Chapter 123: In Iris’ House
Leon almost laughed at that, though he managed to hold it back this time, mindful of her earlier warning. In truth, the thought of any real danger waiting for him at her house hadn’t even crossed his mind.
Whatever she was, whatever she believed, she wasn’t a player. She’d told him that herself, and nothing about her bearing or movement suggested otherwise.
Compared to everything he’d already survived over the course of this single, impossibly long day, an ordinary civilian’s house posed about as much threat to him as a light breeze.
He had Aegis, a shield capable of reflecting nearly any attack thrown at him.
And now he had Hermes’ Boots as well, boots that made him, by his own best estimate, the fastest player currently alive anywhere in the world.
Whatever risk existed in following a stranger back to her home, it simply didn’t register as a real concern.
"I’ll take my chances," Leon said simply, keeping his actual reasoning to himself.
Iris studied him a moment longer, something like grudging respect flickering behind her earlier wariness. "Alright then," she said. "Follow me."
She stood, smoothing down the front of her clothes before turning toward the stairs leading back down to the library’s main floor.
Leon rose as well, grabbing the book on Sysmus Grande out of habit before setting it back down on the table, deciding against actually checking it out.
Whatever answers he needed now clearly weren’t waiting inside those particular pages.
They descended the stairs together, weaving quietly through the scattered patrons still browsing the lower floors, before finally stepping back out through the heavy double doors and into the late afternoon light outside.
The city stretched out around them, tall buildings catching the sun at sharp angles, the steady hum of Aldreth’s streets picking back up the moment they left the library’s quiet interior behind.
Iris led the way without hesitation, apparently familiar enough with the streets to navigate them without needing to think too hard about the route.
Leon fell into step beside her, glancing around casually as they walked, still keeping half his attention on their surroundings out of old habit, watching for anything that might suggest they were being followed or watched.
He doubted Cleo would show up so soon, especially not somewhere as public as the middle of the city, but he still decided to not to abandon caution, just because things had gone quiet for a moment.
"So," Iris said after a few minutes of silence, glancing sideways at him as they walked, "where are you actually from? You don’t talk like someone from Berx."
Leon hesitated slightly, caught off guard by the question. He hadn’t considered how his accent or manner of speaking might give something away, careless as he’d been about it.
"Somewhere far from here," he said, keeping the answer deliberately vague. "South, mostly."
"The South?" Iris asked, her eyebrows lifting slightly with interest.
"Something like that," Leon said, not quite confirming it outright, though he supposed the answer was close enough to the truth that it hardly mattered.
Iris seemed to accept that without pushing further, apparently more interested in continuing their earlier conversation than in prying too deeply into his personal history.
"So you really believe what I told you?" she asked. "About Arthur, and everything else?"
Leon considered his answer carefully.
"I believe you believe it," he said. "Whether it’s all true or not, I don’t know yet. That’s why I want to see the books."
Iris nodded slowly, seemingly satisfied with the honesty of that answer, even if it wasn’t the full confirmation she might have wanted.
"Fair enough," she said.
They continued walking in relative quiet after that, the streets gradually shifting around them as they moved away from the more polished, official district surrounding the library, toward something a little more residential, smaller buildings replacing the towering structures near the city’s center.
"My grandmother used to live in this district," Iris said eventually, breaking the silence again. "I moved into her old place after she passed. Kept most of her things exactly the way she left them. Including the books."
"How long ago was that?" Leon asked. "Since she passed."
"Three years," Iris said, her voice softening slightly at the memory.
"She was the one who first told me all those stories, back when I was a kid. Everyone else in my family always brushed it off as nonsense, harmless bedtime tales meant to keep a child entertained. But she always insisted there was truth buried somewhere underneath it."
Leon glanced at her, noting the quiet conviction in her voice, the same intensity that had first caught his attention back in the library.
Whatever she believed, it clearly wasn’t some passing interest. It was something she’d carried with her for years, inherited directly from someone she’d cared about deeply.
"What made her so certain?" Leon asked. "That the stories were true, I mean."
Iris was quiet for a moment, considering the question carefully.
"She never really explained it outright," she admitted. "Just said that some things were too specific, too consistent across different versions of the same stories, to have been made up entirely from nothing."
"Different cultures, different regions, telling remarkably similar stories about the same figures, with the same specific details. She always said that kind of consistency wasn’t a coincidence."
Leon turned that over in his mind as they continued walking, thinking again about Excalibur, about the near-identical description Iris had given of the sword compared to what he’d already witnessed firsthand. It matched too closely to be pure invention.
Whatever the truth actually was, he was growing more confident with every passing minute that the answers waiting inside Iris’s house might turn out to be exactly what he needed.
They turned down a narrower street lined with modest, older buildings, quieter than the busier avenues they’d left behind.
Iris slowed her pace slightly, glancing toward a small house set back from the road, its exterior worn but clearly well cared for.
"This is it," she said, coming to a stop in front of the gate. "My house."
Leon glanced over the building briefly, noting the small, tidy garden lining the front path, a stark contrast to the sleek, modern architecture dominating most of the rest of the city.
It looked like the kind of place that had existed quietly, unchanged, for far longer than the buildings surrounding it.
Iris hesitated for a moment at the gate, glancing back at him one final time, as though giving him one last chance to reconsider.
"Last chance to back out," she said.
Leon shook his head slightly, already moving toward the gate himself. "I’m not backing out."
Leon stepped through the gate behind Iris, following her up the narrow stone path leading toward the front door.
The garden lining either side looked carefully tended, small clusters of flowers planted in neat rows, though a few sections had clearly been left to grow wild, as if whoever maintained it hadn’t quite kept up with all of it in recent months.
Iris pulled a key from her pocket and unlocked the door, pushing it open with a soft creak. She stepped inside first, gesturing for him to follow.
"Come in," she said. "Sorry if it’s a little messy."
Leon stepped through the doorway, glancing around as he entered.
The inside of the house felt smaller than it looked from the street, though comfortably so, filled with worn furniture that had clearly seen decades of use.
A faint, musty smell hung in the air, old paper and dust mixed together, the kind of smell that came from a house filled with things nobody had touched in a long while.
The front room held a small couch, its cushions faded from years of sunlight, along with a low wooden table scattered with a handful of picture frames.
Leon’s eyes drifted briefly over them as he passed, catching glimpses of an older woman in several of the photos, her face weathered but kind, standing beside a much younger version of Iris in each one.
"That’s her," Iris said, noticing where his attention had gone. "My grandmother. Her name was Elara."
Leon nodded slightly, taking another moment to study the photographs before following Iris further into the house.
Everything about the space felt frozen in a particular era, the furniture, the decorations, even the faint patterns on the wallpaper, all clearly untouched since long before Iris had ever moved in herself.
"You really kept everything the way she left it," Leon said.
"Most of it," Iris said, her voice softening slightly. "I couldn’t bring myself to change much. Felt wrong, somehow. Like I’d be erasing her."
She led him down a short hallway, passing a small kitchen on one side, tidy despite its age, before stopping in front of a closed door near the back of the house.
"This was her study," Iris said, her hand resting on the doorknob for a moment before turning it. "This is where she kept everything."