Title: thrown afar
Fandom: Magic Knight Rayearth
Rating: Teen maybe??
Length: 1000 words
Content notes: Canon-typical implications of self-sacrifice
Author notes: This is nonsense high fantasy au rewrite snippet. I don't even know! Uh, Clef, and also Umi. Also I've thrown Clef in gaol again becuase I guess why not.
Summary: He hadn’t, precisely, meant to end up here.


oOo

The stone walls stood tall and impenetrable around Clef, cold and just slightly damp. It was the damp and the chill that made this place seem real, more than the sight of the bars on the door or the roughly carved marks about the room which drained the power right out of any spell he attempted.

He hadn’t, precisely, meant to end up here.

(Well, a gaol was one place he’d precisely meant to avoid, but in the more general sense-)

His Liege had sent him away, when she’d turned in desperation to a covenant with her land to protect it. An old, old bond, one that had to be written in blood – hers. He’d protested, and there was a lot of protesting you could do, it turned out, when you were the master mage of that land.

But none that could help when your Princess walked in and overruled you, quite literally.

Set on her purpose, she was far stronger than he was, and he’d known it; he’d dropped to his knees, begging her to reconsider, to try to find another way to save Cephiro from the droughts and the storms and the failing harvests, from the neighbouring lands watching with a covetous eye as their people weakened.

Emeraude had rested her hand on his cheek and leaned in to press a kiss to his forehead, even as the tears had started to fall, as power had built about them. “Be free,” she’d said, and he’d felt his tie to her – his vows of fealty – snapping apart. Then, simply, “Go.”

And so he’d gone, flung from Cephiro by her power, tossed through nothingness until he crashed back into being on some far-flung land, dropped on the side of a mountain with the tears still running down his face.

It had taken a month to work out even vaguely where he was. She’d sent him far enough that he didn’t recognise the language used here at all, but this land had mages, too, and the disturbance of his unceremonious crashing into their world had, reasonably, alarmed them. He’d lost track of the number of times the moon had grown and diminished again as he tried to hide from them, to learn how to communicate here, to find out where here was with every intent of leaving it.

He'd been caught, three days ago, by an armed group sent out by the ruler of this… province, he thought the word probably translated to, who had tracked down all the rumours of his passing and found him at the end of them, hiding in a very wet woodland attempting to get a fire to light. Even his magic hadn’t got it to start, sharp sparks of lightning still unable to get the saturated wood to catch.

That was how he’d been found, he thought. When the group of riders crashed through the woods, the young woman in the lead had been looking straight at him, and her power had shivered through the rain to brush against his.

The first day here, he’d been so glad to be out of the rain that he’d not even minded the cell. The second, the fact that it was impossible to get completely dry started to get to him.

Still, he was very obviously a trained mage from another land, creeping about like a spy. He was wearily aware that he wasn’t likely to be released from here, even as every heartbeat in him thundered that he needed to get back, to save Emeraude, to-

A brighter light came along the corridor, steadier than the flickering of the torches that stood out of sight of the cell door, and the sharpness against eyes that hadn’t seen daylight for days made it impossible to see as the lock on the door rattled, and it creaked open.

Someone asked a nervous question that he couldn’t hear well enough to try to understand, and in return got a short sharp order – and Clef hadn’t heard her say much, but even in here with the dampening of the cell about them, he knew the touch of that magic.

As his eyes cleared, he looked up into the face of the young woman who had led the group to capture him. They were alone, the magelight held in her hand and the door shut behind her, but he doubted the guard had gone far.

“Hello,” he tried, knowing his pronunciation was atrocious, but he might as well attempt to be polite. Slightly polite. (He didn’t try to stand up; he wasn’t sure he would manage it, and falling in her direction would probably be taken as a challenge.

She didn’t. “Why are you here?” she demanded, hand raised in a short gesture on ‘here’ which seemed to indicate everything around them – the land, not the cell. “What are your-“

He didn’t understand the rest of what she said, but he was pretty certain he understood what she meant. “I did not mean to be here,” he said, spreading open hands to his sides. I was… thrown. By my ruler.”

Eyes narrowing, she stared at him, and the sense of her power in the air pressed in on him. His own lit up in response, in a way he’d never known, pressing unsettled against his skin. “Why?” she asked, again.

“We argued. She-“ he bit his lip, frustrated. He had no idea how to say this – it wasn’t the kind of thing you picked up sneaking into village markets to attempt to barter for a blanket and some food! “We argued,” he said, again, to the floor.

She stepped closer, and reached out, and pressed a hand to Clef’s forehead.

All in a moment, a cascade of power flickered between the two of them – impressions, knowledge, carried on the wave and needing no translation, not beyond that which lay between the snap of their magic. Clef rocked back against the wall, gasping for air, as she stumbled back a step, shaking her hand – and after a moment, she turned and left.

He barely noticed the noise in the hallway that probably called her away, too busy sorting through her suspicions, and the glimpses of the court upstairs, and by the time he could breath evenly again he was back alone in the dark... but he knew her name, now.

Ryuuzaki Umi.