Echo Online 2

by Zachariah Dracoulis

  Winded, I was defenseless as Carl got up to his knees and, with an unnerving slowness, wrapped his fingers around my throat and started strangling the life out of me.

  He only got to do that for as long as it took me to smuggle some air up to my mouth though, which was a tense few seconds, at which point I spat all my accumulated blood in his eyes, instantly loosening his grip and allowing for me to slip out and kick him in the nuts on my way up.

  It was dirty, but not too dirty.

  I couldn’t strangle him, his neck was too thick, and there was no way in Hell I’d be able to get him to the ground without a truck.

  He was getting up, I was running out of time, and I definitely couldn’t take another whooping.

  And that’s when my eyes fell on a potential weakness.

  The halo.

  Without wasting another second, I grabbed him by the sides of his head and kneed him as hard as my body would allow, catching him by his halo as he reeled.

  It burned, sweet Lord above, did it burn, but the seethes merely grabbing it elicited from Carl told me everything I needed to know.

  So I pulled.

  And pulled.

  And pulled.

  My hands were on fire, Carl was screaming, and the ring of magic and metal was slowly but surely about to give.

  In a final desperate push, I put my knee on his shoulder to prop myself, revealing that Carl could do little else but howl as I reefed his halo off with an unholy ringing sound that shattered windows and pierced my brain like a hot needle.

  And then he was done.

  The halo had stopped burning.

  The howls had silenced.

  All the mighty leader of the Hallowed Kings could do was kneel before me with his head lolling around uselessly.

  “Holy shit…” I murmured with a disturbingly wet cough as I looked up at the crowd, Carl’s halo still in my hand.

  I didn’t know what to do, whether I was supposed to execute the defeated Angel or let him live with the shame of defeat and losing his halo.

  “Yeah!” someone from the crowd roared, setting off a cacophonous rumble of cheers while I struggled to hold a smile.

  “The Legion!” Sam cried out after grabbing my halo-wielding hand and raising it to the sky, turning the celebration volume up to eleven.

  “You can sit the rest of this out,” Jane whispered, handing Dave back to me, “you look about ready to die.”

  “Or you could hit me with one of those magic heals of yours?” I suggested with a laugh, barely hiding the fact that an all-too familiar darkness was closing around my vision, which Jane fixed instantly with her palm against my lower back.

  “Yeah, I realize now that I probably should’ve figured that out on my own.” Jane chuckled, “But at least I got there… eventually.”

  “What’s wrong?” I asked before looking to Carl and his boys and watching them collapse out of existence, replaced with a series of beams that, within a few seconds, outnumbered what was left of the Legion.

  “Oh, you have got to be fucking kidding me…” I trailed off before making a snap decision, “Pull back!”

  “What?” Sam asked, finally releasing the wrist I’d honestly forgotten she was holding, “We have them on the ropes.”

  “Not for long,” I replied, leading the way through the spawning players, “Kurt or Pete must’ve sent out an SOS when Carl went down. We’ve got the city, that’s all that matters.”

  “We should stay and fight.” Sam replied assertively, apparently blind to the dozens of Angels coming down on us and the fact that the Legion was already in full retreat, “Down to the last man, leave this place a bloodied and broken mess.”

  “Stay and die then.” I snapped without turning around, “I want to stay too, but-”

  A bullet whizzing past my head silenced me and got us to pick up the pace, some of us more enthusiastically than others.

  “We’ll hold up wherever we can,” I said, leading the way to an open-ish building, “we’ve got a foothold, and I guarantee they’ll stay near the cathedral now.”

  “And what about the people respawning on the island?” Sam asked after I’d nearly kicked a door clean off its hinges and led the way into what turned out to be a small bakery.

  “They’ll be fine,” I replied reassuringly, trying to plot my way back to the club, “they’re probably better off protecting HQ anyway.”

  “I still think we could’ve taken them…” Sam muttered.

  “Maybe,” Jane chimed in after pointing and leading us towards a back door, “or maybe we would’ve died and Carl would’ve gotten his halo back. Oh, and when we get home you’re telling us what happened back there.”

  “Sounds like a plan.” I replied after peeking around the corner and into the back alley about fifteen times before tailing Jane and the still very naked Sam, “You want my shoes?”

  “I’ll be okay,” Sam assured me, clearly having lost a good deal of her fire, “this was a win though, right?”

  “Definitely,” I said with a nod, “there’s no way they’ll be able to root us out, and I’m pretty sure we’ve just proven that the Hallowed Kings aren’t the all-powerful demigods they pretend to be.”

  I wanted to believe what I was saying, I really did, but there was no denying that there was a part of me that felt like I’d messed up by ordering the retreat and that if we’d have just pushed the cathedral we’d have had it in the bag.

  The whole thing stunk of ‘half-measure’ and that didn’t sit well in my gut.

  Not yet, anyway.

  46

  “I really need to log out,” I said, dropping the halo on the table as I flopped into what was quickly becoming ‘our’ booth, “seriously, right now I’m sleeping in front of a bunch of guys who really hate me.”

  “But we’ve got to strategize,” Sam jokingly pleaded, her mood having improved significantly once we’d made it back to the mostly empty club and gotten word of just how many people had abandoned the Hallowed Kings, “how will we survive otherwise?”

  “I’m glad you’re happy, but we really should consider the possibility that this isn’t over yet.” Jane said with a smile as they both joined me at the booth, “Yes, even with that group spawning in it would seem they are screwed, but that doesn’t mean they can’t wrestle power back.”

  “I wish them all the best with that,” I scoffed, scratching at my significantly larger horns, “there’s not a single faction out there that’d side with them, and once we take the cathedral-”

  “If we take the cathedral.” Jane clarified.

  “Let’s face it, it’s when,” Sam practically giggled, “it’ll be tough, and for the most part I think we’ll be playing Whac-A-Mole with loyalists, but this fight is as good as done.”

  “I wish I had your optimism,” Jane replied with a sigh, “not to say I’m not happy with the win, I really am. Promise.”

  “It wasn’t the absolute victory that I was hoping for either,” Sam agreed, “but it was definitely something.”

  “So, we’re good?” I asked, “I mean, for now? I can just sign out and see you two when I get home?”

  “I mean, yeah,” Sam said, shrugging with enough force to make her boobs jump a little, “it’d be nice if you’d get me some clothes first, though.”

  “Really?” I laughed, “We passed at least a dozen shops on the way here.”

  “I know, but I was eager to get back.” Sam replied innocently, “I’m sure there are some uniforms or something upstairs that you could grab.”

  “She’s just being stupid,” Jane sighed, rolling her eyes lovingly as she did, “you jump back out, we’ll see you at home.”

  “You’re sure?” I jokingly asked, “I mean, if she really wants me to grab her some tear-away clothing, I wouldn’t mind. Hell, I’ll even grab some for her to wear around the house.”

  “Oooh, I can be a slutty maid,” Sam giggled, clapping her hands with faux eagerness, “I’ll just stay at home and clean and we’ll hav
e sex whenever the mood strikes you, which’ll be all the time because, you know, slutty maid costume.”

  “You say that like it’s a bad thing.” Jane joked, “Seriously though, Buck, go make sure they aren’t drawing dicks on your forehead or something.”

  “Oh shit, they might.” I replied, genuinely not having considered that, “You guys message me if anything else happens.”

  “I promise, now go.” Jane said, taking off her coat and giving it to Sam, “And grab some ice cream on the way home, I want to celebrate.”

  Have to say that that, that request, was probably the biggest win of the night for me.

  Kicking Carl’s ass was all well and good, but something about Jane asking me to bring home ice cream made me feel like we were at a new point in our relationship.

  It wasn’t massive, sure, it was just that level of intimacy that you can only really have with someone when you know they’re coming home, and that felt nice.

  Like, close to pulling out the big ‘L’ nice.

  ‘Love’, by the way, not ‘leukemia’.

  47

  I’ll never forget the look on the guy’s faces as I woke up and unplugged myself.

  They were pissed, that much was obvious and expected, but it was so much more than that.

  There was disappointment, rage, betrayal, and this bitterness that made me feel kind of hollow inside.

  “It’s just a game, guys.” I instinctively said, “Try not to linger on it too much.”

  Looking back on it, that was probably a poor choice of words.

  “Really?” Carl scoffed, “I can’t speak for the others, but to me it felt pretty fuckin’ real.”

  “What the fuck, dude?” Kurt snapped before I could respond, “You knew we were working and you thought, what, you’d just join in on trying to destroy everything we’ve been working for?”

  “I got the call to come in from my guild, man,” I replied defensively, “besides, it’s not like service has started or anythin-”

  “That’s exactly it though,” Carl interjected, “Peter let you duck out for a few minutes, and for what? So you could attack us?”

  “I didn’t attack you,” I said, “again, it’s just a game.”

  “You know it’s not just a game,” Kurt growled, “shit, didn’t your new little relationship start with Echo?”

  I hesitated to respond, fearing that I was digging myself into a deeper and deeper hole with each word out of my mouth, but then I saw Carl’s sneer and I couldn’t help myself.

  “Fuck you,” I replied flatly, “seriously, fuck you. After you guys kicked me out, you lost any and all rights to have a go at me about how I play the game.”

  “And there it is,” Carl jeered, “I knew you were pissed about that. You were messing with our enjoyment so we kicked you out. Deal with it.”

  “You messed with my enjoyment so I attacked you, deal with it.” I replied boldly, “Do y’all really think you have a patent on being angry about how the game’s played?”

  “There’s a difference between booting you from the guild and having you help launch a sneak attack on our HQ,” Kurt retorted, “if we hadn’t have gotten in there in time, you and your merry gang of misfits would’ve destroyed the cathedral and that would’ve been it for the Hallowed Kings.”

  “And I’ll do it again,” I warned coolly, “the second I have a chance, I’ll attack you again, and again, and again, until I’m sure you and your little cathedral have been leveled.”

  I shouldn’t have been goading them on, not only was it the pinnacle of weakness and pettiness, but also we were in a professional environment.

  At that moment I should’ve been focused on either apologizing or, at the very least, suggesting we take our argument somewhere the other staff members couldn’t potentially hear us.

  But I wanted them to pick a fight, to start shouting the house down so I could respond calmly and take the undeserved higher ground.

  Carl wasn’t falling for that though.

  “I’m done with you.” he spat, an angry smile on his face as he shook his head and left the room.

  “What?” I scoffed, waiting for him to come back in and kick and scream until he was blue in the face, “What do you mean you’re ‘done’?”

  “It means we’re done, dude,” Kurt replied before getting to his feet, dusting off his knees, and walking out, “find some new friends.”

  Words escaped me as Kurt left the dejected Peter and me to sit in the awkward air that had settled over us.

  “What the Hell was that?” I asked with a forced tone of amusement hidden under my utter disbelief.

  Peter didn’t respond for a while, his eyes downcast as he struggled to do anything other than scratch the side of his head until finally, following a long sigh, he looked up at me, “You’ve messed up, Buck, big time,” he said disappointedly, “and I don’t think it’s the kind of thing the others are going to bounce back from.”

  I think that’s when it started to dawn on me, and I mean really dawn on me.

  Up until that moment I was still very much in an antagonistic headspace, focusing on everything they were doing wrong and how they were being childish dicks, but as soon as Peter started talking I started feeling like…

  It’s not really something I can put into words.

  I’d never put a huge focus on friendships in my life, people came and went and that was just how things were, though there was something distinctly different about people leaving me.

  Carl and Kurt weren’t moving away, they weren’t quitting, and I was still going to see them all the time, they were just leaving me.

  “What about you?” I finally asked after a few seconds of somber soul-searching, “Do you think you’ll bounce back?”

  Again, Peter struggled to answer for a moment, “I don’t know. I mean, they take this stuff seriously, and I do too, but…”

  That ‘but’ hung around in the air for a while, the promise of a follow-up lingering along with the hope that he’d come out with something that acted as some sort of reprieve to everything he’d said up until that point.

  And then he stood up, let out a long breath, and left.

  I was lost, blinking hard as the last person I could really call ‘friend’ in the real world walked out on me.

  However, something weird came along with that.

  I didn’t feel guilty, not really.

  Don’t get me wrong, there was definitely some ‘you done fucked up’ floating around in my head, but I didn’t feel conflicted, and because of that I remembered a little something I had waiting in the car.

  “Hey, Pete?” I called after my Head Chef as I got to my feet, “Pete?”

  “What do you want, Buck?” Pete sighed, having come back to the doorway but not an inch closer.

  “I quit.” I said before grabbing my bag.

  “What?” Pete blurted out, his head poking around the corner while I got ready to leave for good, “What do you mean you quit?”

  “I made a lot of money today, Pete,” I replied with a smile, stopping just shy of leaving as I did, “so I don’t need to deal with a bunch of guys who hate my guts, and I definitely don’t need this job. See you around.”

  “Wait!” Pete called after me, but it was too late.

  I was out the door and on my way to freedom.

  I had me.

  I had the girls.

  I had my millions.

  That was everything I needed and wanted.

  As far as I was concerned, the social obligations and niceties I had to put effort into with the chefs were gone and I could concentrate on being a decent boyfriend, a solid Demon, and, most of all, happily lead the Damned Legion on our path to crushing the halos once and for all.

  The Hallowed Kings days were numbered, and I was counting down the seconds.

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