Echo Online 2

by Zachariah Dracoulis

  “Not even close,” Sergei replied after finally finding the video on YouTube and showing it to me, revealing the exceedingly positive like ratio, “and a bunch of people signed up to the Damned Legion after I put a link in the description.”

  “You uploaded it?” I laughed as an unskippable ad played through, “Didn’t think you should check with anyone first?”

  “Do you have a problem with it?” Sergei asked, his tusky smirk showing that he knew the answer.

  “No, of course not,” I said, warming up to the idea of being briefly internet famous, “but isn’t there a chance other people will complain? You know, the dozens and dozens of people in the crowd?”

  “Eh, unlikely,” Sergei replied as the video finally started to play, “this is technically a let’s play anyway, and seeing as the developers have already shared the video…”

  “We got backing from the devs?” I asked with a smile, half-watching my speech as I did.

  “So-so,” Sergei said, “a lot of people assume they have, including myself, but they haven’t said anything publicly about picking sides. They did mention that they were going to try and make it so more people could automatically load onto the island, but there’s a worry about overcrowding.”

  “So we can only have a handful of people here at any given time…” I seethed before shrugging right when the video got to the part where I was stabbed in the back, “I guess this isn’t exactly a small island.”

  “True,” Sergei replied with a nod, “and I’m sure we could coordinate strikes from the forums, maybe even help the people who can’t fit here claim a chunk of the city, or at least a place to hide.”

  “Forums as in the Echo forums?” I asked.

  “Yes,” Sergei said, “but also the one we had someone set up for the Damned Legion.”

  “Is it all in Russian?” I half-joked.

  “No,” Sergei chuckled, “it was actually set up by someone in your city. Couldn’t find out who thou-”

  “Will both of you shut up?” Dave snapped, making us both instinctively prepare for attack, “It’s almost at my favorite part…”

  Sergei took a few moments longer to relax than I did, but it was obvious we were both tense as we watched me take out the assassin from a few different angles.

  “Yeah.” Dave murmured sinisterly, “We got ‘em good, didn’t we?”

  In an effort to convince myself Dave wasn’t about to jump out and start cutting folk, I rested my palm on his handle and forced a smile, “Skippin’ past where I ask how you can see this-”

  “I don’t have eyes,” Dave interjected with a laugh, “I can’t see anything, but I can see everything.

  “Heh,” Sergei laughed along nervously before looking up at me with a constipated look on his face, “I do not like the fact that he talks.”

  “No one does.” I replied, hoping that’d be enough to relax Sergei, “But he’s harmless.”

  “Did we not just watch the same video?” Dave asked, “I am Dave the Stabby!”

  “You’ll be Dave the Decorative if you don’t settle down.” I said before turning my full attention to Sergei, “Sorry, seems he gets a bit psychotic when he gets all hopped up on soul juice.”

  “Not my fault,” Dave replied innocently while Sergei struggled to keep up, “if it was that much of a problem, you would’ve started unloading souls into the dome by now, started the process for getting whatever superweapon-type thing’s lurking around down there.”

  It took a second longer than it probably should’ve for me to realize what he was talking about, “I thought you said we had nowhere near enough?”

  “You didn’t, and don’t, but you could start unloading souls at any point,” Dave explained, “although I seriously doubt you’re going to be able to come up with the just about a thousand you need any time soon, so I’d strap on my big boy pants and get ready for a whole lot more-”

  “How many people do you think are on the island?” I interjected, turning my attention to the still slightly reeling Sergei, “You know, ballpark.”

  “Couple hundred or so, wh-” Sergei started then stopped as he too came to the same realization with a smile, “Ah, I’ll put up a post, should be able to get some more people here fast. I assume you can only do it once per person?”

  “That seems to be a fair assumption.” I replied, “Think there’s a chance they won’t want to do it?”

  “As long as it’s quick and it’s going towards something to stomp those winged pussies into the dirt I think they’ll want to.” Sergei said, nodding and going to the forum on his phone as he did, “Any idea what this ‘superweapon’ is?”

  “I really don’t like being cut out of the conversation,” Dave chimed in aggressively, “can someone please explain what y’all are planning to… do. No. No, you can’t.”

  “See, that’s the thing, I think I can.” I huffed amusedly, “Not like you can exactly stop me.”

  “But… but… There’s no honor in that.” Dave stammered.

  “Eh,” I said with a shrug, “nothing much honorable about using a bunch of light beams to destroy a city either.”

  “I’m not talking about unlocking the dome, jackass,” Dave snapped, “I’m talking about this whole thing. We have to earn these kills in battle, not just be given souls. We take what we want. I ain’t no fuckin’ charity case.”

  “Ooh, someone’s getting tetchy.” Sergei laughed after finishing his post and slipping his phone back into his pocket.

  “Shit yeah, I’m getting tetchy,” Dave barked, “I refuse to be used like this. This is a violation of my rights.”

  “You don’t have any rights.” I replied, “So, how long do you think ‘til we start getting our volunteers in?”

  “Couple minutes,” Sergei said with a shrug, “if that. We have a lot of people waiting on standby.”

  “Doing what?” I asked.

  Again, Sergei shrugged, “I suppose there are a lot of people out there without very much in the way of responsibilities.”

  “Hello,” a peppy Gnome said as he came running over to us, completely wiping Sergei and I’s conversation off the board, “I saw you needed souls?”

  “I…” I trailed off, sharing a look with Sergei, before looking back down at the eager Gnome, “That I do. You realize what I have to do, right?”

  “Mmhm,” the Gnome replied with a grin, “all towards the war effort.”

  And I was lost for words.

  Again.

  “Alright, if you’re willing.” I sighed, brandishing Dave as I did so, “Do us a favor and… hold still.”

  Not going to lie, that first kill was one of the hardest of the day.

  I don’t know if it was because of how eager he was to lay down his life for what very well could’ve been some fancy cosmetics or because he let out a mouse-like squeak when I stabbed him through the top of his head.

  Turns out ‘quick and painless’ can also mean ‘messy and mildly heartbreaking’.

  9

  One thousand souls.

  I had to harvest one thousand souls.

  The, and I literally shudder when I say this, ‘sacrifices’ were more than willing, especially seeing as we’d managed to get a mage into the little room I’d moved into to clean the sizeable mess after each of the murders.

  I thought it would be easy, I really did, especially after I started getting into a good pattern of taking out five or so at a time, but the more I killed, the more I drifted from chaos towards outright evil.

  It wasn’t just psychologically and emotionally scarring either, it also had the unfortunate effect of making my horns grow thicker and longer while my nails did the same, and I’m pretty sure at around halfway my wings had unfurled and gotten a bit more demon-like.

  And my eyes…

  You know when you stare at a monitor for too long and you start feeling a sort of burning around your eyes and cheeks?

  Yeah, I had that, but the quasi-radiation burns were emanating from my ember
-like eyes.

  Dave, on the other hand, couldn’t have been more thrilled with the whole process.

  I mean, I assume he was happy, he just started cackling with each kill after the hundredth, much to the discomfort of Sergei who regularly checked in on me over the hours of death.

  But I did it.

  Lord knows I did it.

  “Really starting to think I should’ve done all the killing in the dome chamber.” I chuckled grimly, my voice reverberating from my chest and my lips as Sergei and I stepped out of the elevator doors and into the chamber, “Remind me to never use this knife ever again.”

  “Oh, c’mon, it was fun!” Dave exclaimed with all the subtlety of an Adderall-addicted pre-teen explaining the importance of not using ‘manga’ and ‘anime’ interchangeably, “Besides, it’s not like every kill causes this awesomeness. Probably just had to do with the fact that you’ve been offing your friends.”

  “Well, thanks for letting me know.” I snarled, my sharpened teeth grinding as I struggled to contain my anger, before letting out a soothing sigh as we made our way to the keyhole thing, “Sorry, got a lot of stuff to get out.”

  “I thought that’s why you had the cat and witch around?” Dave joked.

  There was a part of me that wanted to smash him against the dome, try to anyway, but, with no small amount of difficulty, I managed to control my rage enough to simply ram the blade into the slot.

  At first a whole lot of nothing happened, leaving me to stand there like an idiot while a still silent Sergei clearly waited for me to have a nuclear-level freak-out.

  To be fair, I was on the verge of one, though thankfully Dave’s handle twisted ninety degrees to the left violently and, before I could so much as widen my eyes with surprise, got pulled into the dome.

  For a moment I was worried I’d lost him, then briefly concerned that I was that emotionally invested in a sociopathic knife, but then, after some whirring from within the dome, the handle came back out and rotated.

  “So,” I said disappointedly as I went to grab Dave out, “that was a tremendous waste of ti-”

  I would’ve gone on bemoaning my situation, probably flown over to the city and gone on a bit of a suicide mission, but as soon as I touched Dave I was wrapped in green, eldritch electricity that seemed to sap my energy.

  My hand refused to let go, my body trembled with the volts, and my heart… you know that tune that plays when Sonic’s about to drown? It was doing that.

  Then, right as I was about to accept my fate and evacuate everything, a deep purr-like voice tickled my ears.

  I didn’t know what it was saying, and with all the rolling letters and guttural throat noises I sincerely doubted I had the ability to look it up, but it seemed friendly.

  Well, as friendly as an obviously Lovecraftian being could be, anyway.

  “Are you alright?” Sergei asked, alerting me to the fact that the zapping had stopped.

  “Yeah, yeah…” I murmured weakly as I pulled Dave out and let him swing down beside me, “just kind of…”

  “Feel like all the evil’s been sucked out?” Sergei lightheartedly chuckled.

  “Along with just about everything else, yeah.” I replied with a smile, “How do I look?”

  “Back to normal, mostly,” Sergei said, pointing at my eyes, “but they might just be inflamed.”

  “Pretty sure that’s the least that could be expected,” I half-joked before looking down at Dave, “so, that’s it? Whole lot of electrocution followed by… Well, the feeling of having just been electrocuted?”

  “Give it…” Dave trailed off, wheezing from his nonexistent lungs, “Give it a minute…”

  I didn’t get the chance to ask for clarification as, with a violent shudder that rocked the whole room, the dome started to crack.

  I’d done it.

  I’d given us a fighting chance.

  I’d-

  “Ow.” Sergei let out with surprise as a soda can-sized chunk of the dome popped out and hit him in the forehead.

  “Huh.” I huffed with mild amusement, catching the chunk right before it fell to the ground, making myself dizzy in the process, “What’s this?”

  “The thing for the next thing…” Dave practically drooled, “Remember?”

  “Vaguely?” I lied before finally sheathing Dave, “Something to do with… something, right?”

  “Exactly,” Dave murmured, “if by ‘something’ you mean ‘magic’. Whole bunch of different magic, actually.”

  “Yeah, no,” I said, shaking my head, “I don’t think you told me about that.”

  Dave let out a long sigh at that, “Ugh, basically you need to absorb a bunch of energy from different sources, that’s what a lot of those scribbles allude to.”

  “What kind of sources?” Sergei asked, apparently finally getting past his shock.

  “Basically it’s sentient magic,” Dave replied, “Elf magic, Dwarf magic, that kind o’ crap.”

  “And I’m guessing we’d have access to a whole bunch of that on the island?” I said with a smirk.

  “Nope, no shortcuts this time, bucko.” Dave chuckled, “See, you could probably scrounge up Fairy magic, Gnome magic, and even Demon magic, but-”

  “Ah, shit,” I interjected disappointedly, “please tell me-”

  “You boys need yourself some Angel magic,” Dave continued happily, “and I sincerely doubt you’ll be able to find anyone from that side of the Earthly plane willing to deal, and believe me, it ain’t exactly like you can trick ‘em into shooting a peppy lightning bolt at you.”

  “So, we’re screwed then?” I scoffed, already moving onto other ideas for fighting Carl.

  “Unless you can think of some way to get a bunch of Angels to spend a few hours making a magic ghost thing,” Dave joked before turning coy, “or, you know, something that may have left a mark? Some kind of massive magical event? Of the Angel-”

  “I got it,” I laughed, “I’m just thinking about how we can get the other ones now.”

  “Leave that to me,” Sergei replied, “guarantee that I’ll be able to get a few people of the different groups together, pass the stone thing around ‘til it’s full up. Until then, it might be best to get over to the city.”

  “You think?” I asked as we got into the elevator, “Not trying to be flip-floppy, but I get the feeling that a trip over to the city might lead to imprisonment, death, or death following imprisonment.”

  “That’s no way for a glorious leader to talk!” Sergei laughed, “But honestly, I don’t think you have much to worry about. Couldn’t hurt to have a squad with you, probably someone who can throw up magical shields on the way over.”

  “I have just the person.” I said with a smile before a somewhat saddening realization dawned on me, “Ah, shit, that’s right.”

  “You forget that those girlfriends of yours aren’t here, didn’t you?” Sergei chuckled.

  “More like had the lines between digital and real blur a bit.” I half-joked, “Anyway, I’m sure there’s someone else kicking around the island that can give us some shielding for the trip over.”

  “Nah.” Sergei replied, briefly confusing me, “Don’t get me wrong, you probably could, but you three built this place, might be a good idea to wait until they’re back in the game. Probably wouldn’t hurt for you to take a break, either.”

  “Really?” I scoffed, “I mean, I ain’t exactly been breaking a sweat here.”

  “True, though I don’t think you’ll get properly tired in here for quite some time,” Sergei said, “I’m not about to force you to stay, but I’d be lying if I told you I wasn’t starting to think about logging off.”

  “You want to jump off?” I laughed, “Must really be time to stop then, eh?”

  “Seriously, Buck,” Sergei replied, not at all sounding serious, “island’s safe, people are ready to defend it, and I sincerely doubt there’s much of a rush to get these…”

  “Magical spirit beings.” Dave finished.
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  “Yes, them…” Sergei murmured, eyeing off Dave as he did, before shaking his gaze loose and looking back to me, “Point is that I am sure they would like to be here, and I can get the other magical spirit beans.”

  “Beings.” Dave corrected.

  “Beings,” Sergei repeated, “got it. So, what do you say?”

  It was a hard call to make.

  I didn’t really feel like I’d done much in the game, I hadn’t even managed to get into a single thrilling fight or battle of wits, but at the same time I did have some minor concerns about staying in bed all the time and atrophying.

  Or, at the very least, getting kind of chubby.

  “Alright, fine,” I lightheartedly sighed as the elevator reached the top of the shaft far earlier than before, “but if I miss out on something coo-”

  “Sergei!” a former Cheeki Breekian shouted as he ran towards the elevator doors, “Angels are on the island.”

  “What?” Sergei asked, a look of genuine bewilderment crossing his face as we got out, “Are they attacking?”

  “No,” the Orc replied, clearly just as confused as Sergei and I, “they’re… Come see.”

  “Looks like you’ll be here for a little longer,” Sergei chuckled as we followed after the jogging Orc, “think you’re up for a fight?”

  “Only one way to find out.” I said, an involuntary smile spreading across my lips.

  Sergei shook his head at that and mimicked my grin, “No need to look so excited about it.”

  “Gonna have to disagree with you there.” I laughed, “And don’t act like you’re not lookin’ forward to a little action.”

  “I am,” Sergei agreed, “but I am of the thinking that if I had two beautiful women waiting at home for me, I wouldn’t be in such a rush to get beaten down by a couple of halos.”

  “Ah, you think so little of me.” I mocked.

  He was right though, and there was a part of me that was mildly worried I was taking the girls for granted and that I should be focusing on making more time for them.

  Then I remembered I wasn’t a clingy little man and that I was allowed to play as many damn videogames as I pleased.

  And, you know, that they were working.