The city of Piltover has a production line for brilliant minds, and it operates with a frightening efficiency. High-quality raw material, rich children with expensive tutors and unrestricted access to libraries, enters on one side of society's conveyor belt and comes out the other as a polished, ambitious, and almost always dangerously naive product. They specialise in several models of genius.
There's the Coggler, obsessed with mechanical purity, who would spend his entire life trying to build a clock that loses one less second per century. There's the aspiring Chem-Alchemist, who dreams of curing Zaun's ailments with miracle serums, but whose experiments invariably result in new kinds of explosive sludge or gases with hilariously tragic side effects. And then there's my favourite type, the most dangerous of all: the Idealist. The one who doesn't just want to build a better machine; he wants to build a better world. A world, of course, designed to his exact specifications.
The tragedy of the Idealist is that he invariably believes that humanity is a logical equation that can be solved with the right engineering. Give them the right tool, the right power source, the right philosophy, and utopianism will blossom. What millennia of observation have taught me is that humanity is not an equation; it is a fire in a firework shop. And giving it a new 'tool' is just handing it a flamethrower.
I was pondering this fundamental flaw in the design of human progress while scrubbing a particularly stubborn tea stain from my counter, when the bell on the door tinkled. With it, entered the very personification of my entire existential thesis.
It was Caitlyn Kiramman, yes, but this time her captive was not her charming and sensible father. She was practically towing a tall, gangly figure who moved with the grace of a freshly assembled scarecrow. He looked as though he had just lost a multi-day fight with an engineering project, and the project had won by a technical knockout.
There were dark circles under his eyes that looked like shadowed valleys, carved out by insomnia and caffeine. His hair was in a state of chaotic rebellion against gravity and common sense. And he had a grease smudge on his cheek that he probably considered a birthmark by this point. The crumpled uniform of the Piltovan Academy confirmed his identity. It was the Kirammans' famous protégé, the academic rumour in the flesh, Jayce Talis.
"Come on, Jayce! You promised!" Caitlyn's voice was a mixture of a younger sister's plea and a future commander's order. "Half an hour! The fresh air and sugar will reboot your brain."
"Fresh air?" his voice was hoarse from disuse, and his eyes didn't focus on her, but on my temperamental hextech kettle hissing on the counter. "Cait, this place smells of seventy different kinds of dried leaves in various stages of decomposition. And that kettle… its energy resonance is incredibly unstable. They could optimise the flow with a simple set of series-capacitors and…"
"No engineering analysis today," she cut him off, pulling him with surprising strength to an empty table in the corner. "Just tea and pastries. Express orders from your junior sponsor."
I watched the scene with the detached amusement of a zoologist observing a bizarre social ritual. He was a perfect specimen. So focused on his own equations that the world around him had become just a set of problems to be optimised.
[Profile analysis in progress… Subject: Jayce Talis. Classification: Idealistic Genius, Critical Overwork Stage. Hydration levels: 28% below ideal. Caffeine levels: 350% above recommended for mammals of his size. High potential to cause unintentional catastrophes. Probability of delivering a monologue on 'changing the world': 98.7%.]
Caitlyn ordered for him as if he were a child incapable of decisions, which, in a way, he was. A calming lavender tea and, for herself, a double portion of Veiled Lady's Madeleines. "He needs something to force him to relax," she informed me confidentially, as if prescribing a potent medicine.
"If relaxation is the goal," I muttered to myself as I prepared the order, "a sharp blow to the head would be quicker and more efficient."
While they waited, she tried, with the affection and patience of an exotic animal keeper, to pull him out of his work-fog.
"So… how is the research? Any progress that I, a complete layperson with a purely vested interest in ensuring you don't blow up our family's building, might understand?"
Jayce sighed, a sound that seemed to come from the depths of his weary soul. He picked up a madeleine, but instead of eating it, began to use it as a visual aid, gesturing in the air. "The problem is stabilisation, Cait. The energy from a natural crystal pulses, it's… irregular. Almost alive. My synthetic matrices are empty shells. I can initiate the arcane resonance, force the magic in, but the structure collapses within seconds. It's like trying to light a fire with wet wood. The spark is there, but the flame won't hold. The containment runes just can't take it."
He leaned forward, the frustration evident in his voice, now talking more to himself. "I've tried everything. I've tested the strongest containment patterns. I took the suppression runes used in the Freljord to imprison the fury of creatures made of ice and combined them with the harmonic glyphs the Ionians use to soothe the life-flows in their groves. The theory says one should suppress the volatility while the other balances the flow. In practice… in practice, I just get an even more spectacular explosion."
Caitlyn listened with an expression of sincere concentration, though I could tell she didn't understand a word. She was there for her friend, not for the science. An act of pure loyalty, one of the few human traits I still found vaguely admirable.
I, on the other hand, understood perfectly. And the simplicity of his mistake was so glaring, so fundamentally wrong, it was almost offensive. It was like listening to a world-renowned musician complain that his instrument made no sound, not realising he was blowing into the wrong end of a flute. I was clearing a nearby table, intending to ignore the conversation, but the loud stupidity of his genius was like a bell ringing incessantly in my head. My tolerance has its limits.
"You're treating magic like engineering," I said casually, without turning to face them. "That's why you're failing."
The silence that followed was heavy and delicious. I could feel them both staring at me, their little Piltovan minds trying to process the audacity.
"I beg your pardon?" Jayce's voice was tense, filled with the indignation of a high priest being corrected by a commoner. "That's exactly what it is. Hextech is the union of engineering and arcane theory. It is about control, precision."
Finally, I turned. I leaned on the back of a chair, my face a mask of pure existential boredom. "Precision? You just said you're using Freljordian suppression runes, designed to contain the raw fury of ice elementals, and trying to stitch them together with Ionian harmony glyphs, which are meant to balance life-flows. You aren't creating a circuit, you genius. You're staging a miniature civil war inside your crystal and then you're surprised when it self-destructs in protest."
Jayce gaped. The colour drained from his face. "How… how do you know that? Those are advanced runic theories. The synergy between different schools is the next step towards…"
"There is no synergy," I cut him off, approaching their table, unable to resist the urge to dissect his ignorance. "There is conflict. Arcane energy is not a stupid servant; it has… texture. Intent. You are ignoring the very nature of the force you're trying to tame." I picked up a glass of water from the table to illustrate. "You're not building a bridge; you are trying to convince a river to flow uphill. Energy doesn't want to be contained in a box; it wants to be guided. And your synthetic matrix is a harp with the wrong strings. The music is there, resonating throughout the universe, but you, as a non-mage, cannot hear the melody. So instead of tuning your instrument, you're trying to clamp the strings with iron braces, hoping that will force the song out."
To drive the final nail into the coffin of his academic arrogance, I took a napkin from the table and a pencil I always carry in my apron. "You use ten different runes to suppress, contain, and force," I said, scribbling rough, angular shapes that mimicked the patterns he likely used. "It's ugly. And loud." Then, with a fluid motion, I drew a single, complex, and elegant rune beside them, one of the first Morgana had taught me, a pattern of flow and acceptance.
"You only need one. One that asks the energy to stay, that offers it a harmonious path. This is not a barrier. It's a riverbed. This is not a cage. It is an invitation to the song. But to draw this, you need to understand the language. And clearly, you are illiterate."
He stared at the drawing, defeated. The air of superiority had disintegrated, replaced by raw astonishment. He, Jayce Talis, in all his brilliance, had been completely outmanoeuvred in his own field by… an eleven-year-old barista. The logic was undeniable, but the premise that he lacked a fundamental perception was a bitter pill to swallow.
It was the hopelessness on his face that led him to confess, to defend himself the only way he knew how: with his truth. "I have to make it work!" His voice was passionate, almost desperate. "I don't care if I can't 'feel' it like you. I saw what real magic is. It wasn't controlled, it wasn't precise. It was… a miracle. When I was a child, my mother and I were saved by a mage during a blizzard. His magic… it was pure, untamed, wondrous… and it saved us. If engineering is the only tool I have to try and recreate that miracle so that everyone can have it, then I will use it until my hands bleed!"
Ah, there it was. The noble, tragic origin story. The foundational trauma that fuels ambition. Every would-be messiah has one.
"Recreating a miracle," I said, my voice soft but sharp. "That reminds me of an old Targon ian legend my mentor Morgana likes to tell. About a foolish mortal who, fascinated by the light of the Sun Lady, managed to capture a single one of her rays in a glass jar. He brought it to his people, saying he had conquered the eternal day. They hailed him as a hero… until they realised the bottled sun burned far hotter than the original. His little stone village was reduced to a desert of molten glass. He hadn't brought the light; he'd brought annihilation disguised as a gift."
Jayce stared at me, his face pale. "That's a risk we must take for progress! For the potential for good it can create!"
"Potential doesn't pay for the funerals," I retorted. "You talk of giving power to the people. But 'the people' do not exist. What exists are individuals, some good, some very desperate, and an alarming number who are greedy. And you want to hand a bottled sunbeam to every single one of them, expecting they'll only use it to light candles? The only guaranteed thing about giving power to those who don't have it is that they will use it exactly as those who had it before: to ensure no one else can get it, or to take it from those who already have it. It's the one sick constant of this universe."
The tension at the table was so thick you could cut it with a cake knife. Caitlyn, seeing her attempt at a break had devolved into a full-blown existential crisis, finally intervened, her voice firm.
"Jayce, that's enough! We came here to eat pastries, not to solve the magical and philosophical problems of humanity. Apologise to the young lady and let's go."
Jayce mumbled an apology, but his eyes never left me. There was frustration there, but also a feverish glint of new ideas. I had not dissuaded him; I had, to my eternal dismay, inspired him with new, more dangerous questions.
As Caitlyn dragged him out, Morgana approached the counter, her gaze calm and deep.
"You were hard on him," she observed.
I shrugged, starting to clear the cups from their table, including the half-eaten madeleine Jayce had abandoned in his crisis. "He's an idealistic pup playing with a kind of fire he doesn't understand. Someone needed to warn him that fire burns."
"Or perhaps," her voice was as soft as ever, but the question was sharp as obsidian, "you saw in him an echo of someone, from somewhere else, who also wanted to change the world… and only succeeded in setting it on fire."
I did not reply. Her observation had hit too close to home, a home that no longer existed, countless lives and countless ashes ago. The anger I felt was not at him, but at myself, for feeling that old, familiar pang.
I hated his idealism, not because it was false, but because it was dangerously familiar. I have seen dozens of Jayces throughout my existences. Geniuses full of good intentions who have diligently paved the road to glorious, technologically advanced hells. He wanted to give magic to everyone. How sweet. He just didn't realise that in doing so, he is just giving everyone permission to burn the world down together.
And I would be here, serving tea, with a front-row seat to watch the explosion.
[Status update. Contact with Subject Talis established. Critical knowledge transfer and philosophical crisis successfully induced. Probability of global hextech catastrophe accelerated by 37%. Suggestion: reinforce the establishment's insurance policy against arcane explosions, social collapse, and well-intentioned idealists.]