Julia Spurr sipped her coffee serenely as she looked down at Ellie Sattler and her dragon. The two of them had halted the auto-narration, it seemed, in order to make their escape more practical. Little did they know that there was no way out. The walls were thick enough to withstand a blast of magic exactly like the one Sattler was planning. Even in her fully-charged state, she wouldn't be able to break out.

BANG!

Spurr flinched at the sound, but smiled after a beat. The two gods were about to find out just how well-prepared her organization was. As she turned back to the digital window, however, her smile disappeared. The prisoners were gone.

Spurr wheeled around and grabbed her ebony phone, keeping an eye on the empty screen. A smoking blast-mark fizzled on one of the walls, clouding the roof with putrid smoke. Tapping her fingers along the spine of the phone anxiously, Spurr waited for her men to pick up on the other end. When they did, she hissed a sharp command.

"They're out of the Rest Cure Room! Find them!"

A cluster of guards jogged into the white chamber through a hidden door. Spurr slapped her forehead and growled.

"No, don't go in there! They're already-"

She paused. Slowly, Spurr turned to the smoking blast-mark. She hadn't noticed that it wasn't so much a hole as a crater. It didn't fully penetrate the wall, and it certainly wasn't large enough to have been created by a strong magic blast, which meant . . .

Suddenly, the prisoners made themselves visible, dropping down from the ceiling like spiders. They landed among the guards and took them out one by one before darting through the door. Spurr slammed her palm on a red button. A siren blared, and the facility turned blood-red under the glow of spinning lights. She checked her network of cameras and saw the escapees approaching a branched hallway.

"Prepare for a roundup. We'll cut them off at the end of the-"

HORK-SPLAT!

Sattler coughed up a wad of dilophosaurus venom, covering the lens of the security camera with thick, grey goop. Spurr trembled in fury.

"Where do you want us to go?" a guard asked her from a telephone station.

Spurr caught sight of the two prisoners running down another hall.

"B Wing! They're headed for the B Wing!"

Her guards clattered down the hall, guns at the ready. When they reached the projected junction point, there was no one there. Spurr slammed her fist on the desk.

"Damnit! They're still using illusions!"

The head guard looked up at the camera, adjusting his microphone.

"Where are the-"

He was cut off when one of his men chopped the back of his neck. In the confusion that followed, the imposters took out the entire squad, then changed back to their true shapes. Spurr roared in outrage and screamed into the phone.

"Stop them! I don't care what it takes! Make sure they don't leave this building!"

Another squad attempted to cut the prisoners off. Sattler leapt upon the leading officer as a raptor, finishing him off with one bite. As she demorphed, she was tackled to the ground by a scout. She placed her heels on either side of his head and snapped his neck with her legs. The dragon, meanwhile, blasted several bursts of electricity, which hit the remaining men and left them convulsing on the floor.

Spurr was seething now. She could see that Sattler had acquired an additional weapon, and it was a deadly one. Although each barrel had to be loaded and set with a percussion cap, the pepperbox style revolver could fire six shots as fast as the trigger was pulled. This meant, of course, that six more men went down like flies. Headshots. All of them.

Before Spurr could warn her top-level guards of the danger, Ellie Sattler sprung up from the floor and did an upside-down split-kick into the control tower, knocking them both out. Elkay pounded the floor with her tail, sending blocky clumps of concrete flying. Sattler kicked the floating chunks towards the remaining guards, and punched the surveillance router with flaming fists. As half of the cameras went dead, Spurr felt her blood boiling. She opened a secret drawer and flipped a small switch. She could hear the click of her magical gravity-enhancing collars all the way from her office. Wherever the girl and her dragon were, they'd have their necks bound by a solid chain-

-which they were now using to launch each other up the East Tower, right outside Spurr's window. She could see them from across the street. It was almost as if they were taunting her. They swung each other up the wall like acrobats. When a cannonball was shot at them, they stretched out in different directions, and the iron sphere snapped the leash in half with a hail of sparks. Elkay swung her chain around a guard before bashing him against the wall and removing her collar.

The impact of the cannonball caused the tower to collapse, and both prisoners jumped up the falling rocks like vertical stepping stones. When they reached the top platform, Elkay spread her wings, deflecting a hail of bullets with a sharp ratta-tat-tat. Sattler swung out from behind her when she heard the sound of empty guns and eliminated the last few guards. An archer shot an arrow at her, and she caught it in midair before kicking it back and giving his neck some extra ventilation.

With the tower about to crumble away into nothingness, it looked like they would have a straight shot at the open sky. Without a second thought, Spurr launched her heat-seeking missiles. The weapons soared through the air, leaving a trail of white smoke behind them. They surrounded the tower, and the two prisoners seemed done for.

Suddenly, Sattler spread her arms. The missiles halted in midair. With a pained expression, she clenched her fists. The missiles rotated slowly. They stopped when they were pointed directly at the hub of the castle-fortress. With a deep frown, Sattler said a phrase which was inaudible from such a long distance, but judging by her lip movements, it was something along the lines of "Merry Christmas, motherfucker!". Then, she let the missiles fly, and they destroyed the most important edifice of Spurr's empire.

Through the billowing smoke and flaming debris, Spurr could make out the shape of a yellow dragon flying into the distance with a winged woman on her back. Slowly, she reached for her phone and dialed every available line until she found one that wasn't dead.

"Ms. Spurr? . . ."

"Was the Mozaradon destroyed in the blast?" she asked evenly.

"Um . . . No. She appears to be fine."

Spurr gave a slow nod.

"Good. Bring her out. We're going to enter Phase 3 of our plan."