There is a philosophical concept popular among the more tedious minds of Piltover called 'The Hypothesis of Emergent Order'. In short, it states that if you throw random, chaotic components into a system for long enough, they will eventually find a functional harmony. It's a pretty way of saying that if you bang your head against a wall for long enough, eventually the hole you've made will be the exact shape of your head. Honestly, I'd always found it to be optimistic nonsense. My personal hypothesis has always been that of 'Guaranteed Entropy': everything inevitably devolves into an ever-increasing mess until a final collapse. The universe is basically a teenager in their bedroom, and extinction is their mother coming in to tell them to tidy up.
So, imagine my existential disappointment when, against all odds and the fundamental laws of my cynicism, my team of misfits… started to work.
It wasn't a miracle. It was more like watching a clumsy, noisy machine cough out smoke, shed bolts, and grind horribly before, somehow, it began to produce something vaguely useful. The first few weeks were a baptism by fire, fuelled by spilt tea and anxiety attacks.
Lucien, my resident Demacian fugitive, spent the first few days looking like a deer in a room full of twitchy hunters. The mere mention of the word 'Demacia', even from a nobleman complaining about the weather there, was enough to make him freeze and nearly drop an entire tray of porcelain. Now? Now he's the picture of calm. A fragile, haunted calm, of course, but calm nonetheless. He has become my official 'human kettle', a silent conductor of thermodynamics who keeps six teapots at six different temperatures with a precision bordering on the supernatural, all with the force of his will and a worrying amount of sweat on his brow. I still think he's going to explode in a shower of dramatic flames and guilt at any moment, but in the meantime, the water boils just right. Progress.
Kaeli, the Vastayan with the nose of a sommelier and the tongue of a razor, nearly caused a customer rebellion in her first week. Her personal crusade against the overuse of sugar in delicate infusions led her to berate a Piltovan trade-baron. It was a spectacle. He turned purple with indignation; she turned purple with contempt. I had to intervene before furs and gold cogs started to fly. Nowadays, she's learned the art of restraint. Instead of verbal confrontations, she now lets out an audible 'tsk' of pure disdain and mutters under her breath in Ionian. Some customers have even started seeking her out for recommendations, treating her as the ultimate authority on dried leaves. Useful and irritating in equal measure. A perfect balance, in my opinion.
And Eddie. Ah, Eddie. The Piltovan pastry-chef was a force of nature in the shape of a disaster. The first two weeks were a culinary massacre. Burnt batches, cakes that failed to rise, an incident with salt instead of sugar that resulted in a batch of biscuits that could be classified as a chemical weapon. He cried in the storeroom at least four times that I counted. But the kid is stubborn. Morgana, with her saintly patience (something I will never understand), spent hours with him, teaching him to breathe instead of panic. And it worked. Last week, he presented a lemon and blueberry loaf that was… surprisingly good. The texture was light, the acidity perfect. I took a bite, looked at him with my best executioner's scowl, and said, "Edible." From his reaction, I might as well have named him the king of Piltover. He's a walking disaster, but at least now he's an edible one.
Finally, Rixa. The Brawler from Zaun. At first, she was a pit of silence and suspicion. Her eyes followed every movement, every exchanged coin. I was 87% certain she was casing the joint for a future robbery. But her rigidity had a purpose. When the shop gets busy, Rixa is the dam that holds back the flood. She doesn't smile much, but she doesn't need to. A wealthy customer tried to jump the queue? A single look from her made him reconsider all his life choices. A group of young Zaunites started talking too loudly? A discreet cough from Rixa silenced them faster than a shout would have. She is the sergeant major of our little army of misfits. Occasionally a glass gets broken or a customer leaves a bit intimidated, but it's a small price to pay for order.
In short, my Hypothesis of Guaranteed Entropy had suffered a minor setback. They survived. They learned the routines, tamed the chaos, and most importantly, learned not to annoy me before my second cup of tea. A miracle, indeed. Morgana calls it 'teamwork'. I call it 'collective fear of being sacked and sent back to their miserable former lives'. The motivation is irrelevant; it's the results that matter.
And the results were a perpetually full salon. The flow of customers normalised into a constant hum, a bizarre mixture of pompous Piltovans and hardened Zaunites sharing the same air without the building imploding. It was my own private, tasteless social experiment. I served tea and watched the theatre. Piltovans forcing an awkward etiquette, talking loudly about how 'refreshing' and 'authentic' it was to be in such a 'diverse' environment, while making sure their designer handbags didn't touch the floor. Zaunites would enter tense, shoulders hunched, expecting insult or eviction at any moment, and then, slowly, over the course of an hour, their muscles would relax. It was like watching a wild creature realise it's not in a trap. Fascinating and depressing. I was the director of a human zoo, and my payment was in coin and glimpses of the absurd human comedy.
It was in the midst of this comedy that the bell on the door rang, but the sound was different this time. It wasn't the cheerful tinkle of a regular. It was a dry *thump*, as if the door had hit something solid. And it had. Standing in the doorway was a man who looked as though he had been carved from an ancient oak with a blunt hatchet. He wasn't just tall; he was wide. A walking wardrobe with shoulders that barely fit through the door and a face that suggested he had once used someone's head to open a stubborn lock. The grey in his hair and thick beard couldn't soften the intensity of his eyes, which swept across the room with the quick, cold appraisal of a general inspecting a battlefield.
Behind him, a brood of four children trooped in, a jarring contrast to the man's massive presence. The room, normally buzzing with conversation, dropped in volume. The Piltovans fell silent out of snobbery. The Zaunites, out of recognition.
The brute (I would later learn his name was Vander) didn't move at first. He just stood there, and a strange expression crossed his face. It wasn't threat. It was… confusion. Pure and simple shock. His gaze drifted from the Piltover nobles at their polished tables to the Zaunite workers in their grimy boots. He looked like he was trying to solve an impossible equation in his head. How was it possible that these two elements, normally so volatile when mixed, were coexisting peacefully in a room that smelt of chamomile and not blood? He looked as though he'd seen a mirage.
It wasn't every day an ogre walked into my tea room and froze as if he'd seen the ghost of his first love serving scones. The scene was too intriguing to ignore.
"Too pretty," a hoarse, childish voice growled. A girl with wild pink hair, who couldn't have been more than twelve, crossed her arms, her face a mask of defiance. "In Piltover, places like this ain't for us. Bet they'll tell us to leave before we even sit down."
I leaned over the counter, not bothering to smile. "Relax, bubblegum. My policy is one of equal-opportunity hostility. I judge people on how annoying they are, not which side of the river they crawled out of. And believe me, you've a long way to go to make it into my top ten for today. Sit or leave, your choice. I'm busy."
Morgana appeared at my side, a calming presence that always managed to neutralise my acidity. She gave me a look that said 'be nice or I'll put soap in your tea', before addressing the group with a genuine smile. "Everyone is welcome here, as long as you respect the peace of the place. Please, have a seat."
The pink-haired girl, Vi, shot me daggers with her eyes but followed the big man to a table. The other children scattered like curious puppies. A little girl with blue hair, clearly the youngest, ran to a display case full of porcelain teapots, her eyes wide with fascination. She reached out a small hand and nearly knocked over my favourite, a ceramic pot with a sleeping dragon painted on it.
Without looking away from the glass I was polishing, I spoke in a casual tone. "If you break that, payment can be in bronze cogs or in a kidney. The organ market is strong at the moment."
The little girl, Powder I heard, snatched her hand back as if she'd touched an ember, her face a mixture of terror and awe. The big man, Vander, hid a half-laugh in his beard. Good. A man with a sense of humour. Perhaps he wasn't a complete ogre after all.
A wiry-looking boy with a shifty air, Mylo, pointed at the bronze sign above the door. "'The Last Cup'?" he sneered, loud enough to be heard. "That sounds like a cheap copy of 'The Last Drop', our bar down in the lanes."
"The difference," I replied, still polishing the glass, "is that here, you leave sober, with all of your teeth, and smelling faintly of lavender instead of vomit and despair. It's a concept called evolution. Perhaps you'll hear of it one day."
Mylo grumbled, defeated. The last boy, a quiet hulk named Claggor, was already fixated on the pastry display, his eyes locked on a cinnamon roll as if it were the love of his life. A dangerous one, that. The quiet ones are always the worst. He was probably calculating the trajectory and velocity needed to steal the entire batch and escape before anyone could react.
Vander sat down, but didn't eat. He just watched. He was a guardian on duty. His eyes studied the Piltovan customers, noting the way they deliberately ignored his family's presence. Then he looked at the other Zaunites in the room, watching how Rixa served them with the same pragmatic efficiency as she did the rich, how Lucien offered them tea with the same formal bow. The surprise on his face gave way to something deeper, more weary. A relief.
Eventually, he said something, his voice so low it was almost a murmur to himself. "I didn't think it was possible… a place where we don't have to choose between being invisible and being thrown out."
It was a statement freighted with the weight of a lifetime of struggles I could barely imagine. To me, it just sounded like a tired man grateful for not being chased off. But I felt Morgana's gaze on me, and I knew she had heard the universe of pain contained in those few words. She had a knack for that. I had a knack for ignoring it and focusing on what mattered: ensuring they paid the bill.
When they had finished, the impossible happened. Vi, the pink-haired girl, still looked suspicious, but the tension in her shoulders had eased. Powder was chattering about inventing an 'anti-gravity teacup that never spills'. Mylo was still complaining about the price, but he did so with his mouth full of the last piece of Eddie's cake. And the hefty boy, Claggor, looked to be in a state of pure sugar-induced bliss.
Vander stood, his presence filling the space again. He left a few coins on the table, far more than was necessary. Before he left, his gaze met Morgana's, then mine.
"You've got something rare here," he said, his voice deep and serious. "A place where we can breathe. And I'll give you a piece of advice." He paused, his gaze sweeping over the other Zaunite customers, who were now watching him with a reverent respect. "None of my people will cause trouble in this salon. And if anyone from the outside tries," his gaze lingered for a split second on the Piltovans, "they'll have to deal with me first."
It was a promise. And a threat. A declaration of protectorship. The Zaunites present nodded subtly. The Piltovans suddenly became very interested in their empty teacups. Morgana inclined her head in a gesture of silent acceptance.
Me? I could only think one thing.
To me, it just sounded like a melodramatic warning from a man who probably settled contract disputes with his fists. But the atmosphere in the room had changed. The weight of that man had settled over 'The Last Cup' like a mantle. He had given us his protection. And I had a very bad feeling that sooner or later, we would find out the price.