Chapter 127: Bonding with Iris
’It’s enough for now,’ Medusa said. ’Some things are better explained properly, not rushed through while you’re busy pretending not to talk to a voice in your head.’
Leon exhaled quietly, recognizing he wasn’t going to get much further right now, not with Iris sitting directly across from him, watching his every reaction with growing curiosity.
He closed the book gently, setting it down on his lap, his mind still turning over everything Medusa had, and hadn’t, told him.
"Well?" Iris asked, leaning forward slightly. "What was that about? You went somewhere else entirely just now."
Leon considered his answer carefully before speaking.
"I was just thinking about something." he said. "Its nothing for you to worry about."
Iris studied him for a long moment, clearly disappointed by the vague answer, though she didn’t press him further.
Instead, she leaned back slightly, a small, thoughtful smile tugging at the corner of her mouth.
"You’re strange, you know that?" she said. "Most players I’ve met either ignore everything I say entirely, or humor me just to be polite. You’re the first one who actually seems like all of this genuinely matters to you."
Leon met her gaze for a moment, considering how much of that assessment was actually true.
Whatever his original reasons for asking about Arthur, Medusa, and Hermes, curiosity alone hadn’t been driving him.
He needed these answers, needed to understand exactly what he’d become tangled up in since his talent had first pulled Excalibur free from wherever it had been hidden.
Still, sitting here now, surrounded by old books and quiet conversation, he found himself admitting, at least internally, that some part of him had genuinely enjoyed the last hour more than he expected to.
"Maybe I’m just different," he said finally, offering her a small, faint smile of his own.
Iris studied him a moment longer, something warm flickering briefly behind her earlier caution, before she reached over and pulled another book down from the shelf beside her, setting it carefully on the table between them.
"Well," she said, "if you’re really that interested, I’ve got plenty more where that came from."
*
The hours slipped by quietly, one book giving way to another as Iris pulled title after title down from the shelves, each one adding another layer to the picture slowly forming in Leon’s mind.
They’d moved from the study into the front room at some point, the low table between them now covered in open books.
They sat on the couch, quite close to each other, making it easy to lean over and point things out without needing to shift far.
Neither of them seemed to notice the change in position that much anymore.
Iris read certain passages aloud when she found something she particularly liked, her voice growing more animated the longer they sat there, her earlier caution around him fading with every shared page.
Leon, for his part, found himself genuinely absorbed, flipping through sections on his own whenever something caught his eye, no longer needing her guidance to know where to look.
He learned more about Hermes properly this time, reading through an entire Chapter dedicated to the messenger god’s exploits, stories of him delivering impossible messages across vast distances, outrunning storms, slipping past enemies who never even saw him coming.
He learned about Heracles as well, a name that hadn’t come up in conversation yet, but one he stumbled across while flipping through a different volume Iris handed him without comment.
The text described a man of monstrous strength, tasked with completing labors considered impossible for anyone else, each one more dangerous than the last.
"There’s an entire section on him further back," Iris said, noticing where his attention had drifted. "My grandmother loved that one. Said strength without purpose was meaningless, and his story proved it better than almost any other."
Leon absorbed that quietly, filing it away alongside everything else he’d already learned that afternoon.
They moved through name after name as the hours passed, some familiar now, others entirely new to him.
A goddess of wisdom who valued strategy over brute force. A trickster god known for reshaping the rules of any game he was forced to play. A hunter goddess who answered to no one, tied to the moon and the wild places most people feared to travel.
Leon found himself increasingly struck by how consistent everything felt across different books, different authors, different eras of writing entirely.
The details rarely contradicted each other in any meaningful way, the same names carrying the same core traits no matter which specific text he happened to be reading from.
"Your grandmother collected all of this herself?" he asked at one point, glancing around at the sheer volume of material still stacked on the shelves in the other room.
"Most of it," Iris said. "Some came from my grandfather originally. She just kept adding to it after he passed."
"Wow... that’s a lot of dedication." Leon said.
Iris shrugged slightly, though a small, proud smile tugged at her mouth. "She always said dismissing something didn’t make it any less true."
Leon nodded slowly, turning another page. Whatever else he’d learned today, he was fairly certain her grandmother had been right about that much, at least.
Outside, the light filtering through the front window had shifted considerably since they’d first sat down, the sharp afternoon brightness softening gradually into something warmer, more golden.
Neither of them had paid much attention to the changing light until Iris glanced up eventually, noticing it herself.
"It’s getting late," she said, sounding mildly surprised. "We’ve been at this for hours."
Leon blinked, realizing she was right. He’d lost track of time entirely somewhere between Heracles and the trickster god, too absorbed in cross-referencing details against everything he already knew firsthand to notice the day slipping away around him.
"Guess we have," he said.
Iris closed the book currently open in her lap, setting it down gently on top of the small pile already accumulated on the table.
"I don’t think I’ve talked about any of this for this long with anyone before," she admitted, glancing at him almost shyly. "Usually people lose interest after the first few minutes."
"I didn’t," Leon said simply.
"No," she agreed, a small laugh slipping out. "You really didn’t. I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone who asked this many questions about any of it."