Lore

Alexandra Bracken

Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2021

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Part 2, Chapters 25-28Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 2: “Carrying Fire”

Part 2, Chapter 25 Summary

The group splits up to go to the museum—Lore traveling with Athena. On the way, they discuss the aegis and the poem, Athena expressing her displeasure at the House of Perseus allowing it to be stolen. Lore keeps quiet, knowing her greatest trial will come when Athena finds out Wrath “didn’t have the aegis after all” (223). In the middle of the conversation, Lore feels a weapon against her back. It’s a hunter from the House of Theseus, there to capture Lore for Wrath. Lore disables him, and Athena finishes him off.

Part 2, Chapter 26 Summary

At the museum, Lore and Athena find Castor, Miles, and dead security guards who were likely murdered by Dionysus. Castor stays on lookout duty while Athena, Lore, and Miles search for Dionysus. They find a trail of destruction leading through doors “that had been kicked in by force” and follow the trail until they hear booming crashes (230). A wounded Dionysus rummages through boxes in an abandoned storage room. Before Lore can figure out how to approach him, Miles’s phone rings loudly. Dionysus punches through the wall and grabs Lore by the throat.

Part 2, Chapter 27 Summary

Lore manages to stab Dionysus and escape his hold. She orders Miles to get Castor and helps Athena break into the storage room. Castor arrives, and the three try to talk Dionysus down from his rage, offering him an alliance if he acts as bait to draw Wrath out. Dionysus refuses, saying he’d rather die and “end this farce of an existence” (236).

For a second time, Athena offers an alliance. Again, Dionysus refuses, offering instead answers to two questions of the group’s choosing. Athena agrees. Dionysus taunts Athena, and Lore defends the goddess’s nature, turning the tide to blame Dionysus for the dead bodies in the museum. Confused, Dionysus responds he hasn’t killed since the very beginning of the Agon, and if there are dead bodies “it wasn’t my blade that did them in” (237).

Part 2, Chapter 28 Summary

The group puzzles over what two questions to ask Dionysus. Before Lore, Castor, or Athena can come up with anything, Miles asks why Dionysus sided with Wrath but Hermes didn’t. Dionysus answers, and Miles goes on to make statements of possibilities, effectively “getting answers by testing assumptions, not by asking questions” as a loophole to Dionysus’s agreement terms (239). They learn Hermes left Dionysus before the Agon to hide something, which Dionysus believes he’s supposed to find.

Athena asks the second question—what Lore’s part is in everything. Dionysus will only tell Lore, and the two separate from the group. Wrath wants Lore because he believes she has the aegis, and he’ll “do just about anything to get it back” (241). Dionysus also reveals he searched for Hermes, which allowed him to find Lore as well because Hermes was with Lore. Gil was Hermes.

Part 2, Chapters 25-28 Analysis

As an outsider to the Agon, Miles both helps and hinders the group’s mission in ways new to hunters. When the group stalks Dionysus, Miles’s phone rings, giving the group’s position away. With all the hunters’ advanced technology and training, a ringing phone exposed them, showing the Agon society isn’t as superior as its people believe. Miles also thinks differently than the hunters. Dionysus offers answers to two questions. While Lore and the others ponder on what two questions to ask, Miles asks the first question that comes to mind and then makes statements that infer information, effectively finding a loophole in Dionysus’s deal. The hunter mindset is hundreds of years old, and there is little room for new concepts or creative thinking. By contrast, Miles can think on the fly and doesn’t overanalyze, a result of the modern world’s influence.

Chapter 28 confirms that Gil was Hermes in disguise. While this news devastates Lore because she truly believed she had escaped the Agon, it also shows how powerful our beliefs can be. Over the last seven years, Lore’s perceived freedom gave her the ability to find her true self buried within the Agon’s propaganda. Away from the constant belittling, she cultivated self-confidence and grew into an independent person who made her own decisions. In the end, that part of her life was a lie, but the lie gave her the strength to move on from much of the Agon’s hold on her. Reality and a person’s perception of reality are two different things, and the perception is what influences us. Lore was still trapped within the Agon’s world, but her perceptions told her she wasn’t, which allowed her to change.