DISCLAIMER: This chapter contains references and images of rape. Reader discretion advised.

Why was I one of the chosen ones?
Until the fight I could not see
The magic and the strength of my power
It was beyond my wildest dreams

"People have described broodmothers to me, but words don't do them justice." Anders shuddered with the memory as he followed the Warden-Commander into her office within the Keep, still rubbing at his hands to try and get the lingering bit of dried darkspawn blood off them from their trip to Kal'Hirol. "I'm still scared. Hold me?" Hekate didn't say anything in reply, which bothered him more than the memory of the swollen, deformed body of the dwarven woman (after all, those were the first naked breasts he'd seen since joining the Wardens); she'd never been one not to laugh at his jokes, or come up with a her own witty repartee in response to bait others hadn't even realized they were providing.

Instead, the young mage sat down behind her desk, forgoing both food and bath as she stared out the window in the direction of the setting sun, her face empty of all emotion, all the radiant humour he associated with his oldest friend. "First day, they come and catch everyone. Second day, they beat us and eat some for meat. Third day, the men are all gnawed on again. Fourth day, we wait and fear for our fate. Fifth day, they return and it's another girl's turn. Sixth day, her screams we hear in our dreams. Seventh day, she grew as in her mouth they spew. Eighth day, we hated as she is violated. Ninth day, she grins and devours her kin. Now she does feast, as she's become the beast." Whispered under her breath, the poem sent a cold chill up his spine. He had no idea where she got them from, but they echoed in his head like a funeral dirge, drawing him over to stand beside the other Grey Warden mage.

"What was that?"

"When we were in the Deep Roads, seeking aid from Orzamar during the Blight, Alistair, Oghren and I came across a half-mad dwarven woman who had once been on of the Paragon Branka's lieutenants on her search for the Anvil of the Void. She told us how the broodmothers are created." Hekate stood up from the chair, pushing herself closer to the window so her face was completely bathed in the fading rays of sunlight. "Darkspawn take women, imprison them, torture them, corrupt them and… violate them, until they become something more than ghouls, but still much less than what they were. Finally, they feed their dead to these poor souls, and the result? More darkspawn. Ironic though; that may be the only way I can ever have children, since, according to Alistair, the taint makes it so hard for us to conceive."

"Hex…"

"Promise me something, Anders?" Turning around to look at him, she gave him one of her rare, serious-as-it-gets looks, violet eyes gleaming from within the shadows of her gore-streaked face. "If there ever comes a time when you're with a woman and the darkspawn try to take her - me, Sigrun, another Warden, anyone - swear, you'll kill me, or them, before there's even a chance of a new broodmother."

Pressing his clenched fist over his chest, he nodded. "I swear."

Her screams we hear in our dreams…

They had been hunting them for days now, the darkspawn, and the small party is exhausted from running, their number whittled down by wave after wave of the foul creatures breaking against them whenever a rest must be taken. Bartrand, Bodahn, Sandal, indeed all the dwarves but Varric were dead, all the guards but the two Ferelden refugees already carried off into the dank side passages by monsters. Depending on the small remnant of stone-sense still flowing in his blood, the merchant prince finds a small chamber with an easily sealed door, covering his companions as they flee into it, Carver and Fenris supporting a drained and blood-spattered Hawke between them.

"Safe a place as any for the night." the younger human asks, leaning his sister against the wall before helping the elf shove the heavy door closed with all the waning strength their exhausted muscles can provide. "Thought the Deep Roads were supposed to be almost empty after a Blight, Tethras."

"It is. Damn, I wish Blondie was here; he could have put those Grey Warden senses to use and told us where the blighted darkspawn were, so we weren't!"

Hawke's voice is soft, strained when she speaks; an obvious struggle just to open her mouth. She has overcast herself time and again healing the others or sending out bursts of fire and ice at their attackers, but now they are out of lyrium potions, and she doesn't have the strength to heal herself without sleep and food. "You know he wouldn't ever go into the Deep Roads again; he was adamant on that from the first."

"I have seen the way the abomination looks at you," Fenris replies with a slight sneer, obviously directed at the topic of conversation and not the mage before him, as he shakes a blanket out from his pack to lay on the ground for his own bed. "No doubt you could have influenced him to decide differently."

"Watch how you talk to my sister!" Carver snaps back, wrapping an arm around her as she totters slightly on her seat, then gently draws her down to rest a head on his lap.

Hawke's eyes are closed, but she is not quite asleep enough to fail to reply. "It wouldn't have done any good; he doesn't think of me like that."

Like a ghost, the emissary floats forward through the dank rot, his dark brothers falling back at the sight of arcane energy crackling around his long, skeleton-like fingers. Without one of the tainted among them, the group of warm-skins is harder to track than the Grey Wardens who are usually the only ones to venture this deep, but at the same time it has made them easier to kill, as they have no prior warning of their approach. But now the last of the warm-skins are trapped, fodder for the gift they have so thoughtfully brought into the darkspawns' domain. Were he capable of such a thing, the emissary would be smiling, though the warm bloods would no doubt be hard pressed to say how his normal facial expression differs all that much from a skeleton's full-toothed grin. Such creatures; truly, no place in the deep is safe from the taint after this many thousand years. Easily, the door is smashed and brought down, the hurlocks pouring through the opening into the room beyond. Caught unprepared, trapped, and sleeping, the warm-skins are easily overwhelmed, dwarf and elf slaughtered within seconds, man injured, but alive, woman unscathed; she is a prize indeed, the emissary realizes as she tries to form a fireball to throw at him with her depleted mana.

With a guttural growl, he flings himself at her, tearing her clothes with his claws while the grunts force her mouth open to vomit their tainted blood down her throat. She tries to pull away, to struggle, but the holds of the darkspawn are strong, their drive ancient and primal: the species must survive. Naked and smeared with grime, she is forced to the ground, crying out as a rotting, pulsating rod of flesh, hard and unyielding as the rock she lays on, is forced into her body. Grunting, the emissary sets a harsh pace, each thrust wrenching screams from her throat even as it tears at her young body, unused to the violence of such a mating. Blood stains her thighs, mixing with his corrupted seed as he releases it into her womb, stroking the tear-streaked face with his claws. "Mother," the word echoes in the chamber despite her sobs, carrying with it the truth that the next generation to seek out an Archdemon is already forming inside her body.

"Ebony!" her brother screams as the hurlocks push for their turns with her, but the cry is cut short as he is torn limb from limb, blood caught in bowls for her nourishment when she is heavy with young. By that time, she will not even care that she feasts on her own kin.

Soaked with sweat and breathing heavily, Anders bolts upright on his narrow, hard cot, threadbare blankets pooling around his waist as he jerks his gaze from side to side, making certain everything is as it was when he fell asleep, that he is still at home with the sound of waves breaking beyond the walls, not buried alive in the dank stench he remembers so well, with the warm skin of a bleeding woman trapped beneath his own cold, corrupted flesh. All is well within the dirty hovel he calls a clinic, but his heart refuses to slow its frenetic pace, the ice-cold sweat on his bare chest refusing to evaporate in the pre-dawn chill. Only a dream, only a dream, only a dream… Over and over he reminds himself this is reality, that the images seared into his mind are only the twisted illusions of the Fade. He is a man, not a darkspawn, and never would he allow harm to come to an innocent by his own hands. But such things are difficult to remember through the spikes of adrenaline shooting through his blood… or his painful arousal from the thought of Hawke spread open beneath him, an unwilling sacrifice to lust.

Over a month has passed since the night he nearly murdered her on the small beach under the harvest moon, over a month since he last set foot in the Hanged Man when there is any chance that Hawke may be there. Only necessary words pass between them now: her asking if he will come on her latest adventure, if he needs anything for the clinic, him saying that he is busy, that Lirene will get him anything he needs. He does not touch her, does not offer friendship or conversation when they happen to meet by chance, but when he is alone he still smells the scent of her hair, soft and floral, mixing with the salty tang of the cold night air off the ocean, still feels the light press of her body against his through the weight of his heavy coat. Why should he be surprised his dreams of being buried to the hilt in one of his many lovers from the Circle should now change to dreams of her, and beyond that, the taint in his blood and the knowledge she must soon leave for the Deep Roads adding the disgusting idea of himself as an emissary debauching Hawke while his fellow darkspawn await their own turns? But he knows the answer to that question as well.

It is not surprise that sets his blood humming with both anger and desire, it is the knowledge that his dream can be more than dream, may just be a vision of the future. Damn, I wish Blondie was here. Without him, none of Hawke's companions will know when the tainted creatures stalk them, know to, at best, protect her with all their strength until they reach the surface again or, at worst, kill her before nightmares become reality.

Promise me something, Anders? If there ever comes a time when you're with a woman and the darkspawn try to take her - me, Sigrun, another Warden, anyone - swear, you'll kill me, or them, before there's even a chance of a new broodmother.

I swear

There are times in the dark of night, when he aches for release, burns with a agony for the touch of a hand not his own, that he curses the fact he is no longer selfish enough to seek out a quick, mindless tumble with some faceless girl he will never think on again except to admire his own performance, but now, for once, he thanks the Maker for this new lack of selfishness, knowing that it is easier to blame Justice's presence in his soul forcing him to keep his oath than admit the truth. To admit that he will speak to Hawke in the light of day, ask her forgiveness for his mulishness and irascibility since they have met, not because he wishes to protect her out of any obligation to the cousin she has never met but sees in the mirror every day, but because the thought of her being touched by another creature stirs near enough anger to cause the spirit to surface.

Laying back down, he rolls to face the wall, hand slipping past the drawstring of his pants to stroke against the hardened length of his need. Squeezing his eyes closed, he sees her, not as she was in the dream, bloody and struggling to escape him, but flushed and clean, amethyst gaze fixed on him in love as she moves against him, welcoming his every movement, begging him to take her, to make her his. Faster and brighter the images come, matching the speed of his caressing hand, images of her arching against him, head thrown back with breathless pleasure in the heat of their shared passion. With a moan, he spills his seed into the palm of his hand, biting down on the dirty cover of his pillow to try to silence the name on his tongue, to keep it from passing his lips, but still it wrenches from him in that last moment of release when he will do anything for the visions in his head to be true.

"Ebony," he cries out between gritted teeth, the word sliding across the feather shafts he can taste in his mouth. "Oh, Maker, Ebony…"

As they took your soul away
The night turned into the day
Blinded by your rays of life
Give us the strength we needed

A/N: Standard "I don't own anything, including my own mind. I have no idea where this stuff comes from sometimes" disclaimer. Lyrics from "Dark Wings" by Within Temptation. Thanks to Amanda Kitswell for betaing this not once, but twice, as it took me over a month to write the monstrosity that is this chapter. And no, she didn't read the darkspawn rape scene twice. Once was enough. (I don't blame her, the nightmare I had which inspired this chapter will not be forgotten soon, either.)