The Games Gods Play

Zai tells Lyra how, after the Labor, Dex became furious with him for aligning with Lyra instead of the other members of the Mind virtue group. He and Rima, Apollo’s champion, kicked him out of their shared house. Lyra offers to break their alliance, but Zai refuses. She offers to have him stay with her and Hades, but Zai is unconvinced. Zai tells her that Rima isn’t allying with Dex out of principle, but rather because she’s against Lyra winning.

Zai specifies that Rima is terrified of Hades becoming the King of the Gods. They talk strategy, but Dex, Neve, Dae-Hyeon, and Samuel find them. Dex tries to intimidate Zai and force him to change allegiances. As they approach them, Zai and Lyra jump off the waterfall. Zai’s boots don’t activate quickly enough to allow him to catch Lyra before she plunges into the waterfall leading to the River Styx.

Lyra struggles as she is dragged by the river to the Underworld. When she arrives in a cavern with calm waters, she uses the tattoos on her arm to illuminate the place. She lies on the ground to catch her breath, and Cerberus finds her.

After its prodding, she explains what happened atop the waterfall. Cerberus tells her it was able to track her with the mark Hades gave her. Cerberus brings her to a dock because Charon, the ferryman of the dead, wants to meet her.

Charon arrives with dead souls. Lyra watches as an opening to Elysium opens for them, and she is awed by the paradise she sees inside. Charon tells her he’s been curious about her for some time. He wonders why she didn’t use Persephone’s pomegranate seeds to escape Dex and the others. Since he is not bound by the Crucible’s rules, he tells her how to properly use the seeds: by thinking of the place/person she wants to go to before ingesting the seed. Charon also tells her that Hades values loyalty above all, and he only has three friends. Hades arrives and looks Lyra over for injuries. Lyra realizes she likes him. Charon and Cerberus both state they like Lyra. Hades announces the third Labor is about to begin.

Lyra and the other champions find themselves in a cave in the jungle where Dionysus explains they must transport the expensive vodka he brought with him from the doline in the cave to a second doline near a waterfall a kilometer away. When Dionysus leaves, Dex addresses the other champions and tries to rally all of them against Lyra since he believes no one wants Hades to become the next King of the Gods. He accuses Lyra and Hades of cheating because of the number of relics she has, but she explains she’s had her axe and the dragon teeth prior to the Crucible. Dex proposes they all injure Lyra so she can no longer compete.

Lyra offers her knowledge about Aphrodite’s Labor as a bargaining chip to the other champions to convince them not to side with Dex. Meike, Amir, and Trinica side with Lyra and Zai, while Jackie and Diego decide to remain neutral, take as many bottles as they can handle, and leave the cave. The others side with Dex but do not harm Lyra.

Meike warns them that the jungle is filled with poison ivy and points it out for the others. Night is about to fall as they build a pallet to carry as much vodka as they can drag. When Meike is stung by the poison ivy, it leaves her with a large blister. By the time they finish the pallet, they’re all covered in blisters. When they set off, they see that the path to the second doline is full of poison ivy.

They struggle through the rockslide with their pallet. When one bottle of vodka smashes and splashes vodka everywhere, Lyra and her group realize the vodka cures the blisters instantly. They reserve one bottle to treat their wounds. Amir asks Lyra about her time as a thief and her humming habit. Later, Lyra worries about Zai since he’s prone to allergies. He reassures her because he has an EpiPen. They all talk about their reasons for wanting to win the Crucible. Lyra trips into a patch of ivy that feels like it closes over her while someone else screams.

Someone drags Lyra out of the vines, but the vodka doesn’t help, and her airways are closing. Zai uses his EpiPen on her. They realize that the vines come alive at night. They sacrifice more vodka, and when they hear Dex’s team screaming, Lyra elects to go help them. She finds them easily enough and shows them how to use the vodka for their wounds. When they return to Lyra’s team, Meike is on the ground, not healing despite the others using all their vodka on her.

With no other options left, Lyra offers to use one of her pearls to transport Meike out of the Labor. The others agree, and Lyra teleports them to Zai’s room for one of his EpiPens and uses it on her. Hades is there, furious with her. He teleports her to the Underworld because the Daemones will soon come to take her to punish her for breaking the rules by using another relic. When they arrive, Hades offers himself in her stead. They drag him away.

Two days later, Charon and Cerberus keep Lyra company. Hades has yet to return. Charon and Cerberus reveal that the Daemones tried to punish Hades previously when Lyra used the dragon teeth, but he’d managed to convince them she’d already owned them before the Crucible. They tell her the Daemones threatened to kill her this time, but Hades negotiated a lesser punishment for himself instead. She asks why he’s participating in the Crucible, but they won’t answer. They tell her that he and Persephone weren’t married despite her being the Queen of the Underworld and the creator of Elysium. A satyr appears, announcing that the next Labor—Apollo’s—will start the next day.

At Apollo’s home, Lyra confronts the Daemones and demands to see Hades. They refuse. Though they know he hasn’t broken a rule, they want to use him as an example for the other gods. Apollo appears with Artemis and announces that they will do both their fourth and fifth Labor together. Apollo explains his Labor: One after another, the champions will enter an enclosed room for two minutes at a time and try to find the trigger that will open a door. If they cannot find it within that time frame, they are returned to the room with the other champions and will need to wait until their next turn to try again. When they figure out the trigger and open the door, they will be given four flags for Artemis’s Labor. Each flag represents their Strength, Mind, Heart, and Courage. When a flag is removed, they lose the virtue; e.g., when the Courage flag is removed, they become excessively fearful. They will need to go through an obstacle course and give their remaining flags to their god. Lyra asks Zeles what she should do since Hades is still gone, but he doesn’t say.

The champions are confused when Zai is picked first instead of Rima. When Zai returns from the room, he informs Lyra and Meike that it contains a monstrous harp but nothing else. They divide the room to check for clues during their turns. As Dex returns from his turn, Lyra mocks him and his foreknowledge ability for being useless. He goes to fight her, but Samuel defends her. When Lyra goes into the room, her tattoos help her investigate, but they find nothing. Zai tells them the harp bit him when he tried to approach it. When Lyra next goes into the room, she unconsciously starts humming, which opens a door in the room. Her flags appear, and she realizes the challenge is to create music, and she’s won the Labor.

Lyra hesitates to go through the new door. She returns to the champions and bargains with them: She will give them the answer to Apollo’s Labor if they swear not to hurt any of the champions during either Labor. Some doubt her intentions, but Dex eventually agrees, and the others follow suit. Lyra reveals the answer, but by returning to the room with the champions, she forfeits her turn and must wait until the other 11 champions visit the room before she can take on Artemis’s Labor. Zai and Meike offer to wait for her, but Lyra encourages them to run the obstacle course instead.

When Lyra emerges from the room to start Artemis’s Labor, Diego is there waiting. He tells her he wants to play the Labors with integrity, and she has earned her right to begin the obstacle course before him. Lyra sets off through a cave where bats try to take her and Diego’s flags away. Now in total darkness, Diego uses his halo artifact to illuminate the way. Just as they’re about to exit the cave, something captures Lyra’s Courage flag, and she falls.

Beset by fear, Lyra takes a moment to lean into the sensation. They press on and arrive at a junkyard where they are attacked by Stymphalian birds. She and Diego get separated, and Lyra finds Neve hiding in car scraps. She has lost her Courage flag and her Mind flag and cannot rally herself to escape the junkyard. Distracted, a bird steals Lyra’s Strength flag. Pain flares, and Lyra hides from the birds. Eventually, she and Neve crawl back to the path and make their way to a wide-open field. When the birds come to attack them again, Neve leaves Lyra behind, and Lyra loses her Mind flag to nymphs of meadows. Panic besets her just as she sees a dragon coming for her.

Confused but given moments of clarity because of her fear, Lyra runs from the dragon and its flames. She sees Hades just as dragon fire catches her arm. She crumbles but forces herself to go to him when the dragon comes to attack her again. She runs for him, and the minute he touches her, the fear, confusion, and some of the pain disappears. She offers her Heart flag to him—the only thing she has left to offer him. He accepts it and claims it’s the only thing he needs.