Anders blinked as he noticed Hawke and a small cadre of her friends storm into his clinic at the very peak of dawn. It was early enough that he was still rubbing the sleep out of his eyes, though the moment he saw the boy that she was carrying, that weariness left him in an instant, and he was leading Hawke towards one of the open cots that he used to examine his patients on.

"Hawke!" He shouted, taking the boy from her arms and laying him onto the table, not taking his eyes off him as spoke. "What happened?!"

"I don't know," the woman replied. Her voice, while usually calm and steady, was laced with barely-hid anxiety, clearly aimed at the boy's well being. "We were… We were down by the docks last night, clearing out some of the thugs that often prowl down there. We were fighting a rather large group of them, and when Varric shot the last one down, and we thought we were safe, he just appeared."

Anders moved his scanning eyes away from the boy for the briefest of moments to look up at the dark-haired woman. "He just… Appeared?"

Hawke nodded, her green eyes serious. "There was a flash of light, then the smell of lightning, and he was just there, on the ground, screaming. He fell unconscious after a few moments, but he was writhing on the ground. I tried to give him some sort of potion, at least to help with the pain, but he kept throwing it up. I wasn't really sure where else to take him."

Anders looked back down at the boy, his eyes scanning for any sort of obvious injury. He said nothing to Hawke as he continued to look, making note of details as he went.

He was barely an adult, Anders realised, having the features and physique of youth that had mislabeled him as a boy. He couldn't have been many more winters than Bethany. And he had dark hair, as well, with a strong jaw, but cheeks that almost looked a bit too baby-ish. He lifted the now identified young man's eye lid to see a dilated violet eye that moved erratically, as though he was still in great pain. He then moved down to the young man's mouth, and tried to open his jaw to look for signs of illness, but found that his jaw was clamped shut. The trickle of blood from out of the corner of his mouth showed that the boy had bitten his tongue off, most likely.

Anders then noticed something about the young man's neck he hadn't before. from the underside of his jaw, all the way down to the hollow of his throat, there were trails and wisps of faint blue lines. There were enough of them in such a distinct pattern that Anders couldn't help but liken them to the veins in his throat.

He examined for a moment more, ignoring the growing moans of pain from the lad with a practiced clinical detachment, and saw that they weren't like veins. They actually were the veins.

They were faint enough that their coloring could only be a product of some sort of discoloration through the skin. Anders examined the young man further, and found that he had the same markings on his palms and backs of his hands that lead halfway up his forearm, and another set that started at his ankles and traveled up to the midpoint of his calf.

Anders leaned back and away from the young man, thought etched into his brow. The lad didn't have any apparent signs of sickness, and aside from the oddities that were the blue veins across his skin, he seemed like a perfectly healthy young adult. There seemed to be no reason why he would be incapacitated by pain in such a way. That lead to the conclusion that what was wrong with him was either internal, or was caused by the markings on his skin. One way or the other, there was a way to find out the problem where his eyes failed him.

As Anders brought the magic in his blood forward, he heard Aveline speak up from where she had previously stood quietly behind and a little to the side of Hawke. "What's wrong with him, then?"

Anders, his eyes closed in concentration, only responded in an absentminded mutter. "I don't know. I need to… Look a bit deeper."

"You mean with magic," the guardswoman said.

"With magic," were the only words Anders gave in response, then placed his softly glowing hands on the lads chest, the spell he had specifically designed to identify illness coursing through his palms and into the young man.

Magic, when one gets down to it, is a very calculable thing. Most people never truly stop to consider this, but magic, in its own sense, was much like physics in the sense that there are constants, variables, and units of measurements to define those constants and variables. There were no universal names for these things, and every mage felt it and calculated it and measured it in different ways, but at the end of the day, one practitioner of magic could use their talent and arcane senses to be able to, at the very least, get a feel for the magic, and many more things besides, around them.

People used this truth about magic in a variety of different ways. Combat mages, for example, develop their skill at being able to identify the drawing of magic from the air when an opponent mage begins to cast a spell, the equivalent of a beast being able to feel the disturbance of the air as another beast breaths in. They can feel the energy from in the world that is being called forth, and can then properly identify how much energy that they themselves might need to counteract the spell being cast at them, even if they can't outright identify the spell itself.

Someone with a similar disposition as Anders might be able to use his talent to identify the sensation of diseases that might ravage a person's body. Another with a completely different disposition, yet still similar to Anders', would be able to identify the gentle hum in a child's blood that belays a magical talent that has yet to bud and make itself known. He had done such things before, mostly on children that found themselves in his clinic, and had even designed the spell that he used to find disease to also search for latent talent, if only to save him time and stop him from having to lie to people when they asked why he performed another spell on a patient. Depending on how you view it, after all, disease and magic can have a similar effect on a person and their family, if handled without knowing it is there.

And when Anders had released the spell he had used so many times before, he felt what was essentially a cow kicking him square in the head.

He staggered back a step, one of his hands going up to his head to fruitlessly grip at the massive ache that had quickly formed there. The connection between him and the young man cut itself off, and the feedback that was savagely tearing through his head receded.

"Woah, Blondie," said a familiar, almost jovial voice said as a broad, gloved hand pressed against the area of his floating ribs to help keep him balanced. "You okay there?"

Anders blinked for a moment, trying his damnedest to simply will the headache away. When that failed, he simply gave up, then gently pushed the supporting hand away from him, looking down to his dwarven friend. "I'm alright, Varric. I just…" He shook his head. "I think I know what's wrong with him."

"Oh?" Hawke asked. "What's wrong, then?"

Anders considered for a moment, then was forced into expediency by the sound of the young man groaning in pain once more. "It's magic," he said simply. "Mages generate the magic they use for spells themselves. But if that well of mana goes untapped for too long, the magic can start to overflow, and cause pain to the mage." He gestured at the writhing form on the cot. "From what I can gather, the young man has a very large pool of mana to draw from, and has likely not used it in years. He needs to get some of it out to relieve the tension in him."

Anders took a step back to where he had originally stood over the lad, while the others that had gathered said nothing, save for Fenris, who muttered once more about his bitterness for mages. But the only response he got was a glare from Aveline, who clearly was not okay to let the ex-slave complain about an injured youth. Fenris just shook his head and headed to wait outside the clinic, though he would no doubt have an ear open to listen for noise that might cue him to start chopping heads off.

As he left, Hawke asked, "Then what do we do?"

Anders shook his head. "There is very little we can do." He jerked his chin at the pain-stricken young man. "It falls to him to expel the magic from his body. All we can do is wake him up and tell him what he needs to do. Then we have to hope he hears us, or else this might kill him."

Hawke stepped up to the opposite side of the cot, placing her hand on the hair of the lad. "Can you wake him, then?"

Anders nodded, and started to gather the power into his hands. "I can."

"Then do it. I'll talk to him."

Anders placed his glowing palms back onto the young man's chest.

OhdeargodthepainpleasemakeitstopIcan'tIcan'tpleaseletitenditneedstostopIcan'tthinkorfeelpleasesomeonejustletite-

"-an you hear me?"

Thepainallifeelisthepainitwon'tstopIjustwantittosto- Goose?

"Hello? C- ear me? I need y- o my voice."

Not Goose, voice is lower, just as calm. Something to focus on, need to try, block the pain.

"There- ic build up in y- have to let it ou- an you feel it?"

Can barely hear, just feel the pain- ohgodthepainpleasemakeitendjustletitstop-

"You can- t in your chest, ri- ouch it, and let it out."

Ican'tfeelanythingelsejustletite- Chest, feel it there, beyond the pain, pulse after pulse, eager for air. Touch it, let it out, like she said, let it out.

…

…

The simple lack of pain itself was practically euphoric. And blissful sleep awaited me.