Editing Blake Thorburn (section)

=== Sine Dine ===
Blake and Green Eyes manage to find a corpse and salvage bones from it before running into a number of Others, including the [[Faceless Woman]] and the [[Pizza Man]] who accompanies her at the behest of [[Alister Behaim]] as a distraction. They decide to team up and Blake plans to go after the Behaim's source of power like he did the husbands only to arrive and see his friends and family with the Behaims. Alister gives the key to his family power to Blake stating that a tragedy would occur in 40 seconds. When the seconds passed the [[Hillglades House]] began sinking down with Alister explaining that the entire town is sinking into the Abyss and the only way to stop it was to let him use the power, preventing Blake from getting rid of the ring so that they could work together to stop it and stop [[Johannes Lillegard|Johannes]].

Blake and Rose divide into groups, with him getting [[Tiffany]], [[Peter Thorburn]], [[Roxanne Thorburn]], [[Faceless Woman]], [[Green Eyes]] and [[Evan Matthieu]]. They run into [[Jeremy Meath]] again, who loans him a maenad and satyr to assist him, but warns not to get them killed. The group the encounters a [[Giant]] and [[Dragon]], which sets him and Green Eyes aflame. Both are seriously damaged as a result, but Blake manages to get to a store and begins repairing himself. He tries to create wings, but the [[Abyss]] taunts him with them being broken unless he's willing to sacrifice his face.

Blake convinces it to give him the wings and in exchange he'll send something bigger to it and his sweatshirt tears to become the pinions of the bat-like wings. He uses them, along with Evan, to wound the Giant and Dragon, and then retreat off to the witch's hut. In the air above the forest they were set up by a horde of turkey vultures and crows, forcing them to land. Inside of it Blake unraveled a trap before being attacked by an [[Astral]] being until [[John Pica]] arrived to kill it. He doesn't trust Pica because of a vision he witnessed of him smiling at [[Crone Mara]], who they encounter as a thirteen year old girl.

He talks to distract her, but once that fails he tries to attack Pica, who he knows is working for her with absolute certainty after she protects him. Pica swaps [[the Hyena]], giving it to Mara, for one of her dolls. Before she could use it [[Rose Thorburn Junior|Rose]] appeared with the [[Knights of the Basement]] to confront them both when Pica pulls out the mirror holding [[Conquest]]. Rose stops the mirror from breaking and bind Pica in place, but Mara flees after giving one of the Knights of the Basement a heart attack and then Blake chases her to find Pica dead. Mara appears afterwards in a circle of blood and feathers, holding Alexis hostage, and wants him to kill himself. When he turns around to pick up the Hyena blade she kills Alexis and he attack in rage to no avail.

While angry he takes a moment, at Evan's question about retrieving Pica's body like he'd asked, to realize the trap and stabbed where he was. When the crow spirit died, turning to feathers, he found the strands of Letita's hair he used, figuring it was a [[glamour]], and takes Mara with the others, fearing that the next time an ally in disguise appeared to almost fool him it would be the third time.

While the others arrange for the circle to be made to hold her, he and Rose discuss matters and he formally surrenders, stating he has no intention of going after her for the fractured remains of their progenitor's life. If he does try and win they should assume he's gone too far and put him down, but all he asks is that they leave a flower on the grave of [[Zoey Artana]] if he's unable to. The interrogation with Mara reveals that Johannes is responsible and he's going to the Hillglades House. There he finds the others and listens to Johannes bargain, reviewing how Mara stated that the deal would make everyone unhappy in the end, and states that [[Faysal Anwar|Faysal]], who acts as the one that can provide the most boons, wasn't working against [[Barbatorem]] in this approach.

After Blake reveals that because the Hillglades House is connected to the Thorburn name and with their collective consent they would all fall with it if they went through with the deal, Johannes reveals it was never his intention to do so, but Faysal did. Before Johannes can stop his familiar, they are dragged into the Abyss and Barbatorem is set loose.