He feels it the second the withdrawal sets in.

It's an ache, a dehydrated hunger in his brain, though he wouldn't have thought himself capable of noticing one more discomfort at this point. His knees—where are his knees?—his arms, his stomach, all laid bare to the elements. Magefire elements, summoned elements, unnatural and painful to the point that he can't remember why he'd ever thought snow beautiful, fire comforting, lightning majestic.

They'd taken his knees, maybe; they'd taken his knees like they'd taken his confidence, taken his lyrium. Lyrium. Thinking of it before hadn't hurt, but now, now that it's gone, he feels its lack throughout his entire body, in the knees that are too painful even to think about.

Had he expected this when he was a dreaming orphan at the Chantry? He'd watched the templars train sometimes, longing to be part of their order when he grew up, but could he ever have anticipated this agony? He never would have thought that being a templar involved experiencing the horrors of magic so intimately. He never could have realized how much lyrium they were given. No, maybe he could have. He'd gone exploring in the storerooms of the Chantry one day and found rows and rows of processed lyrium, all lined up and ready for templars.

No, no, that wasn't true, he realizes now. His Chantry was small, too small to have such a large supply of lyrium in its vault, and he'd been a good boy, never given to wandering. But no, he must have found it, because bottles and bottles of lyrium were in his hands, and he must have laughed, to have so much and not know what to do with it. So he must have opened all the bottles, opened all the bottles of glorious lyrium, and he must have tried to drink them all down, because he can see the bottle in his hand, almost taste the lyrium—

He isn't drinking.

The cap is off, the bottle in his hands, his mouth open, but he isn't drinking. The liquid is flowing out the bottle, but somehow it isn't reaching his mouth, and before he can wonder why not, his throat is on fire.

They're awake. Maker take their souls.

"Did our pet have a nice nap?" the oldest of the three says to him when he cracks his eyes open, fire crackling at the edges of her withered fingers. "It does learn quickly that whiny templar screams are more grating than pleasing to the ears, doesn't it, girls?"

He does learn quickly, that's true. His commander had always said-

"It's going back to sleep again," another one jeers, and his eyes snap open immediately. "They didn't let us oversleep at the Circle, you know. Why should we extend that privilege to you? Get up!"

Another roar of flame assaults him, and he instinctively moves to get away, forcing his strained arms to support his shaking body as he tries crabwalking away from the blast. His aching muscles aren't up to the job—they haven't been in a long time—and he finally collapses only a few feet away from the fire. His toes scream in agony, and he silences his own shriek only by biting his lips to bleeding shreds.

"They're barely second-degree burns. Our pet is quite a baby!" He blinks through the sweat, trying to see who's spoken, but his feet hurt too much for him to see their faces. All he can make out is that the fourth looks like his mother, if he knew what his mother looked like, which of course he doesn't. But Maker, it's his mother, and she's gliding over to him with a smile too big and her arms spread wide, and all he wants to do is throw himself into that embrace and to let her take him away from here.

He doesn't. He slumps on the floor with his muscles screaming and his breath labored, watching her make her way towards him.

"I missed you," she says, smiling too big again, and he believes her. "I'm so proud of the man you've become." He's always hoped she would be, if she could see him now, and her words numb the pain for a moment. "Let me into your life again, son. I miss you," she repeats.

She's a demon. His templar abilities tell him so, but he ignores them. She's a demon, not his mother, and she's reaching towards him with a beckoning hand and a bottle of lyrium, daring him, asking him to give in to her evil, Makerforsaken temptations.

But Eliza never had devilish desires, and that's who he realizes is standing in front of him now. Eliza, the object of his adolescent dreams, raised in the Chantry like he was, so how can she be a demon? Eliza had never paid him any mind, probably never thought he had anything other than familial affections for her, but now—praise the Maker—now, finally, she seems to have realized that she's always loved him, too, the way she's smiling too big again, too flirtatiously.

"You can have anything you want from me, darling boy," she says, reaching towards him again. "You can have anything at all, as much lyrium as you could possibly want."

He thinks he shouts demon begone, as he's been trained to do, but no, he can't have done so, because shouting doesn't involve ice suddenly wrapping itself around his neck like a vice.

"It's so annoying how he does that," one of the mages complains, cracking the ice with a flick of a magical hand. He'd hate how they toy with him if hating didn't require so much energy. He's shaking, shaking, and he's not sure if it's from the ice around his throat or from his experience or from he needs lyrium.

They laugh, and he dully tilts his head up. The youngest, the blonde, he recognizes. He'd been present at her Harrowing.

"What's wrong, pet?" she sneers. "Can't get over old voyeuristic habits?" They seem to have exhausted their magic supply for now, which is a brief blessing, because otherwise he's sure she would have made his blood boil for daring to glance up. As it is, she only walks over and backhands him, the force of her blow smashing his teeth into his sallow cheek. Amused, she joins her laughing fellows and they sit down to eat. He cups the melting ice in his trembling fingers and drinks it up quickly before they notice and decide he doesn't need two days of water in a row.

Perhaps the other templars had spent their time both lusting after and despising their magical charges, but all he'd ever felt about magic was fear. He'd attended a Harrowing during his first month as a templar, and unfortunately for him and a fellow templar, his best friend from the orphanage, it was a Harrowing gone wrong. The possessed mage turned into a demon so large it seemed to fill the chamber, and his poor friend had only managed to land one hit before the thing scooped him up and slid its talons through his armor and his muscles and bones like butter. The demon had finally been felled, but he'll never be able to forget the way his best friend looked without a face.

Even after that, he'd never hated mages, only pitied them for the terror they must have felt. He knew he'd be afraid if he had power like that. None of the other templars ever shared his feelings, so he always felt alone, knowing that he was part of the Order but disconnected since his best friend died. But templars are all united by lyrium; they're united by their love of it, but today the shipment is late. The Knight Commander doesn't know what has happened to the shipment, but suddenly he has a bottle of lyrium in his right hand, so why won't he give it over?

"Stop babbling about lyrium, you pathetic templar," the Knight Commander spits at him, and only now he realizes that it's the blonde in front of him, not a savior. The other two have joined her, and they circle around him with awful smiles, each holding a bottle of lyrium.

The blonde drops her bottle first, then the other two. A waste, but they don't need it for any other reason other than to taunt him. They're maleficarum, they don't need to replenish their magic with accursed, beautiful lyrium, and as they sweep up the sweet poison with magic, for the first time in his life, all he wants to do is kill a mage.

He and his commander were out hunting apostates with a small squadron of templars, and they'd stumbled onto a young blonde mage in the woods outside of Amaranthine. She'd begged them to spare her, saying she wasn't maleficar, and he'd recognized her from her Harrowing.

"You know what to do," the commander told everyone, but no, he couldn't kill her: she said she was innocent. His brothers in arms were already closing in on her, and in the ensuing melee he fled like a coward, tearing through the trees, caution thrown to the winds.

Two other mages were waiting for him in a clearing. "You're the one hunting us," they accused him before they leapt upon him, and he was so unprepared and frightened that he was easy prey. The blonde eventually came back, his commander's head impaled on the end of her staff, his eyes glazed over and his tongue lolling out of his mouth, dead lips blue as lyrium.

He doesn't know where they are, only that it's dark and painful everywhere, and that sometimes Eliza comes to visit him like she is doing now. She's wearing a dress the color of lyrium, and this time he can't tell if she's a demon or not. If she isn't, if she is a hallucination, then maybe it would be all right if he gave in, just surrendered, but if she is a demon, then he'd be betraying his order.

The templars aren't that bad, really. He loves the Maker, he loved his Knight Commander, and he loved watching the fresh-faced apprentices learn and master their gift. He was so happy, so fulfilled, until the events in Kirkwall shattered everything, and until Eliza's slipping out of her dress telling him she wants him, and until he realizes she's a demon after all and sends her away.

The mages are angry this time, not cruelly amused as they had been before. They are all assaulting him at once, and as he screams, he thinks he sees the face of the Maker. But no, that was only pain, only stars exploding in front of his eyes, only white-hot lightning searing his face with a sharp, burning touch.

It was only pain, only pain, just pain, and he realizes his need for lyrium isn't so bad anymore. No, no, that's wrong, he needs it, he needs it so badly, maybe he'd be saved if he just had some lyrium. He isn't even bleeding, just hurting, and his blood is boiling inside him, fighting to burst out of his veins. He can't speak, much less scream, much less breathe, much less drink lyrium, and it's too much, far too much, but the hurt never stops, never ever ever-

He finally collapses. His tremors have tremors. His body cries out for a hundred different remedies. He tries to move and can't, sliding to the floor again, his blood twitching beneath his battered skin.

The mages don't let him, of course. They force him to rise, and if it wasn't for the blood magic controlling his body, he'd be too tired to even hear the command. They make him dance for him, why he doesn't know, and then they tell him to grovel at their knees and beg for respite.

"Cry," they order him, and of course he does, small trickles of wasted water that are probably blue like lyrium. He wants to collapse again, but knows they won't permit him. They force him to kneel, burned head bent back and shaking, bruised arms held up and pleading. It hurts to resist, but it hurts more not to.

The old one cups his face with a too-tight hand and talons sinking into his chin. "Now do you realize you shouldn't have mocked us?" she rasps, spittle flying into his eyes. "Now do you realize you should have feared us?"

He never did. He always had.

"Nod," she tells him. His muscles are too weak to fight against her vicelike grip. "Nod!" she shouts again, slapping him with a palm sizzling with lightning.

His fear of pain overrides his fear of death, need for lyrium, need for food, desire for death.

Maker damn him, he nods.

AN: Concrit greatly, greatly appreciated! I thrive on it.