The Summoning
In which our protagonist uses null_injection for the first time, and the source code breaks a little.
The cultists came on the night of the new moon, and Pip screamed the scream that was not a sound, that was a mana pulse, sharp, urgent, the kind of alarm that Kenji had only ever felt once before, when the dark-robed figure had raised the horn in the field. This was worse. This was the scream of a system that is about to be overwritten.
[Threat assessment: dimensional breach]
[Source: external, not native to this world]
[Target: lesser entity, but powerful]
[Estimated time to manifest: 90 seconds]
[Compiler note: this is a piece of the corrupted source code, given form. The system is, in a small way, frightened.]
[Compiler note: please advise. Please advise. Please advise.]
The system had, in a small way, lost its professional composure. The system was, in the driest possible language, panicking.
"They are summoning something," Kenji said, to Elara. "Not a demon. Something older. Something that should not be here."
"How do you know?"
"Because Pip knows. And Pip does not scream unless it is real."
They rode out. Kenji, Elara, four guards, and Pip. The moonless night was dark, the forest was quiet, and the only sound was the chanting, growing louder as they approached. The green light of the cult's artifacts pulsed through the trees, and at the center of the clearing, in a circle of grey robes, a portal was opening.
It was not a beautiful portal. It was a wound. A vertical tear in the air, edged in sickly green, and through the tear, Kenji could see something moving. Something vast. Something that did not have a shape but had intent.
Pip landed on Kenji's shoulder. The dragonfly's pulse was soft, sad, and very, very careful. The pulse felt like: "It is the same code. The same broken code. The horn was the messenger. This is the message."
Kenji did not think. He did not have time to think. He did the only thing that his training told him to do when a process is about to spawn something it should not spawn.
He defined a null function.
"Function create(name='null_injection', inputs={target=portal}, outputs={terminate_process}, cost=high, side_effects=collapses_caller)!"
[null_injection: ARMED]
[mana cost: 94% of caster pool]
[Compiler note: this is the senior engineer who has been asked to terminate a runaway process. The system approves.]
[Compiler note: the system is, in a small way, hoping the developer survives this.]
He cast it.
The function was, in the language of his old world, a kill -9. A forced termination of a runaway process. It told the system that the portal was an error, that the summoning was an error, that the entire ritual was a bug, and the appropriate response to a bug was not negotiation. It was termination.
The portal screamed.
The cultists screamed.
The thing on the other side of the portal, the thing that did not have a shape but had intent, screamed. It was the most terrible sound Kenji had ever heard, a sound of something that was being forcibly erased from existence, and the portal collapsed.
The green light died. The cultists scattered. The forest was suddenly, terribly quiet.
Kenji fell to his knees, his mana completely drained, his vision swimming. The null_injection had cost him almost everything he had. Pip was on his shoulder, pulsing weakly, the dragonfly's blue light dim.
[Mana: 0%. Stamina: 8%. Status: alive.]
[Note: null_injection has destroyed the portal. The summoning has failed.]
[Note: the cost was higher than expected. Recommend not using this spell casually.]
[Compiler note: the developer is, in a small way, alive. The system approves.]
"Status," he gasped.
Elara was at his side. She had her hand on his shoulder, and her face was pale.
"What did you do?" she asked.
"I killed it. The process. The thing they were trying to bring through. I told the system it was an error and I terminated it."
"Can you do that?"
"I can do that. Once. Maybe twice. I do not recommend doing it three times."
She helped him to his feet. The cultists had fled. The clearing was empty, except for the circle of grey robes, the burned ground, and the faint smell of something that was not quite ozone and not quite rot.
One of the guards picked up something from the ground. A fragment of the portal, frozen in the moment of collapse, like a piece of broken glass. It was black. It was humming with the same kind of structured magic that Kenji used, but twisted, corrupted, like a function call with a malformed argument.
[Object analysis: portal fragment]
[Source: external, not native to this world]
[Note: this is a piece of the corrupted source code. The system is, in a small way, paying attention.]
He took the fragment. He held it in his hand. Pip did not like it. The dragonfly pulsed, urgently, the same warning it had given about the horn.
"This is the second piece," Kenji said, quietly. "The horn. The fragment. They are both pieces of the same code. The same bug."
"What bug?" Elara asked.
"The bug that is Malachar. The chaos god. The thing that wants to bring me to him. The thing that is, in a way, the reason this world is the way it is."
Elara did not understand. She did not need to understand. She helped him onto his horse, and they rode back to Oakhaven, and the night was quiet, and the cult was broken, and Kenji had just done something that no one in this world had ever done.
He had told the system to terminate a process. And the system had listened.
But the bug was not terminated. The bug was, in the dry language of the system in his head, patient. The bug had been waiting for a long time. The bug had watched the clock, and the aquifer, and the firewall, and the summoning, and the bug had decided, in a way that bugs decide, that the developer was interesting, and that the developer was going to be, in a year, the person the bug was going to have to talk to directly.
[Compiler note: the bug has noticed the developer.]
[Compiler note: the bug is, in a small way, paying attention.]
[Compiler note: the developer is, in a small way, learning that not all bugs can be killed.]
Pip pulsed, very softly, in a tone that was, in a small way, ahead of him, and the pulse felt like: "You have done something that the bug did not expect. The bug is, for the first time in a long time, surprised. The bug is going to come for you. The bug is going to come for you soon."
Kenji sent back, in the language only he and Pip could read: "I know."
Pip pulsed again. The pulse felt like: "The king's letter arrives tomorrow. The journey to the capital begins in a week. The bug will be waiting. The bug is, in a small way, ahead of you."
Kenji did not answer. He was too tired, and the night was too dark, and the horn in his pack was humming again, in the same sickly green as the portal, and the fragment in his pocket was humming too, and the two hums were, in the driest possible language, the same hum, and the hum was the bug, and the bug was, in a small way, the whole story.