Dantaylion has some pretty awful dreams about people eating people and skeletons, and when he wakes up, he’s holding The Sicle. Freaking out, he throws it across the bed and a pillow on top of it before wrapping it in a sheet and shoving it in a bag and then calling up Lilja as he goes to look for Rook. Lilja has not seen Robin and comes through the trump connection and they both find Rook. Rook manages to get that Dante would be able use the Jewel to suss out if it’s still connected to Robin and sadly he finds that it’s connected to himself now. And Crow. 

Lilja thinks that there is some of Greer’s research that might relate to the sicle that she could look up. Rook gives everyone a refresh on what the sickle is - a spikard, and that the spikard is used to bind the old gods, and this one is Owl and the mirror realm, connected to the Logrus the way that Bleys’ pattern blade is connected to the pattern. 

They agree to break to do morning things and then come back and see if we can talk to Crow about the sickle and then shake down Dworkin. 

Entering into the room, Dantaylion feels the sort of after-effects of magic, and he asks Crow if his Sorcery is still able to be done and Crow confirms he can, just little things. 

According to Crow, the sickle just kind of showed up one day, Greer didn’t tell him much about it before passing it on. Rook also gives Crow the full infodump of everything that has happened so far - Greer is dead, killed by the inquisition, we’re all descended from the one who founded Amber. 

While they talk, Dantaylion gets a vision of someone else suddenly into the room. - someone with a gray cloak and mask that matches the description of the Iron Scarab. Dantaylion leaves the room so he can better talk to the iron scarab - they have to talk via writing down notes first until he takes up the sickle and is able to speak to the Iron Scarab so that they can hear one another. He gets that the Iron Scarab thinks Osric might be his brother, and that his father killed him and most of his siblings so no he doesn’t have any family looking for him. He wants to not be in the deadlands anymore, and given that he hasn’t ben an ass like the Ferocious Death Sage, Dante promises to look into it. 

While inside talking to Crow, Rook gets a trump call. It’s Caine, he’s injured, he asks Rook to bring him through. Bleys calls Rook almost right after, with the same request, but closes the trump call when Rook tells him Caine is there and he calls Dante instead. The both of them end up telling more or less the same story. Bleys came to Caine to try to talk to him and convince him that Oberon was a horrible person, referencing a bunch of things that Caine doesn’t remember. Caine drew steel first, but Bleys responded in kind. Caine tells Rook that Bleys was acting unlike himself, acting ‘crazy’. Bleys says Caine is denying things that everyone knew happened. Dantaylion asks Bleys if there’s any proof of what he is saying happened, and he says yes there is, but back in Amber, so it isn’t like he can go back. 

Lilja heals Caine’s stomach wound with a shapeshift other, and then steps out of the room to call Bleys to see if he needs healing only to almost run straight into him. Neither enjoy the sensation, but it works. Since Dantaylion has the sickle now, it starts pinging hard off of the pattern blade - like the two items are having a conversation, until it intensifies to the sensation of nails on a chalkboard. 

In the cell, Crow stupidly tries to pickpocket Caine for his trump deck, only to have Caine almost stab him and say he doesn’t like thieves. Crow says he’s bored. 

They head out into the hall only to run right into Bleys. It doesn’t go well, they both pull weapons but do not actually fight, and with some work the three Hesse kids we all get to the sitting room and get some tea. Bleys goes over the list of horrible things Oberon has done, like the murders of his wives. Cain says what he remembers - that some might have died in shitty ways, but they weren’t cartoonishly evil. 

After the yelling, they agree that out of all the siblings they do not share a mother with, Benedict is the one that they trust the most. Seeing the image of him, Dantaylion notices a family resemblance and asks about Osric and finds out about Osric and Finndo. 

Giving Benedict a call, they pull him through. He looks like he’s been living the farm life, and more or less down the line confirms that Caine is correct. While Bleys is pissed, he clearly isn’t willing to throw hands at Benedict. 

Before he leaves, he asks Lilja how Lintra is doing, and Lilja tells him she is well. He nods and leaves. They convince Bleys to allow himself to be checked by Mandor for any high compulsions or memory alterations. He agrees, as long as he can bring someone along with, and calls Mirelle. Altogether we go to see Mandor and while a surface scan does not show any tampering, Bleys, annoyed, agrees to a deeper one. 

While the scan is going on - many of Mandor’s balls entering into the mix - Dantaylion suddenly vanishes. He gets the sense of falling through the ground opening up under him and being pulled in multiple directions, and then ending up on his back in a field of flowers with a squirrel nearby. Lilja, when she notices him gone, trumps him only to end up pulled through as well without either of them intending it. 

Back at Mandor’s - Rook suddenly finds themself laying on their back. The others in the room do as well, but once they stand they don’t recall getting knocked down at all and believe they were always standing. Mandor says he finds nothing wrong with Bleys’ memory, and they return to the twisting branches. When they get there, Dantaylion trimps Rook and they get back, with flower crowns. 

There is a thought that maybe Bleys’ pattern blade is functioning like the sickle - as in binding a god and possibly being a corridor to someplace. Mirelle also doesn’t believe it took that long for Mandor to check out Bleys - only Rook seems to know it took longer than a few minutes. So, this is something big that’s changing reality. 

With nothing else left to go for, they pull out the old trimp of Dworkin and call him, getting a “You’re late!” when they make contact. Dante says “you could have called us!” and they get pulled through. When they get in, they end up in an underground cavern, and Mirelle falls asleep and Bleys looks as though frozen in time. Dworkin hands Dantaylion a laundry basket with baby sloths hanging off poles in it. Dantaylion is also momentarily frozen because this is the cutest thing that he has ever seen, which shuts Rook down as being too cute to witness, and seeing Rook smile shuts Lilja down. 

Once they all get back on track, they ask if Dworkin knows what happened with the missing time. He says it seems to be something beyond a simple compulsion - he can’t check with Bleys because the pattern blade connection makes that a difficult thing to suss out.