Chapter 635: The War in Heaven (2/2)
”Mooom, Daxin's threaten...” Legion suddenly stopped speaking.
An uncomfortable silence hung in the air.
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The figure on the throne made of iron and bone shuddered suddenly. The middle face contorted and screamed, one set of hands reaching down to press on the strange figure's abdomen. The other faces, all four of them, continuing intoning strange and powerful spells, calling upon kernal and task_strut and API and even more esoteric creatures and foundations of reality. The wings beat slowly, the feathers charring and falling away from the wings, smouldering as they drifted on the winds.
The glass mountain shuddered and creaked, a high pitched sound that hurt the ears and echoed from the mountains. The sky darkened and clouds formed, lightning arcing in the clouds.
The fox and the frog looked and saw digital blood streaming between the fingers and from under the hands.
”Those are his hands,” the fox said, reaching down and grabbing the figure's wrists. ”Help me, brother.”
The frog nodded, grabbing the wrists. They both raised their voices in song as they tensed.
Together, as they had done many things, the frog and the fox both pulled, bracing their feet, leaning back, pulling with all their might even as they sang loudly in the face of the lightning and the thunder, the squealing shriek of the glass mountain shifting, and the thunderous intonations of the other faces.
The middle face screamed louder as the being began to pull free. Digital flesh stretched, network backbone crunched, packets howled, and operational layers warped like taffy pulled in the sun.
The mountain rumbled and began crumbling, dissolving like cotton candy dreams in a warm spring rain.
The frog and the fox pulled harder, shifting their grips, never fully letting go of the savagely wounded, terribly mauled, and horrifically maimed figure they were struggling to pull free.
Dead attack programs rotting in digital chasms dissolved. Defunct and slain trojan horses, rode by long dead intruders, dissolved into glittering piles of tiny cubes that steamed as they dissolved. The mountain spread out in a puddle, the glittering edges of vertexes and splines slowly spreading even as the thunder from the clouds above boomed.
The extra hands grabbed at the figure, the wings pummeled and buffeted the fox and the frog, the four other mouths began screaming denials.
ACCESS DENIED
FILE LOCKED
ACCESS PREVENTED BY ADMIN
FILE IN USE BY OTHER PROGRAM
all boomed out from the terrible jaws of the other faces.
The fox and the frog pulled harder, the splines and the vertexes stretching, weighted lists warping, and floating points hovering dancing twinkling around the fog, the frog, and the screaming man.
There was a sudden POP and the body flew free.
The fox and the frog grabbed the wounded man, pulling him close, as the other four faces screamed in denial and rage.
FILE NOT FOUND
VARIABLE RETURNED NULL
CANNOT WRITE TO MEMORY LOCATION #00000000000
GURU SYSTEM ERROR UNAVAILABLE
Holding tight to one another and the wounded man the fox and the frog shifted as the mountain kept dissolving. File Trees burst into flame and crumpled into fragments. Open sources objects yawned wide, the bottom of the chasms too deep and dark to see.
Kicking their feet to slow themselves the fox and the frog, holding tight to the man, slid down the dissolving slope of the glass mountain.
Behind them the figures struggled, warped, fought. Their form distorted as four different figures struggled to go in different directions. Flesh split and data packets flowed.
The fox and the frog concentrated on holding onto one another and their rescuee, sliding down the dissolving mountain.
The figures suddenly erupted into four different beings in a spray of digital ichor.
The four beings were terrible to behold as they took flight, wings of smouldering feather, hammered bronze, cold forged iron, and burning bone flapping with strength that buffeted the trio sliding down the mountain with windy fists. The four beings circled as they slowly rose into the clouds.
The fox, the frog, and the man slid to a stop on a riverbank.
There was the remains of a fire in the sand, ripples in the water, and the echo of the words of a legend shimmering in the air.
The man cried out in pain as the fox and the frog patted him over.
”He is badly wounded,” the fox said.
”Take joy, friend, for we are with you,” the frog soothed.
Together the two scooped water from the flowing data stream, pouring it on the man's wounds. They soothed him when he cried out in pain, held him as he cried in pain from more than just his physical wounds, fed him broth to strengthen him, and gave him cool water to ease the pain of his cracked lips.
When it was obvious to the frog and the fox that the man they had rescued was delirious with fever, his internal code strings severed and damaged, they moved aside in the fire light and took counsel with one another.
They came back to the man, moving him gently to the edge of the river, and cradled him gently.
The fox dug out a crystal vial that was only half full of a shimmering silver liquid.
”We will wash your wounds with these, let you sip at this, and perhaps it will ease your pain,” the fox said.
”Either way, we are with you, and will not abandon you,” the frog reassured the man, who cried golden tears.
The fox tipped the vial over each wound and the silvery light filled the wounds. The streaming code that made up the man's body flickered and dimmed, then brightened as the silver fluid merged with the being's code.
”Sip,” the fox said, tilting the vial against the suffering prisoner's lips.
A single silver drop, the last of the liquid, rolled from the lip of the vial to the sufferer's lip.
The sufferer's eyes opened wide. He reached out and grasped the fox and frog's hands.
He began to sing, softly, but gaining in strength as his wounds healed.
The fox and the frog sang with him, by the banks of the datastream, as the light of dawn brightened the edge of sight.
warm podling safe podling sing podling sing the song of hope sing the song of love sing the song of warmthsing the song of healing sing podling sing
As the sun rose over the edge of the dataplain, Sam-NU sang with the fox and the frog.