Title: Sounding out the way
Rating: G
Length: 1185 words
Content notes: None
Author notes: Post-canon, technically in the weight of water verse I have but as bits of the world-building for that get into half my other post-manga fic, it’s not even exclusive to that ‘verse XD. (And thanks to my wife for typing this in for me~ <3!)
Summary: The bell in the Council-chamber of the reformed-Cephiro was not precisely Clef’s idea, for all that he was the one who created the room.

oOo

The bell in the Council-chamber of the reformed-Cephiro was not precisely Clef’s idea, for all that he was the one who created the room. He’d seen pictures of a couple of the historical versions, from back when the Pillar dealt with the existence of Cephiro, but the governance was delegated to the Council, he tried creating something that felt the same.

(Sometimes, some days, Clef wondered if he could have argued Emeraude into reinstating that. If, by doing so, he could have kept her from despair. But they’d had no idea how the split-system worked - still didn’t, even though they were attempting to run with it - and she rebuffed every quiet hint he’d made in the direction.)

Of course, he was also expanding it to take about three times as many people. He opened his eyes part-way through and realised he’d added in the banked seats of the assembly room from the Hall the Guru before his predecessor had lived in, where she’d given lectures and hosted others doing the same for student mages - the closest thing to the Academy Clef had begun planning that he’d ever heard of.

The benches looked well enough, so he let them be. Everything else looked about right - the light well down the centre of the castle ended on the translucent window in the centre of the ceiling, flooding the place in light (and continuing to the room below through the smokey white crystal of the floor. But that room was off-limits and no one else needed to know it sat at the base of this place: he checked carefully that the floor looked like any other fancy floor).

Stepping back and looking around, the spell still hanging open in his hands, there was something… missing. The air at the centre of the room seemed empty.

There had been nothing there in any of the illustrations and yet his attention was drawn back, again and again, to that gap. Frowning, he closed his eyes - what would even go there? The clear space was for petitioners to come forward. If he filled it in, where would they go? But higher up…

From nowhere, he had the image of a great bell hanging there. ‘Oh!’ he thought - and all in a rush the bell was hanging there before him and the creation spell closed up neatly and finished itself off, without him actually deciding to do so, leaving a bell larger than him hanging with its rim at shoulder height for the average adult (and well above Clef’s head-height).

It didn’t feel so much as though he’d created the bell as that it had just… moved into place? But he’d never seen it before. Or… no. Moving closer, he had seen it; another historical illustration he barely remembered, a sketch showing the old-fashioned coiling, crossing design chased about the deep silver base.

Clef stared at it, and it - didn’t stare back, because it was a bell. He and the rest of Cephiro were tied closer than ever before - if enough other people remembered this bell, that could probably have been enough to influence him.

…At least, that was the least creepy explanation he could think of, so he was sticking to it.

oOo

The bell didn’t cause too much comment in the first few meetings - enough people seemed to recognise it that Clef’s theory seemed to hold some weight. He’d heard the Clerks calling ‘The Law Bell’ to each other, and it echoed the ringing of the main Castle bell when it sounded the hours or meal times.

That was, no one commented much until the day they passed the first alteration to the laws of Cephiro - and the bell rang. By itself, with no encouragement or contact, it sang out a deeper, stronger tone, one which reverberated through the room and all the way down through Clef’s bones.

The whole room stared at it as they sound faded to a startled hush.

“...You could have warned us it was going to do that,” the head of the Judges snapped. Teru Atenza did not like surprises at the best of times.

Clef eyed the bell. “If I’d known it was going to, I would have,” he muttered. But it stayed innocuously quiet for the rest of the meeting. He waited, at the end, until everyone else had gone - everyone except Presea, who barely waited for the door to shut before bouncing out of her seat and across to it.

Walking slowly across, Clef felt the air get a little heavier as she held out her hands to the metal and hummed slowly under her breath.

“I didn’t realise it’s made of Escudo!” Presea said, sounding both enthusiastic and slightly awed.

“It is?” Clef said, blankly. He probably shouldn’t have been surprised.

“I thought you’d made a replica, but this is the original Law Bell, isn’t it?” Oh, wow, it is -” Presea’s voice started to reverberate as she ducked to stand with her head inside the bell. “Look at this.” She summoned a light and pointed to a band about the inside of the rim which Clef hadn’t even noticed before.

It was inscribed, in a form of Cephiran script old enough Clef could just barely read it. “I… be…” he began.

“I Am The Law,” Presea quoted, declaimed, and turned a third of the way around. “I Am The Truth.” She turned again, and this time Clef couldn’t see the inscription; it was directly over his head. “I Am The Heart. I was told those words when I was appointed Faaru - they aren’t written in any description.” Indeed, as the air lightened with the end of Presea’s examination, the inscription faded out of sight.

“...Escudo,” Clef muttered, glaring at it.

“But you know what this means?” Presea beamed at him. “If this wasn’t a good path for Cephiro, the bell wouldn’t be here - and it certainly wouldn’t ring! It rings for the law, and the truth.”

“...And the heart?”

The grin turned into a grimace at that. “Oh, we’ve no idea what that actually means. Faaru Kadjar had a couple of theories, but only when he was drunk. ...Or maybe it’s all the same thing. The law is the truth of the heart of Cephiro, or something.” She shrugged. “I’m still glad it’s here.”

Sighing, Clef stepped back to let her duck out from under it. “Well, is it going to do anything else unexpected?”

“No idea!” Presea told him, cheerfully. “It’s not been seen for about seven thousand years. We’ll have to wait and see.”

“Teru Atenza’s going to love hearing that,” Clef said aloud, without thinking, and Presea smothered a laugh with one hand.

But the weight of it, the heavy presence… it was settling, for all it had come uninvited. They were going in the right direction. It would probably make it know if they strayed - and with loud enough voice they wouldn’t be able to ignore it.

oOo