to learn the things that are, and comprehend their nature [attn.: jamie]

[kai]

Since the moment he woke to drive to the mountain, Hawksley has been depleting his will for the sake of the ritual. He focuses on the work, on the sleep deprivation, on the weariness itself. He focuses on the sky that he is climbing to and the summit he knows he will reach, and how it will never be close enough,

it is never close enough.

Within that circle, he is not seen wearing himself out. He is seen standing, looking very, very far out into the horizon. The people who pass him ignore him, because he would not be the first hippie to climb a mountain to commune with the sky and he won't be the last. Hell: that's why <i>they're</i> here, in a way. They cannot know that he is only dimly aware of their presence, for his own consciousness is flinging him towards the Four Season, to the near-comatose girl there and faintly pulsing colors of magic in her bloodstream. Hawksley's head jerks and dismisses the vision, flicking over other areas in the city.

SeraJimSid, not their faces or their actions but their magic, their resonance, and the resonance of the magic in their possession in the form of those vials of blue powder. He dismisses that vision as well, because he knows. Hawksley goes farther, feeling the earth at his feet pulling at him like a tether to a post, keeping him from true flight. He finds another set, roaming near each other but not with each other, and he cannot pick out names or faces but by god he can feel the chaos those people's minds have been thrown into by the stuff. Hawksley will remember that, but he is still looking.

There is a hint of it at his periphery. Bodily, his eyes strain and burn and water. Spiritually, he pulls back, unable to push any farther and retain enough energy to find his true quarry. That is when Hawksley truly, truly lets himself go. That is when, though he stands still in the center of his circle, he breaks into a sweat that does not come from the exertion of climbing or the heat of the sun. That is when his heart really starts to pound again.

Hawksley fucking loves this part.

--

A cry goes up in his heart, triumphant and blending lightning and thunder both, the shriek of a raptor, the roar of something ancient,

when he finds the fucker. Hawksley-the-body flashes a vicious, toothy grin at nothingness, at midair, his feet turning him ninety degrees clockwise. His eyes become like that of an eagle, and despite the brightness of the sun he's over fourteen thousand feet closer to now, his pupils are blown wide and black. The colors come first, and just as the users and holders of the drug appeared with mottled blue and violet and green in their veins, he now sees green and red pulsing together in the ether, outlining the hint of a human form only, the idea of one, and Hawksley watches for a long time until he understands.

He spins around again til he faces west. He reaches out again for something old, something new, something purchased, something very, very blue. He hones in on those flickers again, those ones he reached for but could not... quite... grasp.

Hawksley decides he will grasp them now.

And he does.

--

The release of magic leaves him shaking inside, if not outside. His viscera is lit up, quivering, and he feels momentarily hollowed out. It is not an altogether unpleasant sensation, and it is certainly not unfamiliar. Hawksley lets himself drop to a crouch, and the first thing he does is scoop a bit of blue-stained earth back into a vial. The powder, now mixed with dirt and sand and grit, is essentially worthless as a drug, but he retains it. Its worth as a focus is far from depleted.

The eye and the pentacle are kicked to nothing. The stone barrows are undone, and the colored rocks of the four corners replaced in his pack. Hawksley feels the soreness creeping up, and the sleep deprivation, but he still has to climb down. Somehow, he always finds that harder.

But he needs to climb down. He has calls to make, and the reception up here sucks balls.