Twelve hours and three states away from the neon glow of Vegas, the world had softened into sun-drenched normality. Alistair's Defender turned off a main road and into a development called Camelot Crescent. The houses were spacious ranch-styles and tidy two-stories, with perfectly manicured lawns, basketball hoops, and the occasional decorative garden gnome (which Alistair's second sight confirmed were, in fact, just garden gnomes).
He pulled up to a well-kept house at the end of a cul-de-sac. The lawn was a flawless emerald carpet, edged with military precision. And there, in a wide-brimmed sun hat, khakis, and a polo shirt, was King Arthur Pendragon, applying the finishing touches to a flower bed with an electric edger.
The low whine of the edger cut through the suburban silence. Arthur moved with the focused contentment of a man who had exchanged the weight of a kingdom for the weight of a good, cordless tool. He didn't look up as Alistair killed the engine and stepped out, the scabbard now wrapped in a less-damaged travel blanket.
Arthur finished the last foot of edging, straightened up, and only then turned. He saw Alistair, saw the shape of the bundle in his arms, and his shoulders slumped in a sigh of profound, domestic resignation. He thumbed the switch on the edger, and the quiet that followed was filled with the chirping of sparrows.
"Finch," Arthur said, pulling off his gardening gloves. "Let me guess. You found my missing… thing." He said "thing" the way another man might say "left sock."
"The very same," Alistair said, walking up the pristine driveway. "Had a bit of an adventure with it. You really should keep better track of your legendary, reality-altering artifacts, Your Majesty."
"It's Arthur. Or Art. The 'majesty' is for the HOA president, and even that's a stretch," Arthur grumbled, leading the way to the front door. "Come in. And wipe your feet. Guinevere just cleaned the floors."
The interior of the house was a study in comfortable, modern blandness. A large, comfortable-looking sectional faced a big-screen TV. Bookshelves held a mix of historical biographies and paperback thrillers. The furniture was largely IKEA, functional and unassuming. Only one thing betrayed the home's occupant: on the main wall hung a single, magnificent Tapestry of Avalon. It was exquisitely detailed, the island shrouded in mist, the Lady's hand just visible offering a cup. It hummed with a soft, ancient magic, a quiet ache of nostalgia in a room that smelled of lemon polish and fresh coffee.
"So," Arthur said, heading to the kitchen. "Where was it?"
"Vegas. In a Leprechaun casino. They were using it as a high-stakes auction item."
Arthur let out a short, dry laugh. "Figures. Everything ends up in Vegas eventually." He opened the fridge. "Lemonade?"
"Please."
Alistair unwrapped the blanket on the living room table, revealing the scabbard in all its jeweled, ancient glory. It seemed to gather the light in the room, its presence a quiet, noble pressure. Arthur returned with two glasses of homemade lemonade, condensation already beading on the sides. He glanced at the scabbard, took a long sip of his drink, and then, with utterly mundane casualness, picked the artifact up.
"Thanks," he said. "The paper cuts were becoming a genuine hazard. Do you know how much a king-sized bandage costs these days? Outrageous." He walked to the kitchen counter and unceremoniously dropped the scabbard next to a sleek silver toaster. It lay there, its timeless magic looking absurdly out of place beside a loaf of sliced wheat bread and a jar of strawberry jam.
Alistair blinked. "Aren't you going to… I don't know, feel its power? Reconnect? Do a little ceremonial sheathing of a kitchen knife or something?"
Arthur gave him a deadpan look over the rim of his glass. "It stops bleeding, Finch. That's it. It's a very fancy, very effective bandage. The 'power' was always the sword. And the king." He took another sip. "Mostly the king. The scabbard just meant I could get through a council meeting without needing a tourniquet. Now," he gestured to the patio door with his glass, "shall we?"
They sat on a comfortable back patio overlooking the immaculate yard. The silence was peaceful, filled with the distant sounds of a lawnmower and children playing.
Arthur didn't look at him. He stared at his flower beds, his expression shifting from mild annoyance to something more weathered, more knowing. "You didn't just come all this way to return a medical accessory," he stated. "You're looking for answers. Like your parents did."
The easy, playful energy around Alistair vanished. It was like a light had been switched off inside him. He set his lemonade down carefully. "Their journals mention you. Several times. They spoke with you before they… before they left."
Arthur nodded slowly. "Henry and Elara Finch. Good people. The best kind of curious. Not greedy for gold or power. Hungry for understanding. They weren't just looking for what was true—which tomb held which relic, which god lived where. Anyone can make a map of that chaos." He finally turned his gaze to Alistair. It was the gaze of a commander, a king who had seen the patterns in the fog of war. "They were looking for why. Why is any of it true? What is the root? They called it the 'First Story.' The source myth. The one that all the others are just echoes of, or arguments with."
A cold thrill, entirely different from the scabbard's warmth, shot down Alistair's spine. This was it. The thread he'd been clutching for years.
Arthur reached into the pocket of his khakis and pulled out a simple, cream-colored business card. He handed it to Alistair.
It was blank except for two things. In the center, a symbol: an ouroboros, a serpent eating its own tail, but the circle it formed was shaped unmistakably like a keyhole. Beneath it, an address. But the numbers and letters didn't correspond to any city or state Alistair knew. It read: "Between, 3rd Whisperspin, The Spire's Shadow."
"They frequented a place," Arthur said, his voice low. "A neutral ground for our kind. A tavern between the cracks. If you want to walk their path, to find what they were searching for… start there." He leaned forward slightly, the ghost of Excalibur's weight in his posture. "But be careful, Finch. Your parents were brilliant, and they had hearts as brave as yours. They still vanished. Some stories… aren't meant to be finished. Some doors aren't meant to be opened."
Alistair stared at the card. The keyhole symbol seemed to pulse faintly against the paper, a subtle, beckoning magic. The warm, protective weight of the just-returned scabbard was gone, an errand completed. In its place was this: a cold, thrilling, terrifying key. A first clue.
He looked up from the card, out past Arthur's perfect fence, past Camelot Crescent, to the empty blue of the suburban sky. A slow smile touched his lips, but it was a different smile than the one he'd worn in the monster truck arena or the Leprechaun's vault. This one was thinner, sharper, and it didn't reach his eyes, which had darkened, fixed on a horizon far beyond lawns and lemonade.
He pocketed the card. The paper felt like a lodestone against his chest.
"Since when," Dr. Alistair Finch said softly, the words a vow to the quiet afternoon, "have I ever been careful?"