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This article or section contains information original to the novel Fable: Theresa, which is a licensed Fable work, but does not necessarily conform to Lionhead's Fable canon.
Fable: Theresa

Fable: Theresa is the last of three e-book short stories from bestselling author Peter David based on the Fable series of games. It was released on 19 June 2012 on all major e-reading platforms.

Synopsis[]

In a small village, an innocent girl is tormented by disturbing hallucinations and violent headaches. Like Theresa, the girl is a seer, but one whose powers will lead to madness and death. Theresa has seen the girl's fate in a shocking vision. Refusing to accept what appears to be certain, Theresa resolves to find the mythical cure for second sight. But she needs help.

Unfortunately, in a town where heroes are few and far between, Theresa is left with Elijah Stane, a drunken wretch up for one last great adventure. On a journey rife with peril, Fable's most powerful seer discovers that altering fate is no easy task. And the choices Theresa must make will haunt her, perhaps to the grave.

Plot[]

The novel is narrated in first person by Theresa herself.

Theresa arrives at a small house in the outskirts of the town of Ravenbeak, where she is greeted by a distressed woman, Elizabeth, who quickly notices Theresa’s blindness. However, as Theresa quickly demonstrates to have no trouble to navigate in her surroundings inside the messy house, Elizabeth acknowledges that she must hold some kind of magical abilities and anxious asks her if she is the “Endless Walker”, a fabled blind seer who legend said to live forever, and if she was there to help with her family curse.

The scourge within the family turn out to be Anne, Elizabeth’s eleven-years-old daughter which is bedridden and tormented by headaches apparently caused by nightmares. Theresa examines Anne and realizes she is also a seer, however, the girl is experimenting the ability to foresight events in a much more intense scale than the ones Theresa experienced herself in her youth. Theresa grows worried due to Anne’s visions, all related to corruption and darkness, being responsible to exhausting the little girl’s mind to the point that she would eventually succumb of exhaustion within a week at most.

Elizabeth tells Theresa that Anne’s visions started when she was five years old, and eventually she had predicted the murder of a boy, James Leeves, which did occur and Anne gained the reputation of being a cursed child, what caused  the townspeople of Ravenbeak to all been driven away from Anne, afraid of the latter’s powers. As Anne’s visions gotten worse, her father abandoned her and her mother to their own luck.

As Elizabeth starts to mourn the fate of her daughter, Theresa decides not to sit by and let Anne die without fighting for her right to command her own destiny, and then departs to try to find a cure for the girl’s condition, but for that, she needed a hero. In a hopeful act, Elizabeth claims that there is a hero just to be found in the town, Elijah Stane.

Elijah Stane, however, was found by Theresa laying drunk outside the town’s pub, The Cock And The Crow, and, as both Theresa and Elijah himself notice, there’s not much left of a hero inside of him. Elijah himself is in poor health conditions, as he constantly coughs blood, having retired from the hero world after failing to protect a young girl, Gretta, in the past, who, according to him, died in a hollow men ambush. Theresa asks for his help to protect herself in her journey to find a cure for Anne’s ability, and he reluctantly agrees after noticing that she would go with or without him and seeing in it an opportunity to redeem himself for Gretta’s fate in the past.

During their journey towards the mountains of Ravenwing, Elijah tells his story of being a failed hero, and states that is oddly that almost everything in the regions is named after ravens, and Theresa tells him that legends say that the whole region was molded and made human-habitable from the bedrock in the past by a powerful will user called Raven, whom is the one Theresa is after in the mountains, hopeful to find him as she believes he is the best chance to have a cure for Anne. During the journey they are ambushed by bandits which Elijah effortlessly defeats, showing to Theresa that he indeed have the abilities of a hero.

Elijah questions Theresa about her seer powers and if she was satisfied living blind relying in her powers to drive herself thought life. Theresa responds that not everything that has happened with her made sense at first but she then states that losing her eyesight was a fair price for the powers she eventually developed and that everything comes with a cost. He then asks if she will be able to fulfill Raven’s eventual price to cure Anne, which she responds that she’ll pay anything no matter the cost.

Eventually they both arrives at the mountain where they find ancient runes carved in a stone wall, which Theresa translates to “Only one with the blood of a hero shall gain entrance”. Convinced they were in the right location to find Raven, Elijah coughs blood in the runes hoping his “hero blood ” would be able to open some sort of passage. However, as nothing happens, Theresa slits her hand with Elijah old rusty sword and splatters her own blood in the runes, which do, indeed then, open a passage to the insides of the mountain. This prompts Elijah to fully accept himself not to be a hero after all, as his blood wasn’t able to open the passage, Theresa, in the other hand, having grown sympathetic towards him, tells that he just believe himself not be the hero he in fact is.

As Theresa and Elijah descends within the passage, the stones close the exit behind then. Theresa is then utterly terrified as she notices that her eyesight have suddenly been restored which completely wipes out her ability to view the world beyond the physical appearance with her abilities, rendering her chained to experience the world as a normal person. They don’t have much time to Annalise the situation as they are quickly surrounded by hordes of hollow men within the tunnel, much to Elijah dismay, who considers the creatures the reason of his downfall as a hero. As they fight their way through the cave system, Theresa accidentally uncovers the truth of Elijah’s past. He was, in fact, the one responsible for Gretta’s death during the battle against the hollow men in the past, when he accidentally drawn the sword through her chest, who were hiding behind him.

Theresa then, not used to rely on eyesight to navigate, falls in a well, where she hits her head. She then awakens in a pitch black place, floating above the not seen ground, in front of her is a tall bird-masked figure, who turns out to be Raven himself. Theresa asks for his help to cure Anne, but he is more interested in what are the reasons of Theresa’s worst fear being that she would return to see and lose her ability to connect with the world via her powers. Theresa notices that Raven was making both she and Elijah face their biggest fears within the cave, as the hollow men were Elijah’s greatest fear after his fiasco as a hero.

Theresa insists in getting Raven’s help and he agrees to do so, materializing a flask filled with a mysterious dark liquid, only enough for one dose, which he claims to be able to cure Anne’s foresight, but to keep the cure, Theresa would be not to interfere in the following events that would occur. Theresa claims that she didn’t understand what Raven meant and he explained that, just like a real raven feeds upon the corpses of the dead, Raven’s powers were fed by the regrets and grief of dead choices and unfortunate fates.

Theresa then awakes back in the cave, with her eyesight once again gone and her powers fully restored. Elijah approaches her and warns they should leave the cave and that he found an exit on the other end of a stone bridge that leads to a stone wall with rune marks on it.

Still shaken by Raven’s words, Theresa’s restored powers are able to make her notice that the apparently safe path through the bridge is actually a trap, and that in the other end of it lies not more than a dozen of hidden rockmites, ready to ambush and tear apart whoever dares to get close.

Theresa falls to the ground, struck with doubt and agony, as she realizes that in order to keep the cure for Anne, she must let the unaware Elijah to cross the bridge and get mauled by the rockmites, as her mourning over him would be raven’s price over the potion. Theresa is unable to choose between saving either the young girl or letting the old hero to die, and Elijah crosses the bridge by himself. Theresa is only able to scream that he was indeed a great hero before he the creatures swarm upon him tearing his flesh apart as he shouts that sacrificing himself was the right choice.

Elijah stumbles off the bridge and falls to the abyss below dragging the rockmites with him. Suddenly the stone door opens, and Theresa chooses to believe that some of Elijah’s blood fell on the runes which opened the path, proving that in his final moment he was indeed a hero. As Theresa exits the cave, she hears Raven’s laughter which sounds like a bird’s caw.

Theresa then, after curing Anne and being unable to inform about Elijah’s sacrifice, parts to face her own destiny.

External Links[]

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