Author's Note: I've never played Fable II and I'm not sure about the real distance between Bloodstone and Bowerstone. If there are any inaccuracies about the locations and distances, please let me know. Reviews are encouraged!

Chapter 4: Climax

Seven Months Later…

On the morning her life changed permanently, Eleanor awoke and went through the routine she had upheld for three months without Sparrow.

Eleanor woke when her maid arrived to lay out the Queen's attire for the day. She always made small talk with the woman, whose name was Amy and who was married to one of the castle guards. Eleanor allowed Amy to excuse herself before climbing out of her gigantic four-poster mahogany bed. Like the rest of her chambers, Eleanor's bed was draped with the royal colors of purple, gold, and silver. It was Sparrow's contribution to the décor.

Once the maid left, Eleanor drew her own lukewarm bath. Fortunately for the Queen, Bowerstone Castle was one of the few places in Albion with running water. Sparrow had made sure that the luxury of running water was provided by the renovations, even if it was never hot or cold running from its source to the Castle.

She changed unassisted from her diaphanous sleeping gown into something commiserates with her morning errands. That morning it was a black light cotton blouse, a sleeveless cream leather jacket, black cotton breeches, cream low-heeled leather boots, and cream shooting gloves. Before she managed her hair, Eleanor studied the effect of her outfit in the full-length gold mirror she had brought from Bloodstone.

Eleanor hadn't yet felt the quickening, but her stomach grew daily.

More than four hundred miles away, King Sparrow awoke to the sound of thundering musket fire and the roar of something he knew could not be human. The humid air was thick with magic, misery, and malice as Sparrow launched himself from his hard cotton cot. Sparrow was already dressed in unbuttoned black leather trousers that hugged his slim waist and black leather explorer boots caked with mud. As he ran for the opening of his tent, Sparrow pulled on a simple white cotton long-sleeved shirt. It clung immediately to his bare torso. He hastily grabbed a rifle and the Axe of Disharmony, both of which were propped against a chain, and dashed into the bone-chilling early morning air of Wraithmarsh. Sparrow immediately gaped in horror.

A few hundred yards away, a furious forest troll tromped through the Hero-King's encampment.

Sparrow watched as the creature tore apart a tent and flung aside the soldiers within as though they were weak toys. Riflemen formed a line of aggression between the King and the troll, but they fired erratically at the creature's head, eyes, and brow. 'They set a forest troll upon us? I'll slay all those rebels in Bloodstone where they stand!'

Initially, Sparrow had abhorred the notion of war with Bloodstone. The Bloodstone region was rife with natural resources that Albion could not lose to a prolonged war. It was Albion's second largest port. Eleanor had been born and raised there. No one had told Sparrow anything to the contrary, so the Hero-King had engaged Bloodstone's elite in a series of epistolary battles for more than two months.

Then, Bloodstone-based pirates had attacked a fleet of merchant ships traveling the route between Knothole Island and Bowerstone. Sailors aboard the ships had been impressed into piracy or slaughtered. Cargo had been confiscated. The entire fleet of ships had been set ablaze upon the waters.

Lord Lionel Mumfrey, the owner of the fleet of ships, had come to Bowerstone Castle in a rage the day the report arrived at his mansion in Rookridge. "How much longer will you tolerate the traitors in Bloodstone? This attack will be only the first on privately owned ships! All of Albion will suffer! Declare war now and end their perfidious existence!" he had demanded.

Sparrow was a wealthy king. He had given Lord Mumfrey financial restitution. Within a week, three additional merchants had stormed into the Castle with reports of destroyed ships, stolen cargo, and captured sailors. Their losses had cost Knothole Island several tons of cotton and wheat. Sparrow had had no choice but to declare war.

The troll scraped boulders from the earth and hurled them at the riflemen. Sparrow rushed forward, muttering the Force Push spell, and raised his hands. Boulders blasted apart against the shield of invisible energy Sparrow provided over the riflemen's heads. Several glanced backward and smiled at the sight of their Hero-King.

"King Sparrow's protecting us!"

"Look at that use of his magic! Some powerful stuff, that is!"

The troll was quick to realize the futility of the boulders and roared in rage. It sank into the earth and the riflemen cheered. But Sparrow knew something of trolls. He had no particular affinity for them; he just killed the ones who got in his way. 'Come on, bugger. I know you haven't given up quite that easily.' Sparrow removed his rifle from his holster and stalked toward the spot where the monster had disappeared.

Before he took ten steps, the ground erupted beneath him. Sparrow was flung backwards into a world of agony and darkness.

The Queen diligently kept her symptoms concealed. Her cotton blouse was loose at the waist and tight at her bosom, so as to flatter her steadily swelling belly; she avoided stately dresses and suffocating corsets in favor of loose fitting coats. When she felt nauseous (which was often), Eleanor sniffed the smelling salts in which she dampened all her gloves, until she could escape the stimulus of her nausea. The court attributed her occasional mood swings to the stress from the revolt in Bloodstone.

After all, it wasn't every day that a woman's father and husband went to war against each other.

She was blissful that morning though and strolled into the Gardens with a smile on her face to rival the sun over Eleanor's head. A family heirloom pistol, Briar's Blaster, dangled from her hip in a black leather gun holster as she strolled past the guards and wealthy citizens of Bowerstone to the Rose Garden.

In the process of renovating the former Fairfax Castle and Gardens, Sparrow had dedicated a garden to the memory of his beloved older sister. Its hedges were filled with every color and variety of rose known in Albion. The Rose Garden dominated the roadway leading to the castle's front doors and exuded its fragrant scent over the castle grounds. Eleanor tended to it herself as a way of paying homage to the sister-in-law she never knew and to sequester herself from grasping gentry within the tranquility of the gardens.

"You're going to be an aunt soon, you know," Eleanor said to the life-sized statue of a younger Sparrow and Rose at the center of the garden. The statue had been based off the one picture the merchant Barnum had fully developed before his untimely murder in Reaver's Bloodstone mansion. "If it's a girl, I should hope to name her after you. Wouldn't that be something though?" Rose's marble likeness gave no reply. "I wonder what kind of father Sparrow will make?"

"Are you talking to yourself, your Highness?" a man drawled behind Eleanor.

Light slowly entered Sparrow's eyes and allowed the Hero-King to process the world around him as he regained consciousness. Sparrow realized he lay on the marshy earth with his arms and legs akimbo from the force of the troll's sneak attack. When Sparrow sat upright, the agony that radiated through his superhuman body almost blinded him. His ears captured a sinister, demonic laughter and the screams of terrified men, sounds that overpowered his own pain.

'I am going to get up,' he promised himself. 'If Hannah were here, she would say, "You haven't been beaten in a fight until you refuse to get up.' With a grunt, Sparrow forced cooperation from his legs. 'Well, Hannah, I'm up.'

Sparrow's left leg dispersed a stabbing pain through his body. The Hero had to blink to see without spots of painful red dots dancing before his eyes. He glanced down and immediately looked away. A splinter of bone punctured the top of his explorer boots. Blood and shredded muscle surrounded the broken bone.

'There should be some rule against seeing that.' Sparrow limped to the side of a munitions cart, grabbed the right sleeve of his shirt, and ripped it off. Advanced Heroic healing would repair the broken bone by the next day, but until then, Sparrow would have to combat his wound and the troll.

He glanced at the troll's hulking mass a few hundred yards away. While Sparrow was unconscious, the forest troll had moved closer to the line of riflemen trying to end its existence and had exacted revenge. The broken bodies of his men lay scattered around the marsh, dead or dying in the haunted mists. Yet many hundreds more were firing at it from behind barrels, atop carts, and behind fortifications outside its throwing range.

The incensed troll roared and slammed its fists into the earth, but not a single soldier was harmed. Angered further, it began to pound its fists on the ground, and the shock waves sent men falling beneath heavy barrels and crates. With his ebony locks matted to his forehead by sweat and blood, and a lethal scowl on his face, Sparrow looked every bit a man enraged. He checked his rifle, found it unfazed by his fall, and aimed it at the creature's head to fire five rounds in quick succession.

Eleanor whirled around, Briar's Blaster drawn and raised…in Reaver's curly face. "If so, you should be warned: It's the first sign of severe madness, my Queen." The Hero of Skill glared at the pistol aimed at his forehead. "And this is surely the second."

"What are you doing here, Reaver? Have you come to destroy something else lovely for your selfish gratification?" Eleanor lowered her pistol.

"Your Highness, how snarky you've become!" Reaver leaned on his ebony cane with its gold lion's head handle. The light blue of the vest he elegantly wore gave light to his dark eyes and color to his unnaturally sallow face. "Perhaps it is symptomatic of your condition?"

"What condition are you talking about, Reaver?"

His dark eyes drifted below her cleavage. While Eleanor appreciated the shift in his gaze, it was the sinister grin for which she had no love. "My dear Queen, anyone of worldly knowledge can see you are pregnant, enceinte, expecting, with child…"

"Thank you, Reaver. Your vocabulary on the topic is quite broad." The depraved Hero was not afraid of anyone else hearing but Eleanor was. "Now, I must tend to the roses, and I'm certain you have a flower or two to defile."

She turned on her heels, but before she could take a single step, a pale, dark-eyed man dressed in all black burst through the bushes. Eleanor gasped at the sight of the crossbow, loaded with a steel-tipped bolt, which he held aimed at her belly.