"Scria won't be joining us for a bit. There's something going on, but he won't tell me about it." Bjorn looked a little concerned and distracted.

Lily cocked her head and asked, "Did you just call Scria 'he'?"

"Ah, her cousin. He's the one who asked if I'd let her join us. I don't actually know her personally."

"I thought you did. The way you looked at her all the time, I figured she was your girlfriend." Lily had a mischievious glint in her eyes.

"Well, uh, I'm married. To a beautiful woman, and I'm not the type of guy to, uh, actually never mind. We have important things to talk about right?" Bjorn's face looked like it might be slightly darker, but it was hard to tell with his stoney skin.

Marcus seemed to remember that there were important things to talk about and he cleared his throat, "Right, so all of you know that we've been seeing some weird things involving the game lately. Like how Bwyd was somewhere else without ever logging out, and the weird crystal stuff, and well all the stuff."

Lilly giggled and muttered "Stuff" so Marcus glared, "This is actually serious Lily. Two of us cannot log out, and we don't know what that means."

One of the scientists spoke up, "What do you mean by logout?"

"Wait, you can't log out either?" Marcus hit himself in the forehead, "I'm dumb. Of course you can't log out. You physically stepped through the portal, so you are actually here. Bjorn, Scria and Lily can all leave this instance, but me and Bwyd cannot. Just like all the refugees." He seemed like he was getting excited. "That means that we must be in the same state as... Bwyd, I think we are physically here. Wherever here is."

After that Marcus started to shut down again, so I decided to take charge. It was my castle after all. I told everyone everything that I knew about my instance, told Bjorn everything we'd been through (with help from Lily), and answered lots of questions from everyone. Except Marcus. He was thinking for most of it, and when he finally stopped thinking he just let me do all the talking. It took several hours to get through all the questions and explanations, and because I was hungry, I found an option for the banquet hall to serve a meal. Which I did. In front of everyone's seat, food appeared. The only type of food that appeared in front of me was the magically created meat, but other people had vegtables as well. It also seemed like everything was proportioned for each of us. Bjorn had a couple plates of food, Lily had a small plate of veggies, and I had a platter of meat. It was perfect.

After eating, Marcus asked to speak with me privately. So we went to my room.

"I really thought the ruler of the castle would have a nicer room." I just glared at him. "Not that there's a problem with the owner, it's the game system."

"Yeah, and I can upgrade it. Along with everything else here."

"I heard your explanation, but I need to ask you something." He looked nervous.

"Ok?"

"What was the first notification you saw when we got here?"

"Um something about anomolies and other stuff? It was kind of long."

"You know you can look up old notifications in your log, right?"

"Oh, right. Found it."

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"

As I read the notification out loud, he wrote down what I said. He read over it a couple times, compared it to something else he had written.

He started pacing. "Well, I think I have an idea about what happened. Our notifications are the same, until the line "Creating Instance". That's where mine ends. Lily's notification was a bit different. The "Removing Duality" line wasn't in her's."

"What does that mean?" I hopped on my bed to get out of his way.

"Where did you live?" He stopped pacing a looked at me with the most serious look I'd ever seen.

"Uh, New York. Why?"

His eyes shifted to the corner of my room for a moment, then he said, "I think we're in California. At the point between where you lived, and where I lived."

"Can we really be on Earth? Why California? How do you know?" I was starting to get a bit worried.

"It's the redwoods. We're in a redwood forest."

"So, we can't log out because this is already Earth?"

"That's my theory. I need to get Bjorn to test it though. If he can visit one of our homes, he can see if, if we're dead." His voice broke and his eyes looked like he was about to cry.

"Marcus. We are not dead. We're talking, breathing, eating. We're alive. So who cares if we look a little different. I get to be a dragon, so that's cool. My family will understand, probably. Besides, you're an illusionist, so you can look like whatever you want to."

He looked like he was about to say something, but we were interrupted by a siren. It sounded like a WWII air raid siren.

Alert

The protection period for you instance has run out

You may now be attacked, or visited by outsiders

Warning Your instance has been invaded by *$(#&$#)))% New Quest!

Defeat the intruders

Reward: Influence points based on contribution

Failure: Instance level decreases (The instance level is too low, and will change ownership instead)

We both looked at each other and said, "Uh oh."