When I heard Marcus' voice, I looked around, as if I might see him somewhere around. When I didn't I started to think that I might have imagined it. I mean, this was some kind of wierd magical machine that was supposed to see magic, so maybe there were side effects, like hallucination.

"BWYD!"

Then I heard him again.

"Marcus?"

The moment his name left my lips, the the crystal around me started glowing brighter and brighter. As it got brighter the whole thing started vibrating, and I heard a high pitched whining noise. The doctor, and his minions started rushing around touching various screens. After a few seconds I could barely see outside, and the noise and vibration had gotten so bad I was thrown around the small space, clutching my ears. Just trying to stop the noise. I felt something wet coming out of my ears, and I was pretty sure it was blood. Then the light started to rapidly change colors, going through the entire specturum one way then the other. I tried to close my eyes to keep the light out, but it didn't help. Just when it felt like my head was about to burst, everything stopped. I was half convinced I had died, and this is what the respawn feature felt like.

Until a bunch of people started talking.

"Bywd? Are you ok?" Marcus sounded concerned.

"Bwyd, that was some crazy light show. Even beats Marcus."

There were bell noises, and I felt my headache, and bruises, go away.

"Guys, she bleeding. In purple." Scria almost sounded scared.

They were all just standing around me, and now they stared at my ears. I kind of wiped my hand under my ear, and it was covered with purple blood. Then I realized something. People don't bleed in the game. There was something about PTSD, and fear of blood, so they didn't show blood. Injuries were just a red mark, that disappeared with healing. They could become a scar if you didn't heal it, or it was from massive damage, but if you didn't want a scar then you could just have it removed. But you could never bleed, or have body parts removed, or feel pain from someone touching an injury.

"That can't be blood. You know the game doesn't have gore." Marcus sounded like he was about to start a lecture.

"Shut up! I knew a guy. Liked playin with, loud things. One of em blew up in his face. Burned the hair off his head, and made him bleed from the ears. Like that." Scria finished and pointed at me.

They all looked at me again. They all had very serious looks, like they were thinking really hard. So while they were thinking, I decided to check something. I bit my arm as hard as I could. It didn't hurt at all, but it did make all of them jump.

"You ok Bwyd?" Bjorn approached me and put a hand on my back.

"Yeah, but you'll probably never believe me when I tell you where I've been."

"Will that explain what we found here?" He gestured around, and there behind me was a large crystal. It looked like the same stuff the augur machine was made out of, only a pillar instead of an hourglass. And it looked like something had smashed out from the inside of it.

"Was I in that?"

"Yeah. We were wondering about that."

"I don't remember seeing anything like this when I was here before. It was just empty sewers. And darkness."

Marcus walked up to the crystal, "Yeah, we were following, but you got quite a ways ahead of us, so when your name suddenly went dark in my friend list, and it said unavailable. We started running to catch up to you."

Lily cut him off, "In case you don't know, your name only goes dark if you're offline, but it says offline, I've never heard of unavaillable."

"Yes, yes. I'm sure Bwyd's read the forums by now. She would know."

I didn't but I just nodded, "So what does unavailable mean?"

"That's the mystery. I sent a message to an info broker, just to see if he knew anything, and he had no idea. Never heard of it. Apparently, that is a status that does not exist in the game. So it means that something was hacked, but from what I know of you, you aren't a hacker. Hackers tend to know more about the game they're hacking." He paused, as I started glaring at him, "You've learned a lot, but hackers need as much knowledge as possible. Plus, the game is supposed to be unhackable. Something about the interface having no connection to the core game code. The most a hacker could do is change what their menus look like, or alter the information on their stats, but nothing actually changes. Which really means that all of your friends would be the hackers, becuase they were the ones who saw your status as unavailable."

"What Marcus is trying to say is, you're an anomaly. But we love you anyway." Lily seemed impatient with how long Marcus' explaination was taking.

"So, I was thinking, you should get a full appraisal done. It might show something that you don't even know about."

"Ha, funny story. I was getting something like that done. Then Marcus showed up and ruined it all, but don't let me interrupt your story. What did you find when you finally got here?"

He looked a little confused for a moment, then he seemed to get back his original train of thought, "Oh, right. So when we got here, there was a giant crystal on top of this walkway. We tried to summon you, but nothing happened. We even tried breaking the crystal, but it was immune to everything. Including Lily's and my identification magic. When we had just about given up, it started pulsing with light."

"Like a rave." Scria did something that I think was supposed to be a dance move you'd see at a rave, but with four arms.

"Yeah, sure. But everytime it lit up you came online, and everytime it went dark your name went dark as well. So we started yelling your name and trying to summon you. Then it exploaded with a bright flash that blinded us all, and you were there."

Lily was practically bouncing up and down, "So Bwyd, did you find a personal dungeon? Or a secret challenge? What was it? Tell us, tell us."

"Blood and zombies."