[https://i.imgur.com/5QTJnxy.jpg]

System suggests Host Daphne innate ability [extremophilic estivation] skill Second Life

Use Skill? Yes / No

Daphne lay on the rounded stones, already her gills felt sticky, hot. The sun beat down on her upturned carapace. She reached out with Water Control, she could feel the river off in the distance from where she was lying. She attempted to pull a tendril of water out from the river towards herself, but her connection was too weak. It hesitated almost 15 feet from her, before collapsing and draining back down to the river. She didn’t have the strength.

She was trapped. The heat addled her thoughts.

She would die here, she accepted the system’s suggestion and activated Second Life.

The moment the skill activated she felt energy overlap her body, it was very different from when she leveled-up. The energy was passing through her slowly, systematically. It scanned her, measured her from the inside out, and then paused at her brain. She felt the system accessing her thoughts, her memories, cataloging and extrapolating her every experience.

Then she felt her spiritual core begin to burn with coruscating power. A searing heat filled her body from the massive release of spiritual energy, all of the power she had stored in her core was being used by Second Life. She felt the power collect and begin modifying her internal structure. Her brood pouch expanded, pushing some organs forward towards her phyllopods while consuming others.

The skill was building something new, harvesting parts of her to construct it. She felt her inner self being recast, reshaped. Then a massive surge as the remaining energy was funneled into the new structure, coalescing into a new, tinier spiritual core. Then her original core’s brilliant halo of energy dimmed, growing fainter and fainter until it winked out.

Daphne shuddered as her connection to her own spiritual energy disappeared. She could no longer use any of her skills.

The sun beat down, a harsh drying wind began to blow over her, her gills grew drier and less able to allow her to breathe. The heat was unbearable, every thought was agony. She slipped into feverish gibbering confusion, neither able to stop thinking or to have coherent, meaningful thoughts.

All she could do was wait.

Hour after hour.

She remembered her mother-sister, swimming through the dark uncharted waters, never knowing or caring what the next moment would bring. Sifting the bright greenfood from the water and hiding from the bright light and the hunters. She remembered her beauty.

A perfect life.

Daphne died.

Over the next few days, the sun beat down and dried her tissues. The setae on the ends of her swimming antennae were the first parts to slough away, drying up and snapping away in the wind.

A group of ravens landed on the bank and investigated her body as they looked for food. One of them picked her up by the necktooth and shook her awkwardly. It dropped her again and one of her swimming antennae snapped off.

The raven picked up the broken antenna and pecked at the dried flesh within it. The slight hint of spiritual power embedded in Daphne’s dried tissue filled it with excitement. Its sudden interest attracted the other ravens, and they began pecking away at the bits of her flesh they could reach. Her body was picked up and dropped multiple times, till her second antenna was broken off.

The ravens reached with their beaks as well as they could to reach the flesh inside her carapace, but the main shell was a single monolithic piece, not easily torn open or cracked with the strength that Iron Chitin had given it.

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One of the ravens, an older one, tried a different method more often used for small turtles and clams. It picked up Daphne’s body in its beak and flew into the air, dropping it down to the rocks from a great height. This caused her necktooth to snap off, but her dried body was too light to breach the carapace with the added strength her skill had given it.

Eventually, the eagle parents returned from hunting, and drove the ravens away.

Weeks passed.

Daphne’s carapace became a bleached white shell among the gray stones. Rain fell, moistening the stones and washing more traces of color from the hard shell.

A pair of tanuki ambled along the shore. One of them stopped to sniff at her shell, it took an experimental bite, but could not mar the hard chitin. It picked up the shell in its mouth and looked playfully at its mate. The other tanuki quickly agreed to the game and snapped at the shell, trying to steal it from her partner.

The two played a lively game of tag, running back and forth across the beach, even into the water’s edge at times. Daphne’s shell changed hands between them several times and back again.

Eventually they tired of this, dropped Daphne’s shell back on the rocks and moved on to search for food. They had dropped her quite a ways from the eagle’s tree, further down the beach towards the water.

Many weeks went by.

The weather grew colder, rain fell frequently. Frost coated Daphne’s shell most mornings. The aspen groves turned a brilliant yellow, the oaks a rusty red. The leaves fell around and upon her, only to be blown further away into the river by the cold autumn winds.

It grew colder as the weeks went on. The winds pulled the last of the autumn leaves from the branches. The grass had long turned straw yellow. Only the pines and spruces were green in the forests and on the side of the mountains.

The snow began to fall. Then rain, then sleet. The snow took hold for the winter.

In the coming weeks the grip of winter closed in on the river. Daphne became coated in a layer of frozen sleet, then deeply covered by snow. The ice began forming at the water’s edge. First a thin sheen in the slow areas, but as the nights became colder and the days never warmed above freezing, it grew thicker and extended further and further towards the center. Soon only the fastest moving areas of the river were ice-free.

The length of the days shortened. Under the blanket of snow and ice Daphne’s shell was invisible. The ice on the river came now to cover every part of it. Red deer, reindeer, wolves, tanuki, and foxes all crossed the frozen river freely. The eagles had long fledged their surviving chick and migrated south, where the water was open and there were fish to catch.

Under the blanket of snow, the river waited.

The days grew longer, the sun warmer.

Slowly the snow began to recede. A day came when the air was above freezing, the warm breezes shrank the snow, the larger stones around Daphne were the first to uncover themselves, absorbing the warm rays and melting themselves from the cover of ice.

Water began to flow towards the frozen river, puddling on top, melting the layer of snow above the ice. The warmer water cut channels into the thick ice. Booming chittering crackling sounds rang out.

A few days of this warmth and a sudden crash sounded the ice was breaking up!

Huge cracks formed across the surface of the ice in places weakened by days of meltwater. The ice slowly began to move downriver. The great sheets of ice ground against one another and spun against the banks and boulders in the riverbed.

A huge triangle of thick ice spun and jammed itself against the bank downstream of Daphne’s shell. Smaller sheets began piling up and damming themselves against the massive blocking chunk. The water rose behind this dam of ice pushing icy, slushy water up the beach on either side of the river. For the first time, Daphne’s dried body was under the water again.

The flood rose higher and higher up the beach above Daphne’s shell. Broken slabs of ice rolled over each other and pushed the gravel and stones in front of them.

Then, with a snap and crackling roar, the huge ice dam collapsed, and the water rushed downstream again. The watery slush and ice poured down the beach, in the chaotic churning flow Daphne’s shell was swirled up and pulled along with the water, ice and debris.

Her shell was dried and dense, soon it sank in a calmer stretch of deep water. It drifted to the bottom, covered over quickly with sand and silt drifting down from the churned-up river.

More weeks passed. The ice melted, and the river swelled with snowmelt.

Spring had arrived, the water became warmer, algae and plankton began to proliferate.

Later, the rush of spring snowmelt slowed, the water warmed even more, it was early summer.

Soon, salmon arrived and began surging upriver past Daphne’s shell to spawn.

Environmental conditions favorable for Second Life- Restart Protocol.

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