Daphne cruised through the crossing river channels, exploring the nooks and backwaters with her Water Control. She could sense the vivid and active life even in the quietest parts of the weed-choked sloughs. The river teemed with life, and she took pleasure in sampling the flavor of the various small fish as she passed them by.
So far, the salmon remained her favorite food. They tasted sweet, rich and complex. Their bodies were filled with spiritual energy collected on their long maturation in the sea, and it filled them with flavor and a depth of balanced energy. The tastiest of the local river fish could not compare to them.
The summer spawning run was coming to an end, fewer and fewer salmon were pushing upstream. Soon they would be gone, their life cycle completed, their bodies feeding and fertilizing the waters and the land.
Daphne had noticed the shrinking numbers of salmon and had begun to actively search for the few remaining. She noticed a small group of them coming upstream, just at the limits of her perception. She idly turned towards them, planning to make a quick hunt of this group, when suddenly almost all of them stiffened and rolled over. Most of the stunned salmon sank towards the bottom, while a smaller number floated up to the surface, bellies up.
Daphne was immediately curious what caused this mass of her favorite prey to do this, and she quietly approached. The few untouched salmon swam past her, disregarded.
As she grew closer, she detected a massive fish quickly swallowing the stunned salmon drifting along the bottom. It was enormous, each salmon easily swallowed with a single powerful gulp.
It was a river catfish, its presence dominated by its massive head and jaws, a pair of long whiskers protruding from its upper lip. From the huge head, the long fat body tapered slowly to a relatively tiny tail. It had an anal fin that ran almost the length of its body from the abdomen to just below the tail. The entire fish was a dark steel gray, lightening to a paler color on its belly.
As Daphne watched, a few of the stunned salmon began to twitch and make abbreviated swimming motions. The catfish stiffened and turned towards the livening fish, its whiskers extending outwards. Then, the entire body of the catfish rippled in a strange way, and Daphne felt the water around the catfish pulse with energy that moved in huge, curved arcs centered on the great fish. These invisible water arcs intersected with the waking salmon, and they stiffened into immobility again.
A skill!
The catfish was using spiritual power to use a skill! It was a Spirit Beast!
She instantly determined to hunt the huge fish and collect its power for herself, but she would not foolishly charge in. She had grown smarter, more strategic since killing the squawker. It would be best to slowly stalk this beast, to gain a sense of its powers and its weaknesses.
Daphne held her distance from the catfish just at the edge of her range of perception, she had no way of knowing yet if it had a similar ability to sense through the water as she did.
So far, the catfish hadn’t given any sign of noticing her presence, it was quickly chasing down the remaining stunned salmon. First the sunken fish had been swallowed up, then it rose to the surface and slurped up the floaters. They had traveled a fair distance downriver, so the catfish followed them downstream quite far before beginning its return.
Upon returning it slipped languidly into a deep hole excavated in the river bottom, above the hole was a thick tangle of sunken trees, waterlogged and jumbled together, half buried in the sediment. Some long ago flood had dropped them here, and the water and sediment had gradually covered them in a thick layer of silt. They made a formidable barrier for anything attacking the catfish’s hideaway from above. Daphne however, found it easy to navigate through, she was much smaller than the catfish and could find many small gaps to hide in.
Daphne found a quiet nook in the log pile and sat quietly to watch the catfish. She had plenty of time.
Over a day passed and the catfish remained motionless in its hole, digesting the salmon. Daphne grew hungry, so she slipped away to find food outside of the catfish’s potential sight or perception. After a quick meal of some carp, she returned.
She was shocked to find the catfish on the move!
It had swum out of its hole and was cruising out into the middle of the channel along the bottom.
Daphne noticed another small group of salmon swimming upriver almost directly above the catfish.
The catfish arched its body into a rigid curve, its whiskers pointing out stiffy. The fish’s body quivered, and Daphne felt the strange arcs appear, looping out from the catfish’s tail and whiskers into the water in ever expanding arcs, as soon as they reached the salmon the fish stiffened spasmodically. The catfish relaxed the skill and the salmon drifted away, limp in the current. Most of them sank, drifting downwards towards the waiting catfish, while a small few floated up and began bobbing downstream.
Daphne watched as the catfish began gulping down the stunned fish. With her water senses, Daphne realized that several of the fish were not merely stunned, but dead. She could sense inside their bodies now that their lives had stopped. She was surprised to sense that their muscles still were tightly convulsed. Tiny arcs of electricity were racing through the salmon’s tissues.
Lightning.
The catfish had lightning powers!
It was sending out intense fields of electricity from its body, electrocuting and stunning the fish in the water. Daphne was alarmed at this development. She needed to determine the range this skill had, or she would have a very difficult time attacking. If she was shocked immobile by the lightning, she could be easily killed by the catfish without any way to fight back.
She could possibly fight the catfish at a distance, staying outside of its range while sniping at it with Piercing Intent.
The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.
She realized that she did not know the effective range that Piercing Intent had, generally she had always preferred to close and fire at her enemy from point-blank range. Kiting her enemy from a distance wasn’t a tactic she had ever practiced. She needed to do that immediately, before trying to attack.
She pulled away from the catfish’s area into another channel. Looking for targets to practice on.
A small school of sharpbellies swam into her perception and she began sniping at the baitfish. If she could effectively hit one, she’d get a good understanding of her range with Piercing Intent, as well as a sense of how lethal the skill was at various distances.
After firing while slowly closing on the sharpbellies, she began to hit the fish cleanly when they were within twenty yards of her position. It was very difficult to accurately target beyond hitting the school itself, so she wasn’t accurate at that range. At approximately fifteen yards, she was able to reliably hit and kill any fish she targeted. Within six or seven yards, the small fish were torn apart by the force of the sharp Piercing Intent.
Daphne now felt confident in her own range and accuracy, she now planned to attack from fifteen or so yards, which was farther than the catfish’s lightning arcs had spread when it stunned the salmon.
She circled around and began watching the sleeping lightning catfish once again. For several days, it did nothing but shift around occasionally in the hole, content to digest its last feast. Daphne impatiently watched and waited, hoping to catch it as it was focussed on its own hunt, out in the open. The pile of logs covering the hole left Daphne with very limited ways to attack the fish while it was in its den; she couldn’t get a shot without coming deep inside the range of the lightning arcs.
Finally, her wait ended and the fish slowly oozed out of its hole to hunt. This time, the catfish seemed to be after a huge school of young carp, swimming through the thickets of weeds close to shore. The individual fish were tiny compared to the salmon, but there were hundreds of baby fish in the school. The catfish inserted itself into the weeds in the path of the school while Daphne followed at a safe distance behind it.
As the carp swam overhead, the catfish stiffened into an arch and began emitting lightning using its skill. The water boiled with the spasms of the carps, the small fish on the edge of the skill’s range seemed to go berserk instead of being stunned, they flung themselves forward and upward, flying out of the water and jumping through the air in all directions. Unlike the salmon, the bulk of the baby carp floated up to the surface, forming a twitching silvery slick of stunned fish. The catfish swam upwards and began gulping huge mouthfuls of the fish at once.
Daphne moved into her attack position as the catfish gorged. Staying carefully fifteen yards away, she aimed with care at the huge fish’s head. She began firing aimed shots of Piercing Intent, first at the head and then switching aim to the catfish’s abdomen.
The first shot of Intent slashed through the catfish’s skull just behind its eye, destroying the eye and piercing the bone, but missing the fish’s brain. This blow wasn’t lethal, but it was agonizingly painful, the catfish exploded from the water, splashing to the surface in pain and shock. Most of Daphne’s following shots made superficial wounds on the enraged fish.
It plunged down into the water and instantly arched into its skill, powerful arcs of electricity radiated outwards from the bleeding, pulsing fish.
Daphne’s body gave a lurch, she was inside the range of the catfish’s electricity! She was unable to move her antennae or her phyllopods, her vision flashed alternately brilliant white and total blackness. She instinctively activated Water Control and pulled herself backwards with it, away from the catfish’s electricity. Several yards further back and the influence of the electricity dropped dramatically.
Daphne was able to see and control her own movements again.
She had wounded the catfish badly, but it was clear that in an emergency, the huge fish was able to dramatically increase the power and range of the lightning skill. There was not a safe range she could snipe the fish at. Besides, now that the catfish was injured, it was likely to hole up in its den to heal. She would need to take the fight to the catfish, to close the range to stabbing distance and go for an instant kill.
She had destroyed one of its eyes, so it was partially blinded. What if she blinded the fish completely? If she created a storm of muddy bottom muck to completely occlude the water, she could hide in the cloud of murk and approach unseen. She would likely need to create intense cross currents to make her movements inaudible as well. Daphne didn’t need to see, Water Control told her everything she needed to know about the water, no matter how turbid it was.
She sculled upstream and activated Water Control, taking hold of the currents with her skill and churning the silty bottom, throwing up plumes of mud into the water. She created a giant spinning cloud of muddy water and hurled it into the catfish's den. The roiling mud clouds quickly covered the log pile, obscuring them and the sunken entrance to the den.
Daphne stalked closer slowly, throwing churning muddy crosscurrents ahead of her, the crossing streams of water roared with vibrating competing pressures, vastly drowning out her silent approach.
The catfish was alarmed, still bleeding from the injuries Daphne had inflicted, and confused by the loud and muddy currents, very unusual for this quiet backwater outside of the flood season. Its whiskers whipped back and forth through the water, questing for information, searching for scents and vibrations that would warn it of danger.
To late!
Daphne had closed within striking distance, less than ten feet from the giant catfish’s heat. She activated Speed Boost and charged directly at the fish, her necktooth aimed directly between its eyes.
She slammed into the catfish at top speed, not giving it enough time to react to her approach. The necktooth pierced directly into the catfish’s skull and into its tiny brain. A killing blow.
Even in death, the catfish was not done, the catastrophic damage to its brain sent its lightning powers haywire. Nearly all the stored lightning the catfish had was released in one huge surge! Blue-white arcs of energy whipped outwards from the fish’s whiskers, arcing through Daphne’s carapace then pulsing out to arc around and reenter the catfish at its tail.
Daphne’s mind went brilliant white in an actinic flash of agony, after a moment of exquisite pain, she fell into oblivion.
For nearly an hour, the catfish and the monster crustacean lay in the muddy hole, immobile and lifeless. Then, a tiny twitch of Daphne’s antennae could be seen.
Then another.
A short while later, both of Daphne’s antennae began to flail, likewise her phyllopods quivered aimlessly inside her shell. This awkward seizure continued for several minutes before tapering off.
Daphne gradually came awake again, an agonizing pain shooting through her brain.
Congratulations! Host Daphne has defeated a Spirit Beast Silurus asotus Level 5 Level UP!
Alert! Host Daphne has taken severe damage from Lightning Attack. Penalty Cost 15 Vitality Points to counter damage. Vitality will be temporarily reduced until the next Level UP!