(Oct 28)
Blue Laurel
Shepherd’s End
Spring 11, Night
Xalati and the ranch family hear the pops and see the flashes, and Xalati leaves her family in a circle at the Fighting Stones and takes Yev to investigate.
Sal, who had gone after the Sheriff, finds Xalati and her family and tells them a large group of jellies blocked his route out, on the opposite side of the town; Xal tells him to warn everyone at the hearth, but instead they end up rescuing an old couple from an electric jelly.
Miranda, Gwin, Aureya and Peach run for the Wanderlust, where Miranda says she has a cache of weapons. Instead, she locks them in the pantry and tells them to stay there and stay safe. Aureya bargains with her tail that she’ll cut a slit in her skirt to give it more freedom, if it’ll slip under the door and unbar the door on the other side
Ava, Esmund, and Kaisi see the parents of a small family get struck by lightning jellies; Ava tries to save one by redirecting lightning, but can’t quite manage it in time. Both of them turn into three jellies apiece, though one is killed; the teens gather up the children and run for it.
Kibeth gets to the Hearth and shouts that the jellies are coming, they all need to run, which succeeds in making everyone scatter and run in random directions. Seyfried and Kibeth get their siblings to shelter in a barn, while they try to find Kibeth’s parents and older siblings. They do manage to find Kibeth’s father and Seyfried’s older siblings.
At the physicker, now filled with people with contusions and burns, Ava manages to use the technique she tried before to expel a jelly from an old woman. Another patient starts to convulse, and Xalati has to physically throw Teredian out of the physickers and get everyone uninfected to evacuate, heading north as a wave of electric blue jellies cut them off to the east and south.
As they reach the Hearth, they see a horde of blue jellies arrive and shimmy together to combine into a giant blue laurel chicken jelly. Xalati throws a packet of bread at it and runs off to the side along with Kibeth, successfully luring it away from the Hearth. Everyone remaining at the Hearth starts running north toward the lighthouse. Xalati manages to draw the blue chicken jelly away for a while before hiding, but then it gets distracted by a sound at the Hearth while Esmund helps Xalati climb up from the well she’d hidden in.
The blue chicken arrives at the Dry Iron Inn where Ava and Kibeth are; as it attacks, Teredian interposes himself and the chicken tears him apart. Gilgain tells them to run and is immediately blasted by a ray of lightning from the chicken, along with a swathe of the fleeing crowd. Xalati and Esmund catch up, and they attempt to distract the chicken again, but it refuses and instead blasts the crowd, until Miranda comes flying in to stab the chicken and distract it from Ava before getting torn apart herself (her last words: “Tell her I was a hero.”). Esmund grabs his mother and runs north at her urging. Xalati and Kibeth continue to try and distract the chicken, but it seems content now to settle down on the Hearth, after scratching at the ground a bit more.
Near the Fighting Stones, everyone not at the Hearth finds Xalati’s family fighting a wave of gray puddings, and Aureya, Kaisi and Salinger all manage to save various members of her family from being struck by puddings. Kaisi sparks his lighter as the jellies retreat to the grass and sets it on fire, as the various siblings and families gather in Kibeth’s family barn. The fire swirls into one vortex that splits into three jellies, which then combine into a fiery fox shape that runs off.
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