he slept on, and the pillow that was his, were a different color.
Tan sheets and a hand stitched pillow.
His eyes opened wide, slowly he came to realize; he wasn't home.
He stared at the wooden wall of the gypsy caravan and only one thought crawled through his mind.
-Where in the hell am I?
As soon as he turned around, he fell still and silent, but none the less terrified.
The woman he recognized as Theresa, sister of the Hero of Albion from 500 years earlier sat at the lip of his caravan.
"Don't be afraid" she said, her eyes shying under her red and white cowl.
Sergio tried to say something but the words caught themselves in his throat. He had a thousand questions and half a mind to bolt around her and run away. But she stopped him with but a word.
"Listen"
Her voice was wizened and mesmerizing in a way. Her voice, coming from her cracked lips and wrinkled face made him stop and obey her. Sergio couldn't move, he felt light headed and dizzy. Terrified and sick to his stomach in the extreme and in equal parts.
"I know what you are Sergio Alexander Toro, and I know where you came from; a world beyond this one" she said with a steady voice, a knowing tone.
Sergio eased and noticed he was holding his breath. He felt he wasn't in danger, but he also felt like he could not yet ask his thousand questions. Something in the old woman, Theresa, forbade it.
"And now this young one, the world you were once part of is no longer yours to be part of"
Sergi forced himself to speak, if only by ripping a single syllable out of his throat.
"I-"
"Don't recognize the camp Sergio? You have lived here for ten years"
Sergio blinked at her completely lost and even more afraid.
She slid away from his view to allow him a look outside.
Sergio's head felt like it wanted to evaporate into mist. Everything outside, every face he could see from his humble, green and red caravan, was familiar and tied to powerful memories. His vision wanted to shut it all out, his mind was struggling to remember and forget in equal measure. His breath was squirming in his chest.
Everything he saw, was tied to vivid and old memories, tied to smells, feelings and tastes of a life, just as real as the one in the concrete graveyard that was his city, perhaps, even more alive, more meaningful.
He tore himself away from staring wide eyed at everything around him as Theresa spoke again.
"I see you remember. You have been with us for ten years, starting with the night Lucien killed your sister"
Sergio's heart squirmed and ripped as if it wanted to tear itself a mouth and scream. He remembered her; Rose.
His sister
His sister
His sister
She had taken care of him, loved him and looked after him beyond all hardship. He could remember every detail of their life in survival as vividly as his real life.
And Lucien, a name that glowed in his heart as if it had been branded there burned and so did a low but seething hatred for that man.
But this was a game. It was a game, he was going to awake and be back in the apartment with a hell of a dream to tell Violet.
A part of him however, the part of him that was a dreamer told him, this was not a dream. It was real.
And slowly, the rest of his mind was agreeing. And beyond that, everything felt indeed real. He was in a gypsy camp in Albion and his butt was falling asleep because of his position.
Theresa smiled
"A mind such as yours, a mind willing to believe in magic and in the fantastic will be have more use here more than in your world of origin"
She rose and walked off in the camp gate's direction.
"Come, your journey is begun with but a single step, starting with getting dressed and accepting where you are"
Sergio swallowed and looked about his bare surroundings finding a pair of leather shoes that were waned with age and wear. The kind of shoes someone of very little means in life would use, and equally humbling long pants and shirt, all in a folded little pile behind him.
As he took up the clothing he noticed it was folded in the same manner he used to fold things in the real world. Folded with a presentable appearance but with everything else that would be folded unto itself made a mess, making wrinkles in the sleeves only.
After looking himself over her stepped out of the caravan and a black dog with a white belly and paws up to its elbows came running to him, overjoyed it pounced on him knocking him down.
What at first would have been fear in Sergio turned to laughing as the dog ate him with kisses.
After it had finished slobbering all over him it looked at him enthusiastically.
He smiled and petted him confidently, fingering the tag.
Pan
That was the name he had always wanted to give a dog, if it wasn't for mother always choosing the names. Then again, it was she who had chosen his name. And he liked his name, he thought it suited him perfectly for reasons embedded in his personality as well entrenched as his very veins.
He finished dressing and returned the hellos to all of the people in the camp who greeted him, and in a way, bizarre to his understanding, he knew all their names. And all were tied to memories as well.
He remembered, he was liked here, not overly liked, but liked. He was a jester of sorts apparently and they thought of him as such.
He continued the walk up the hill and to the intimidating ramparts of the camp where Theresa waited and so did another gypsy who opened the gate.
The gypsy who's name Sergio remembered to be Anthony said; "Good Luck Sergio"
Sergio smiled at him and followed Theresa out to the small landing right outside the gates.
The view was breathtaking, a valley stretched out before him, majestic and imperious mountains sat in the east and north, forests of a pure shade of green he had never seen before swayed almost unnoticeably every direction, and so did well worn dirt paths. Those were the two most abundant things in his view, that and old but beautiful ruins, or the stones of ruins which had their own charm in a way. Like an old vintage that everyone enjoys, but rather than drink, one looks and touches them.
Sergio had always drooled over ruins of any type. Especially castles.
After all he had stayed in one for a while, Dromoland Castle in Ireland, a holiday he would never forget.
Theresa pointed at the only ominous shape in the valley; a spire of stone half in the lake, half on the shore.
"That is where your journey begins Sergio. Take these things and this seal, it will open the gate in the lake and by extension, your destiny"
Sergio took the sword and the crossbow, the spade and a few other things. The guild seal, a heavy trinket sat in his hand, and as he eyed it, he noticed Theresa had skulked off to the entrance of the camp and looked at him thoughtfully.
He recognized the guild seal of the Hero's Guild of Albion and took a deep breath.
The walk up the hill, the feel of his boots, the coarseness of his blade and the weight of the guild seal, the chill of the breeze and the coming rain, it made him realize one incontrovertible fact.
Albion, where he was, Theresa, his "dreamt" memories, they were all real.
Sergio felt a low drag in his stomach and fear in the same. By inference, all the monsters he had vanquished in the predecessor to this game, world, were real. And he would have to face them again.
He thought of his father, Santi, short for Santiago, Violet, and his friends; Arnold, Gabriel, Saul, "Mini Khan", Robert, Pacheko, Mulero, Charlie and Alex. Had they been with him, they would have likely followed him wherever he decided to go. Sergio had the ability to be brave in groups, but alone, he was vulnerable, and he was only painfully aware of this.
He smiled as he gazed at the spire.
In school, there had been a series of poems called the Cantebury Tales, and he had written a series of improvised poems for them, identifying each as one of the characters of the Tales. He had always proclaimed himself to be the Knight at heart.
He gripped and squeezed the seal.
And as he did, he let go of his decorum pertaining the "real" world.
He was a pragmatist, and all of this being so real, it all being real, he decided to be practical and do the next most logical thing. To take the first step forward, he was Sergio Alexander, and whatever awaited him, he would fight it. And as he marched downhill smirking as Pan walked happily next to his friend, he kept repeating the same thing in his head.
I shall Not Fail
He wore his brave face and showed courage as he marched ahead, to no one obviously, more convince himself than he would be alright than anything else.
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Sergio braved through the down the chasm, through the dark waters of the pitch black tunnels, illuminated only by the powerful seal. Up the ways and through the mines, down the landings and through the stairs he marched inexorably towards his goal, albeit with fear.
He was afraid the dark after all.
He slew the few beetles that came to attack him, a task which he was less than skilled at, he felt bad putting them out of their misery after maiming them. He didn't like to hurt anything.
The dark whispered, shadows danced at the edges of the light and water droplets piped their existence periodically as briefly as a human life.
He continued on his way and at the near end, he stumbled upon a library. This same little library contained, apart from more beetles which he dispatched more easily than the firsts or the seconds, books.
He picked up the three volumes and read the runes adorning the covers of each distinct book.
The grave, black book read "The End is Almost Nigh"
The solid, coarser book read "The Hero of Oakvale"
And a book in an ominous shade of black, with a cover as smooth as skin read only "The Tattered Spire"
Sergio leafed through all of the books and took a deep breath before continuing by guild-seal light. He thought that this was perhaps a foreshadowing of the future, of what would be involved in it.
He hoped not, at least with the Balverines of the first fable, and above that, Jack of Blades. Especially not Jack. He hoped for no dragons as well.
He was a seventeen year old with a sword, not a born warrior, if he faced anything more than a beetle he was likely screwed. He was too scared and too much of a coward to fight anything else.
As he thought this continuing down the small bridge to what looked like the main chamber he realized, he was squeaking along the dark passages and this so called mission in Albion more than forging bravely forward against evil.
He felt smaller for it, he wasn't living up to, whatever it was he was supposed to live up to.
Well, this was Fable, so he was supposed to be a hero wasn't he?
No training, no Will, no will to fight and no magical super weapon to help him.
Some Hero…
He frowned as he pushed open the ancient doors of the large dome thinking that the quest would likely be over before it began.
As he opened the gates he gasped silently.
This was the Chamber of Fate from his first adventure.
As she had at the beginning of the tunnel, Theresa spoke to him through the guild seal.
"The murals on the walls? Do you recognize them?"
Sergio instantly forgot about his surroundings and scanned each mural, some, where in better conditions than others but he recognized each and every one.
"Yeah, these are the murals of when-"
"When you first influenced Albion"
"Yeah, I was unstoppable and I ha-"
"And you had a grudge against humanity"
Sergio stopped for a moment and approached the debris near the center of the chamber, almost being able to see himself picking up Jack's mask and smiling in his dark chainmail armor, his horns and red aura casting a glow of malice in the room.
"What do you mean Theresa?"
"You were the greatest hero ever to set foot in Albion. You were a master of Will, Skill and Strength. No one, not Thunder, Briar Rose, Whisper, or even Jack and later on the Guildmaster could stand against you"
Sergio said nothing
"You were both the terror and the salvation of the lands, you went through the world toppling every evil soul that laid a claim to greatness until there was no great evil in the world but you. Of course, this was after you destroyed the Sword of Aeons"
The boy sat in the darkness realizing that what he did during Fable I and during the Lost Chapters influenced a his Hero after he stopped playing. Sergio realized that what he chose, the Hero chose and suffered in Albion.
"In your past life you were known as Gladiator, and no one enemy, not one or a thousand at a time could defeat you. And so, at the end of your days as that man, you killed yourself"
Sergio felt a frozen chill crawl up his spine.
"What?"
"Gladiator was as you are; peculiar, split, broken. He was evil through and through and had a soul as black as the voids that surround you now. But he held his grudge, his cruelty, his malice against all others like him. He destroyed all who fought, good or evil, until there was no one else"
Sergio sat silently, his mind blank, committing every word to memory.
"Gladiator hated himself so much, that anyone who was like him, he was compelled to destroy, and so he did. He purged the Albion of evil, then he purged it of himself. This is who you were"
Sergio hesitated to speak and tried to say something, but the words were stuck in the back of his throat.
"Do not doubt yourself, Gladiator did impossible things, and so will you. How the world will be shaped, lies in your hands once again, although what will you do with it, is up to you"
" This is a clean slate so to speak"
As he heard her add this, Sergio could swear she was smiling.
"Step into the circle, and get some rest. You will need it when the new day comes"
Sergio looked at the small circle where he had slaked the bloodlust his greatest adversary and stepped on it.
There was a low rumble inside him and green light burst from the circle. His body was lifted a meter off the ground and his heart beat like a drum.
Sergio felt something, he would never be able to accurately describe. Every muscle, every organ, every bone, every cell in his body sang and bulged under the influence. He felt a rush of adrenaline in every pore of his skin and inch of his body, but much more potent to the point of euphoria.
An electric feeling coursed through specific channels in his body form his heart, to his arms, finger, legs, toes, chest and brain.
He could barely control the feeling, he wanted to blow apart the chamber with a scream and with that, he dropped to the ground. His entire body, stronger, faster and tougher than it had been before, quivered as it slowed down, Sergio breathed in with a new life. His senses themselves hummed like a low note on a cello, and his bones felt light as a feather. His joints swerved as he flicked his wrists and twisted himself around relishing the feeling in his body. The skin itself crawled and seemed to purr pleasantly. His head was buzzing with blood.
"The blood that courses through your veins is awakening, the blood you and your predecessor share. With this power, you will become what you have it in yourself to be"
If she said anything else, he didn't hear her.
The noise in his head drowned out everything around, him save for one thing, one fact that glowed warmly but didn't burn, scream its existence but didn't speak.
He now felt in a way he could not explain, that his body could now reflect his soul, his potential.
A powerful, ever-changing thing….