WebCat Studios
Chapter One — The Bottom of the Cup
Eldris walked alone through Stonecross.
The city had rebuilt itself efficiently. Walls stood straight again. Streets had been repaved with care that favored appearance over depth. Scaffolds still clung to a few higher towers, but only where it was convenient to finish the work. The quake had forced urgency, not reflection.
Stonecross did not mourn what it had been. It corrected itself and moved on.
He moved through the central avenues first, where human stonework dominated. Buildings rose in clean lines and deliberate symmetry, their faces scrubbed and repaired until no cracks remained visible. Broad streets allowed carts to pass without slowing. Shopfronts were open, their wares arranged carefully to suggest stability rather than abundance. Guards stood at regular intervals, visible but relaxed, hands resting near weapons they did not expect to draw.
As Eldris passed, a few people noticed him.
Some slowed. Some looked twice.
A man carrying a leather bound ledger hesitated when he recognized him. The man’s mouth opened as if to speak, then closed again. He gave a shallow nod that suggested respect remembered rather than felt, then continued on his way without meeting Eldris’s eyes.
A woman walking with her child paused. She pulled the boy a little closer, not sharply, not with fear, but with habit. The child looked up at Eldris with open curiosity before being gently guided forward again. No explanation followed.
Two merchants speaking quietly near a doorway broke off their conversation entirely as Eldris approached. One cleared his throat. The other pretended to adjust a clasp that did not need fixing. When Eldris had passed, their voices resumed, lower than before.
Pity traveled faster than respect ever had.
He felt it without looking for it. It settled on him like dust, light but persistent, clinging no matter how he moved.
When he turned off the main street, the change came quickly. Stonecross did not segregate loudly. It did not rely on walls or signs. Distance did the work. Elevation did the rest.
The streets narrowed. Light thinned as taller buildings leaned closer together. Stonework here was older, patched rather than replaced. Repairs showed their seams. Drainage channels ran closer to the surface. Foot traffic grew quieter and more purposeful.
Buildings belonging to other races appeared here, pressed into alleys or built upward where ground space had been denied. Dwarven stone reinforced human foundations but rarely stood on its own. Goblin dwellings clustered near service tunnels and drainage ways, their entrances low and practical, built for access rather than comfort. Halfling homes tucked themselves between larger buildings, clean and well kept, easy to overlook unless one already knew where to look.
Eldris passed a goblin hauling refuse toward the outer bins. The goblin glanced up, recognized him, then dropped his eyes immediately. Not fear. Recognition. Acceptance of position. The cart wheels squeaked as it rolled past, leaving behind the faint smell of refuse and lye.
A halfling man sweeping a threshold paused when he saw Eldris. The broom stilled in his hands. For a moment, his expression softened with something like sympathy. It vanished almost immediately. He resumed his work, sweeping carefully around Eldris’s boots rather than away from them, as if proximity were the greater risk.
Eldris did not slow.
He noted how people reacted because it had once been different. There had been a time when eyes followed him with expectation instead of avoidance. When people leaned closer instead of stepping aside. When disagreement still carried engagement rather than discomfort.
Now the reactions were careful. Curated. People measured the cost of acknowledgment before offering it. No one wanted to be seen choosing a side that no longer existed.
He crossed a small square where vendors sold food meant for quick consumption. Smoke from cooking fires hung low. The smells were familiar. Roasted grain. Fat rendered too quickly. Spices stretched thin to make them last longer. The stalls were mixed in the way Stonecross preferred, just enough to claim inclusion without sharing space equally.
Humans clustered near the center tables, laughing loudly, elbows wide. Others lingered at the edges, close to walls, ready to move. A goblin vendor handed change to a human customer and received it back tossed onto the counter rather than into his hand. He did not comment.
No one addressed Eldris.
That silence told him more than insults ever had.
By the time Eldris reached the tavern, his patience was already worn thin. The building leaned slightly, as if tired of standing. Its stone had not been cleaned in years. The sign creaked in the evening air, its iron hooks rusted. The name painted there had faded long ago, scraped away by weather and neglect.
He pushed inside.
The smell hit him first. Sour ale. Damp wool. Smoke that never quite cleared. The fire burned low, not for lack of fuel, but because no one cared enough to tend it properly. Heat pooled unevenly, leaving cold corners where men hunched deeper into their coats.
This was where men came when they wanted to disappear.
Eldris chose a table in the corner, his back to the wall. Habit. He sat, removed his gloves, and set them neatly beside his cup. The tavern continued around him as if he were already part of the furniture. Chairs scraped. Dice rattled briefly and then stopped. Someone laughed too loudly and was quieted by a look.
Stonecross had learned how to rebuild without learning how to change.
The quake had broken walls, toppled towers, and split stone streets open like wounds. It had not disturbed the order of things. When the dust settled and the scaffolds came down, the city returned to itself with practiced efficiency. Humans reclaimed the center. Others drifted back to the edges. Trade resumed. Authority settled where it always had.
Eldris watched it all from the corner of a tavern that smelled of sour ale and damp wool.
The place had once had a name worth knowing. Now it was simply where men went when they wanted to be unseen. The fire burned low. The tables were scarred with old cuts and stains. Conversation stayed just loud enough to avoid silence but never loud enough to invite attention.
Eldris lifted his cup and found it empty.
He turned it once in his hand, as if inspecting a failure, then set it down harder than necessary.
“Another,” he said.
The bartender did not hurry. He was human, broad shouldered, gray at the temples. He had the look of a man who had once heard Eldris speak and decided afterward not to be impressed.
“What kind?” the bartender asked.
Eldris did not look up. “Something stronger.”
“That is all any of it is,” the bartender replied.
“You have dwarven brew?”
The bartender hesitated, then nodded. “Costs more.”
Eldris reached for his pouch, then stopped. He counted by weight instead of sight. He disliked the habit, but it had returned without permission.
“Fine,” he said.
The bartender poured without ceremony. The ale was darker and thicker, the kind that lingered in the throat and made no apologies. When he slid the mug across the bar, he added, almost casually, “Careful with that one. Dwarves brew it to remind themselves who they are.”
“At least the stone rubbers know how to do one thing right,” Eldris said.
The bartender’s mouth twitched. “Funny. That is what they say about you lot.”
Eldris drank.
The ale burned the way he needed it to. He welcomed the certainty of bitterness. It reminded him that sensation still answered effort, even if the world did not.
Around him, Stonecross continued as it always had. Human voices dominated the room. A pair of goblins sat near the door, speaking quietly, eyes lowered. They would leave before the crowd thickened. They always did. A halfling woman passed through carrying trays, her movements practiced, her smile automatic. No one asked her opinion on anything.
Eldris noticed these things because he always had.
Once, he had believed noticing was enough.
He had stood in chambers larger and cleaner than this one and spoken of balance, of order, of a world that made sense if one stopped pretending it was already fair. He had argued that leadership should belong to those willing to take responsibility, not those content to debate while the world strained at its seams.
He had not called it supremacy.
He had called it realism.
For a time, people had listened.
They did not listen anymore.
He drank again and felt the bitterness rise, not from the ale, but from memory. Five years had passed since the vote and the quiet dismantling of his standing. There had been no accusations and no trial. Only distance. Invitations that stopped arriving. Doors that closed without explanation.
The Arcanum had never condemned him.
It had not needed to.
He was still known. Still recognized. His name carried history. History did not pay for ale, and recognition did not open councils.
Eldris set the mug down and stared into its depths, as if the answer might settle there.
Eldris became aware of the attention before it took form.
It was not the crude kind. No staring. No whispers that stopped when he turned his head. The tavern was too practiced for that. Whatever watched him did so carefully, from the edge of notice, the way a merchant assessed coin before weighing it.
He took another drink and did not look up.
The feeling persisted.
He shifted slightly in his chair. The sensation adjusted with him. Not pursuit. Calibration. As if someone nearby was testing angles, distances, timing. Measuring how long it took him to reach for the mug. How often his eyes moved. How still he could sit without appearing rigid.
Eldris had been watched before. By councils. By crowds. By enemies who wanted spectacle. This was different.
This felt deliberate.
He let his gaze drift across the room without focusing. Dice players at a corner table. A pair of laborers arguing quietly over a debt neither would collect. The bartender polishing a mug that would never be clean. Nothing out of place. No obvious interest.
And yet the pressure remained.
The old reflex stirred. The one that had once told him when a room was ready to listen and when it was already decided. Attention was a resource. It could be gathered, directed, wasted.
This attention was not being offered.
It was being spent.
He considered leaving. The thought came and went without urgency. He stayed.
The feeling sharpened, then settled, as if a conclusion had been reached.
Eldris lifted his cup and found it empty again. He turned it once in his hand, then set it down. The sound carried farther than he intended. A few heads turned, then turned away.
The pressure eased.
Not because it was gone.
Because the measurement was complete.
That was when someone sat beside him.
Not close enough to crowd him. Close enough to be intentional.
The man was human. Early forties. Clean, well kept, dressed plainly but with the confidence of someone who did not need to announce his means. He did not look at Eldris immediately. He ordered a drink and waited.
Eldris said nothing.
After a moment, the man spoke. “You used to fill rooms.”
“Rooms are fickle,” Eldris replied.
“They are,” the man said. “But they remember.”
“Do I know you?”
“No. But I know of you.”
“That is rarely worth the trouble.”
The man smiled faintly. “Depends who is listening.”
“And who is paying.”
That earned a look.
The man reached into his coat and placed a small sack on the bar between them. It landed with unmistakable weight.
Gold.
The bartender glanced at it and looked away.
“I do not enjoy wasting time,” the man said. “And I do not imagine you do either.”
“What do you want?” Eldris asked.
“A conversation. Somewhere quieter. Tomorrow night. The inn across the river.”
Eldris laughed. “You bring a year’s wages to buy a conversation?”
“Assuming one lives normally,” the man said. “And not overly lavish.”
Eldris studied the pouch.
“Your name,” he said.
“Corvin. Corvin Halden.”
The name carried weight.
“Your father,” Eldris said.
Corvin nodded. “Professor Halden.”
“I have heard the stories.”
“Most people have,” Corvin replied. “They were told carefully.”
“You think that makes us kin?”
“No,” Corvin said. “It makes us aligned.”
Silence settled between them.
“You are angry,” Eldris said.
“Anger is inefficient,” Corvin replied. “I prefer correction.”
Corvin stood and left the gold behind.
Eldris watched him go.
The bartender returned. “You want that tallied now?”
Eldris looked at the pouch. Then at his empty mug.
“Yes,” he said. “And bring another.”
As the bartender poured, Eldris felt something stir that had been quiet for years.
Not hope.
Momentum.
Stonecross had rebuilt its walls.
Some foundations, he thought, were still waiting to be tested.
Eldris finished his drink slowly. He set the mug down with care, paid without comment, and rose from the table. As he stepped back into the street, the night air felt cooler, sharper. He walked home through Stonecross with his shoulders set a little higher than before, his pace more deliberate. Nothing in the city had changed. But he carried himself as if something had been measured, found sufficient, and set in motion.