"Hey, Marcus!" Lily tried to get his attention, but he seemed to be in one of his lost in thought states.

"You think he lives alone or something?" I was worried, but I figured it was better to just let him come back to us on his own.

"I hope not. We have been gone so long that... that would be bad." Lily seemed to accept he wasn't going to talk to us yet and just held his hand.

Brogan had been fidgeting with his MUD, but he really didn't seem like he was doing anything. It was like he was pretending to be busy while not doing anything. That kind of annoyed me, so I glared at him. It took him a while to notice, but when he did, he looked a little embarrassed.

"Sorry about not thinking about you. I just, I've never... sorry, I don't want to make excuses. My father always said 'A man never makes excuses, just take responsibility'." When he quoted his father he puffed out his chest, as if he was trying to look bigger.

"He sounds like a, uh, man." I wanted to say something that sounded better, but my mind was filled with images of buff men with German accents.

"He is. He is my father after all. Wait, do dragons have fathers?"

"Uh, actually, no. That's kind of wierd..." I was slightly confused by my newfound knowledge.

"What?"

"Oh, well, until you asked, I hadn't really thought about it, but now that I have. It just makes sense. Like it's something I've always known. Like it would be strange for someone to think dragons have fathers. True dragons anyway. This is kind of hurthing my head." It felt like a whole bunch of information was just appearing in my head.

"Is there something I can do to help?"

"No, it's not actual pain it's just odd to think about. It almost feels like I'm remembering things that I forgot, but I know that I didn't ever know it in the first place. Except it's more like I knew it, but I just didn't think about it, and now that I keep thinking about it I keep remembering more. Even though I'm not really remembering anything. But I am."

"Maybe we should talk about something else? I don't want you to end up like Marcus." He glanced at Marcus, who was sitting down now with Lily giving him a shoulder massage.

"I don't know, a shoulder massage sounds good right about now..." Brogan shrugged and moved like he was actually going to give me a massage, "Wait, no, that was a joke. Kind of." I shook my head and buried my face in my hands.

"You ok?" Brogan sounded hesitant.

"I'm just confused. I'm fine, really." I tried to give him a reassuring smile, but I was interrupted. By a flash of light.

Calling it a flash of light might have been a little bit of an understatement. The whole area was bathed in a bright white light, that was so bright we couldn't see anything. It only lasted for a couple of seconds, but it was so bright that we were all blinded for a bit after it went out. Well all except for:

Warning

System authority has detected anomolous behavior

Removing Duality

Authority insufficent to erase all anomalies

Isolating anomoly from non-integrated environment

Assimilating environment

Creating instance

Assigning highest leadership member to Controller

Transporting all anomolies to isolated area

Integrating all anomolies into instance

Developing logisitical support

Creating dungeon "Dragon's Refuge"

I was a little overwhelmed by the light, and then the longest message I'd ever seen. Not to mention the things that I could only guess what they meant. But at least it looked like we were back in the game, maybe.

When I could see again, I realized that things had changed. There were still giant trees, but right in front of me was a fortress. A massive fortress. It looked like it was made of stone, but like the city in the darkness, it was seemless. The walls were probably about a hundred feet tall, and they had crenulations on top of them. Every hundred feet or so, there was a round tower that was a bit higher than the wall, and it looked like there were balistas on top of it. I could also see arrow slits near the top of the wall, and all through the towers.

Beyond the wall there was a large keep, with the same design as the walls, exept it was a building, not just a defensive fortification. I quickly teleported towards the wall then to the top so I could get a better look, and the keep was more impressive than I expected. I'm not an expert on defenses, but I got the impression that this place was built to survive a siege. Standing on the walls I realized that they were at least twenty feet thick, and had javelins, arrows, and balista bolts stockpiled in several places. There were also things that looked like giant cannons in the middle of each tower. They were big enough we could put Bjorn inside and shoot him like a cannon ball.

There were two sets of walls total, with the keep connected to one side of the inner walls. The inner walls were slightly taller than the towers on the outer wall, which were taller than the trees. There were only four towers on the inner walls, but they had a hundred foot diameter, and they had gigantic cannons on them. The keep itself had two more towers that rose far above any other part of the fortress, and kind of reminded me of Notre Dame. Except taller. And wider. And rounder.

As I looked around I realized that the trees were far enough away that there was a nice open field around the fortress, and then I realized there were people throughout the fields. There were hundreds of people. Some were walking around, some were yelling at each other, some just sat or lay on the ground. I also saw my group crossing the field, so I waved hoping they'd see me, but they were too distracted by all the people. Some of which were talking to them. I figured I could find the gate while they walked closer, I was supposed to be our parties scout after all. Not that we'd really done game stuff as a party for a while. We didn't even have our tank. What kind of adventuring party could we be without a tank?

So I looked around to see if I could see a gate, but there was nothing. I went around the entire outer wall, and it was solid all the way around. I started going around again, but got distracted. There was a group of people who were surrounding a couple of large looking people. It looked like there was some kind of a disagreement, and as I watched one of the large people pulled a massive dark shield out of nowhere and slammed it into the ground, while the other one drew two large swords from her back, and two smaller swords from her waist. The shield slam knocked down the people around them, and then I realized, she was blue and had four arms, and the shield guy was kind of rocky looking.

When I recognized them I immediately teleported in front of them, and held up a hand in greeting. "Hi guys."