Desiree spends the night at Milton's house and is awakened twice: once by his Grandmother sneaking into her room with a knife (upon being confronted, she acts weird and leaves) and once by his father yelling stock quotes and other things from upstairs. All par for the course.
In the morning, there's much discussion about what to do, and plans are hit upon - Magda will try to coordinate with the Countess, and Desiree will go talk to Sir Ten. Magda and Milton discover that the Countess and Count have gone to the Duchess's court to talk with here. The secretary thinks that the Countess is going to tell off the Duchess. They even took some guards with them, including "that dreamy Sir Oakleaf".
No sooner is this information on the plate than the Countess calls Magda. Come quick, the Duchess is attacking her and the Count has turned against her! Magda tears off for the court in Belmont, as does Milton.
Magda arrives and tears in the door, finding only a couple of guards (although she can hear fighting upstairs. They tell her to stop... she unsheathes the Tenth Child and chops them both in half in one mighty blow. She's halfway up the stairs before they finish twitching.
Upstairs, she sees that someone (presumably the Countess) is barricaded in a room down the hall, with guards outside trying to get in. Both the Count and the Duchess are also in the hall. Magda charges down and tries to catch the Duchess (who is closest to her) unawares, but her lumbering troll-charge is heard. The Duchess draws Chackalshek and the fight is on.
Magda unleashes the full fury of the Tenth Child, however, and though the Duchess is able to defend for a while, the cursed blade easily turns aside her attempts to attack and even pierces some time magic she is constructing. Then Magda uses the Tenth Child as a giant hammer of force and blows the Duchess first into, then through a wall. The rest of the guards retreat, and Magda rescues the Countess, who is holed up with Johnny and the Sidhe knights Sir Oakleaf and Sir Raithlen. They retreat. As Magda gets to the door with the Countess the guards attack again, and Johnny and the Sidhe knights fall in a rearguard action to let their leige escape.
Magda and the Countess then grabbed the Chariot of Radcliffe (actually a nice antique Rolls) and a crazed knocker chauffer and headed to New Your to try and get the Queen to resolve this mess.
In all that fighting, Milton snooped in the Duchess's office but found nothing of interest other than the hostile stick people, then when Magda threw the Duchess off a balcony Milton applied a healing herb to prevent the Duchess from dying. He then called an ambulance and tried to sneak off with Chackalshek in the ensuing confusion, but a guard stopped him. Somehow, however, he leaves the impression that he's on the Duchess's side.
Meanwhile, Desiree persuaded (well, it wasn't too hard) Victor to abandon his peculiar experiments and help her find Sir Ten in the dreaming. They walk along a beach for a while and find a white boat, which they get into (because how can you avoid a white boat in the dreaming?). The boat carries them over the ocean for a long way, until the air begins to fill with an unwholesome mist and the water turns greasy to the touch. Victor begins to worry what story they have entered. Strange slug-like things as large as your head begin to try to crawl into the boat. Finally, Desiree spots an island ahead - and recognizes it as the nameless island at the center of the bottomless ocean, beneath which the green fomorians are interned. She tells Victor, and they both agree that they shouldn't stick around. Victor persuades Desiree to let him use her in order to "rewrite the story". He somehow draws a large amount of dreaming from her and she passes out...
When she awakens again, she is on the shore near the lighthouse of abandonment.
Despite being very tired, she sets off to Sir Ten's encampment with Victor in tow - being very mad at him but not particularly talkative. Once there, she talks to Sir Ten and persuades him to stay his attack for a fortnight and render what aid he can to resolving things peacefully. He seems to believe that the Seer might be behind everything. Sir Ten also sends a letter to the Duchess in which it is mentioned in passing that the Seer helped him after she nearly slew him the first time in the hopes of subtly leading her to the conclusion that the Seer is the enemy. Sir Ten uses a gateway to send Desiree and Victor back to Desiree's apartment.
Meanwhile, Magda and the Countess meet with the Queen, who buys the whole story (or seems to, anyway) and decides something Must be Done. Tomorrow the Queen and her court will set out to Boston to resolve things. The only problem is that neither Magda nor the Countess is really sure what Queen Mab will do when she gets to Boston.
Player Notes:
I bet you Queen Mab's going to do something wacky... It's almost
required, if your name is Queen Mab. -MIN