The universe, in its vast and indifferent repertoire, has a type of chaos for every occasion. There is the grand, apocalyptic chaos of stars dying silently light-years away. There is the methodical, bureaucratic chaos of a Piltovan elite's party, where sharp smiles hide venomous ambitions. And then there is my own personal favourite kind of chaos: domestic chaos. The kind that smells of trouble, sounds like bad decisions, and usually ends with something catching fire. And that evening, we were about to dive headfirst into it.
It all started with a favour, which is how most catastrophes begin. Vander appeared at our shop door late in the afternoon, his large, tired face carrying more weight than usual. He needed to sort out 'a problem with a parts supplier' in the Sump, which, in the multi-layered language of Zaun, could mean anything from negotiating the price of screws to ensuring said supplier didn't end the night floating in the chem-river as a new kind of fluorescent aquatic life. The point was, he couldn't take the children, and his absence would leave 'The Last Drop' at the mercy of the total anarchy they invariably created.
"It's just for a few hours," he said, his voice a low, pleading rumble, something I never thought I'd hear from that mountain of a man. "They're not much trouble," he lied shamelessly, looking at his chaotic brood with a mixture of deep love and terminal exhaustion.
Morgana, with her heart that perpetually bleeds for the oppressed, the weak, the abandoned, and, apparently, Zaun's overworked single fathers, had agreed before I could even formulate a convincing and well-articulated protest about the dangers of leaving four small forces of nature in the care of a tired cosmic entity and a fallen goddess of justice. I knew I was defeated. And that is how I became, for the second time in the same life, the reluctant babysitter to a tribe of potentially pyromaniacal orphans. Reincarnation, at times, has a sick sense of humour.
[Probability calculation updated. Chance of the evening ending without a fire, accidental poisoning, unintentional demonic summoning, or the creation of a portal to a dimension of pain: 12.7%. Suggestion: prepare fire extinguishers and have a good lawyer on retainer.]
An hour later, our peaceful and orderly tea house had been transformed into our own private battlefield. The children arrived like a hurricane of pent-up energy, spreading through the space with the efficiency of an invading army. Vi immediately took possession of my favourite reading corner, pretending to read one of my tomes on arcane history with an expression of deep concentration, while in truth she was just enjoying the comfy armchair and the moral superiority of 'studying'. Mylo began a thorough inspection of our pastry display, offering 'constructive criticisms' that sounded suspiciously like attempts to get free samples. And Claggor discovered Eddie's secret stash of cinnamon rolls, to his delight and to the future fury of our poor pastry chef.
But it was Powder who came with a purpose. She marched up to me, dragging a box of scrap metal that clanked dangerously. Her eyes, from behind enormous goggles, shone with the holy fire of invention.
"Today," she announced with the solemnity of a great prophet revealing a new scripture, "we are going to build something truly revolutionary!"
I looked at the pile of rusted cogs, frayed wires, suspicious glass tubes, and something that vaguely resembled the internal mechanism of a clockwork mouse. "Revolutionary?" I replied, arching an eyebrow. "Judging by the materials, the only revolution this is going to start is in the ways your hair can spontaneously combust."
[Device jury-rigged by a minor without the supervision of a qualified engineer. Power source: unstable. Materials: questionable. Probability of non-catastrophic explosion: 78%. Probability of it becoming self-aware and starting a miniature machine revolt: 0.02%. Do you wish to proceed?]
"Take your parts to the cellar," I told her, already resigned to my fate. "And don't touch anything that glows purple or makes a high-pitched humming sound. Unless you want to be teleported to Noxus. It happened once to a lab rat. It was… inconvenient. Mostly for the rat."
As my new apprentice-in-disaster and I descended into my workshop, I heard Morgana, in a rare and deeply misguided fit of domesticity, announce that she would take on the task of feeding the rest of the pack. I knew, with the certainty of one who had tasted her previous 'creations', that this was a mistake of cosmic proportions. Morgana was a mage of incalculable power, an entity of compassion and wisdom. But in the kitchen? In the kitchen, she was a force of primordial chaos, a harbinger of culinary entropy.
My cellar smelt of burnt oil, old wood, and my signature scent of spilt tea, a combination I personally found quite comforting. The lanterns I had jury-rigged from glass jars and synthetic fireflies (an old, failed project that now served an aesthetic purpose) hung from the pipes, illuminating my workbenches, which were more graveyards of bad ideas than stations of invention.
Powder entered, her eyes shining as if she had just discovered a lost temple dedicated to the god of scrap and explosions.
"This is… amazing!" she whispered in awe, running her fingers over a warped contraption that was supposed to have been a toaster but now looked more like a suicidal bear trap. "You have so much stuff down here!"
"'Stuff' is a delicate way of referring to fifty-two consecutive failures, carefully catalogued in order of hazardousness," I corrected, dusting off a prototype that had once dreamed of being an automatic window cleaner but now just repeatedly bumped into the same wall. "Welcome."
While Powder was already rummaging at one of the tables with the energy of a gold prospector who's just struck a vein, I took a piece of chalk and drew a quick diagram on a blackboard. "Think of it like this," I began, falling into the reluctant-teacher mode that Morgana so appreciated. "Energy is water. This here," I pointed to a makeshift condenser she had brought, which looked suspiciously like a part from an old wireless, "is a bent and clogged pipe. You're trying to force the pressure of a dam through it, without a proper outlet. The result is always the same: *BOOM*."
She bit her lip, absorbing the information with an intensity I rarely saw in inventors twice her age. "So I have to… redirect it?"
"Not just redirect. You have to seduce the energy. Invite it to dance to the rhythm you want." I took two wires and a homemade resistor made of charcoal and ceramic. "This here is like teaching a stubborn child to walk in time. If you force them too much, they scream and throw themselves on the floor. If you give them the right rhythm, with the right path and the promise of a sweet at the end, they'll follow you. Energy is lazy. It will always seek the path of least resistance."
"You make it sound easy," she said, the admiration in her voice almost palpable.
"It isn't easy," I admitted with a shrug, as we soldered a piece with an iron I'd built myself. "It's a process of trial and error. Mostly error. Blowing things up until you learn is part of the curriculum."
As we worked, immersed in a focused silence broken only by the crackle of solder and my occasional instructions, I noticed a smudge of soot on Powder's cheek. Without thinking, an almost involuntary gesture that I would blame entirely on Morgana's influence, I reached out and wiped it away with my thumb. She froze for a second, her big eyes surprised by the touch, before returning to her work with an even wider smile, if that were possible.
"Do you really think I have talent?" she asked suddenly, her voice sincere and vulnerable, a small needle of honesty in my ocean of cynicism.
I looked away, focusing on tightening a screw. Compliments were not my strong suit, especially sincere ones. "I think you have the right kind of stubbornness, which is far more important. Talent is just what's left after you've failed a thousand times and still haven't had the good sense to give up."
She laughed, embracing the comment as the highest of praise.
[Warning. Paternalistic affection levels reaching critical threshold. Recommend immediate physical and emotional distancing to avoid the spontaneous adoption of another problematic, pyromaniacally-inclined orphan.]
Upstairs, another kind of experiment was reaching its catastrophic conclusion. The kitchen, normally my sanctuary of order, precision, and perfectly infused teas, now smelt of something… indefinable. And vaguely alarming. It was as if someone had burnt vegetables, boiled old socks, and added a dash of existential regret for a finishing touch.
On the stove, a pot was bubbling with a viscous content that shifted between moss-green, deep purple, and, in some spots, a black that seemed to absorb the light itself. Each bubble let out a slow, heavy "blup" that sounded almost conscious, like a slime creature complaining about its own existence.
Vi, Claggor, and Mylo were sat at the table, staring at the scene with the reverent terror of those watching a summoning ritual go horribly wrong.
"So… that's food, right?" Vi asked, arching an eyebrow, her voice cautious.
"It's a nutritious stew," Morgana replied, her voice perfectly serene as she stirred the pot with a calmness only an entity with millennia of patience could feign. "Simple ingredients, but with restorative properties."
"I swear I saw it blink," Claggor whispered to Mylo.
"Blink?" Mylo scoffed, his eyes wide. "I saw it try to crawl out of the pot. It waved at me. I think it was asking for help."
The goo made a louder 'plop', as if it had taken offence at the slander.
Morgana served the delicacy in bowls with all the elegance of a hostess serving a royal banquet. Vi stared at her portion like a personal enemy she needed to defeat in single combat. "Okay… are we supposed to eat this or fight it?"
"If I die," Mylo declared, raising his spoon with the false heroism of a martyr, "tell Vander I died a warrior. And that it was the gothic lady's fault."
He brought the first, brave spoonful to his mouth, chewed once, and his eyes widened. He paused, blinking several times. "I… I can't feel my tongue," he said, his voice strangely emotionless.
Claggor, who had been about to eat, froze with his spoon in mid-air. "Is that a good thing or a bad thing?"
Morgana, still maintaining her outward calm, gripped her own spoon with a force that made her knuckles turn white. "It's… experimental," she said. "Perhaps it needs some seasoning adjustments."
As Mylo and Claggor continued their culinary horror-comedy, poking the goo and debating whether or not it had developed a consciousness of its own, Vi grew quiet. I noticed the change when I came up quickly to fetch more tools. Her tough-girl facade had cracked.
"You don't like it?" Morgana asked, her perception, as always, flawless.
"It's not that," Vi said without looking at her, her gaze lost in the steaming bowl. "It's just… sometimes it feels like I have to be the wall for everyone. Mylo and his dumb jokes, Claggor and his endless hunger, Powder and her explosions… even Vander, sometimes. I have to be the strong one, always holding things together. But underneath… I'm still just a kid."
Morgana's expression softened, becoming unmistakably motherly. She put down her spoon, giving Vi her full attention.
"Vi," she said, her voice as soft as the fabric of an ancient veil. "The strength you show doesn't come from your fists. It comes from the love you feel for them. It is not a weight you carry alone; it is the anchor that stops you all from being lost in the storm. You are not the wall that separates them from the world; you are the safe harbour they can always return to."
The words seemed to find a place within Vi, a truth she had never considered in that way. She bit her lip hard, fighting the emotion that threatened to spill over, but a small, grateful, and vulnerable smile escaped. The weight on her shoulders hadn't vanished, but perhaps, for the first time, it seemed to have a nobler purpose than simply 'enduring'.
The wall had been reinforced, not with more stone, but with understanding.
Back in the cellar, our masterpiece was ready. It was a glorious abomination: a crude metal box, precariously soldered, full of tangled wires, copper coils stolen from an old phonograph, and an unstable crystal that pulsed like a nervous heart. The goal: to emit a continuous, gentle stream of light. A fancy lantern.
"Okay… moment of truth!" Powder said, her hands trembling with excitement.
"Moment of explosion, you mean," I muttered, backing away to a safe distance behind a stack of thick books. "Brace yourself."
She pushed the button.
There was a high-pitched hum that quickly escalated into an electric wail. A blue flash filled the cellar, so intense it blinded me for an instant. For a terrifying second, I thought Eos was right and we had, in fact, created a miniature weapon of mass destruction. But instead of an explosion, the contraption released a single, colossal wave of light. A pulse of blue and white energy, pure and bright as the heart of a star, which shot up the stairwell, through the shop windows, and tore through the darkness of the night.
Our tea house, perched on the great bridge connecting Piltover and Zaun, became a lighthouse for three glorious seconds. The intense light bathed the golden architecture of the City of Progress above and plunged into the smoggy fissures of the Sump below.
Up in Piltover, citizens strolling along the Promenade stopped, pointing at the inexplicable flash emanating from the 'exotic establishment'. A flash of wild, unsanctioned magic in their world of order.
Down in Zaun, residents who looked up saw something different. The light wasn't coming from Piltover, but from the bridge, from the place they called 'The Truce'. An old man, who was making a silent prayer near the faded mural of Janna, fell to his knees. He did not see a technological failure; he saw an answer. "Did you see?" he whispered to the others, his eyes wide. "A sign… from the bridge… the Wind Lady… she still watches over us." The whisper began to spread, from alley to alley, a new faith born from an engineering failure.
Inside the cellar, I was covered in soot, my hair standing on end from the static. The device was smoking, completely dead. But Powder was on her feet, her face radiant, jumping with pure joy amidst the smoke.
"IT WORKED!" she shouted. "WE MADE LIGHT!"
I looked at the smoke rising from our creation, and then at the ceiling, imagining the confused looks from above and the mistaken hope from below.
"Yes," I said, my voice dry. "It worked in giving us a religious reputation, it did. For half the city, at least."
[Update. Mission status: technically successful. Unforeseen outcomes of a theological and geopolitical nature: 100%. New title unlocked for the group: "Accidental Prophets of the Bridge". Suggestion: immediately open a franchise of miracles and begin selling blessed candles to both markets. The profit potential is significant.]