A/N: Important moments or merely pointless filler? Choose for yourselves. It asked to be written and so I obliged. 'Nuff said. Slightly edited this time, but still raw works overall.

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Of Ghouls And Men

Meeting your first ghoul is always a shocker which the Warden-Commander could have told them but didn't. Anders and Nathaniel took it harder then each was willing to admit. Oghren was just happy there were no crazy ex-wives involved this time.

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"Anders, do you have a sleep spell?"

The elf's voice was quiet and Anders' face was grim; a rare expression and an even rarer display of seriousness on his part, but what they were looking at merited nothing but.

Clearing the cellar of the few remaining Darkspawn stragglers had been easy, especially after Howe joined the party and took the lead. As it turned out, the cellar was no longer in regular use and hand't been since quite a while. Still, Howe knew the passages well enough, remembering them from the time he and his siblings snuck down there to play despite being strictly forbidden from doing so. How did Anders manage to get that out of him remained a mystery, especially to Howe, though the mage's smug little smile that Oghren caught later on suggested there was more reason behind Anders' casual prodding then any one of them knew.

Vigil Keep was built on top of old Avvar ruins and the cellar was no exception. There were blocked-off corridors deeper below the storage chambers that eventually led them into the crypts. When they descended into the cellar early in the afternoon, they tought they'd merely check for possible Darkspawn that came in during the attack. But it was growing increasingly obvious that the Darkspawn didn't come in but rather out of the cellar.

What came in were actually people - those few servants and keep locals who fled down there seeking safety but finding none. All of them died at Darkspawn hands, os so the party tought until they reached a platform-like ledge behind the crypts overlooking a cavernous chamber below. Down in the darkness, hunched shapes moved about between the rocks and more scattered corpses on the floor. Half a dozen, perhaps more.

The elf creeped to the edge of the platform to get a better look at what was going on below, leaving Oghren behind to explain to Nathaniel what ghouls are. Anders already knew. The Taint was death, and an excruciating one at that. Most people were lucky, though, and succumbed to it in a matter of minutes, hours, perhaps a day. The shapes moving down below were the unlucky ones, and he understood immediatelly what the Commander was suggesting.

He nodded and moved closer to the ledge. "I could cover them all. But I'm out of range. I'd need to get closer."

"How close?"

Anders squinted into the gloom and pointed towards the steep climb to their right, a damp, narrow portrusion in the wall with patches of lichen and fungy splattered in irregular patterns. "At least to that larger stone over there. And honestly Commander, I don't think I can make it without taking a fast slide all the way down."

She considered the climb for a while. She could navigate it sure enough. Howe could, too, if she were any judge and she knew Oghren was far more sure-footed than one would think at a first glance. She looked back at Anders. "You'd better not. We'll have to go down there either way." She pulled back and motioned for Anders to follow. They rejoined Oghren and Nathaniel at the entrance to the crypts and the elf exchanged a knowing glance with the dwarf.

"Deep Roads, Commander. Right beyond that cave-in over there. Can feel the Darkspawn crawling about already."

The elf gave him a nod. Anders gave him a glare. "You can't be sensing them. Not from way over here." Still, he couldn't disregard the growing thrumming in the back of his skull. He tought it was just a headache from all this mold. And the explosion. More accurately, from the chunk of a wine casket Oghren flung into his face right after.

Nathaniel looked at each of them in turn, frowning. "I am not sensing anything."

"Oh, lucky you. Enjoy it while it lasts," Anders grumped.

"You can't, yet," the elf explained. "It takes a while to kick in, and you only Joined last night." She still wasn't happy about that.

Oghren grinned. "You don't need special Warden sense to tell you there's Darkspawn down there, boys. It's the Deep Roads! What do you expect's down there? Queen of Antiva having a bathrobe party?"

"Well, that would be a more pleasant reason to go down there. Even better if it's without the bathrobes."

"Hehe. You do have a point there, mage."

The elf chuckled but lost her mirth quick as it came in a show of seriousness not typical for her usual self. "Bathrobes or not, we're going down there. And if we really do find the Queen of Antiva, I'm buying drinks for all next tavern. But first," she motioned for Anders and Howe to follow. "Sorry Oghren - you're too loud."

Ogren made a show of huffing but remained behind. The three moved to the ledge again and the elf scanned the path downwards once more.

"I'll go scout ahead, see if I can spot any more further down. You take him when I give you the go."

Nathaniel looked at the trecherous footing and nodded. He was both larger and stronger than the elf; If Anders slipped, he could hold him or pull him back. Without any more words, the elf slid into the shadows and went off.

XXX

It was grim work, killing the ghouls. It was also mercy. Anders' spell managed to catch them all; by the time he and Howe reached the bottom of the cavern, Oghren trailing further behind, the elf had already begun picking them off. Crouch, stab, retract, up, crouch, stab, retract, blade slick with blood and finding hearts with swift precision. And no pain. Wordlessly, Nathaniel pulled out his own blade and joined the task. Anders lingered behind.

If asked, he would say he did not want to get his robes dirty. In truth, he simply couldn't do it. He leaned his back against the wall and tried not to look in that direction, doing his best to ignore the sickly sounds the blades made as they came sliding out of stilled chests. He never tought he'd welcome a headache, but the growing throbbing within his skull helped him ignore it better. Even Oghren made no comments when he finally made his way down, merely passed Anders by and went to the cave-in on the cave's other end.

With Anders not looking, Oghren inspecting the huge pile of collapsed stones and the elf presoccupied with her task, no one noticed when Nathaniel stopped in his. It wasn't until Anders went to join Oghren and the elf finished off the last ghoul she found that she spotted Nathaniel crouching over a prone form, dagger in hand but staying perfectly still.

At first, she made no sense of what she saw but then an eerily familiar feeling scraped at her entrails. Dammit! It's someone he knows. And she had no idea what to do. Offer to do it for him? Oh, but that would go down so well, wouldn't it? She already planted a blade into his father - he'd be bloody trilled to have her stab another one he knew. The spell would wear off soon; should she tell him to just do it? It would probably piss im off, but angry made this sort of thing easier to do. Well, it did for her - she had no clue about him. Shit.

In the end, she did nothing. He saw her watching him, raised his eyes, but there was nothing she could see in them at all. She stood there for another moment, uncertain, and when no grand epiphanies hit her broke off eye contact and walked away without a word.

She joined Oghren and Anders at the cave-in. Large boulders formed the base with other, slightly smaller stones piled up on top. There were several places where the space between the rocks was large enough for an average-sized person to push through and on the far end, an opening big enough for several.

"Must be how they came in," Oghren mused and tapped the rocks with his axe. "Right from the Deep Roads."

Anders looked at her with a "must we?" experession. She gave him a sympathetic shrug. "'Fraid so." She eyed the openings somewhat suspiciously. "Will it hold?"

Oghren nodded. "It'll hold. Eh... Where's the stoic?"

"Wrapping up. I'll go snoop ahead. Once we hit below, you take the lead."

Oghren barked out a laugh. "Sure thing, Commander. Last time we were in Deep Roads together I tought you'd lead us straight to Antiva."

Anders scrounged up his nose. "What is it with you and Antiva today?"

"Heh. It's not me you should be asking about Antiva, robes boy. It's the Commander. She knows all about Antiva. Kept us up all night with that assassin of hers… heh."

Anders' eyebrows rose, mouth quirked. "Really, Commander? "

The elf purred. "Oh, yes. You wouldn't believe the things Zev could do in bed…"

"Good you managed to stop long enough to kill the Archdemon," Oghren teased.

"Indeed," she grinned, and dissapeared through the crack.