"Good luck," Smokewell said, hopping onto Asmod's shoulder before the man rushed off, mixing into the crowd of fleeing pedestrians. They were going to keep a lookout on the outside while Hopper, Lily and I went in to get Hammer.

Lily pulled out a card from her pocket and summoned the big direwolf. The three of us hopped onto its back and the beast took off, maneuvering through the frantic crowd and bounding through the burnt gates of the prison.

The alarms started going off within the facility, the prison guards were rushing out with their guns and taking aims. Lily was the one steering the wolf. "Hold tight!" she snapped at us and pulled at the right side of the creature's fur. The wolf turned before one of the guards' rifle bullets struck him.

Lily pushed her glasses further up on her nose. A golden tint came over the lenses. And the next thing I knew, she was guiding the beast as if it was a limb attached to her own body, deftly weaving our path through the flying projectiles.

"Try not to kill any of the guards," Hopper yelled behind me.

"I don't plan to," Lily yelled back as the wolf took off into the air when another bullet flew at it. The beast landed heavily onto the guard that had fired the gun. There was a loud wet crunch like a boulder dropping into a muddy pit and a fountain of red spurted around. "I might've guided the wolf slightly wrong," she said sheepishly.

"I told you to keep the guard casualties to a minimum!" Hopper yelled again. "We're not here to kill!"

"Just tell me which way we were supposed to go again!" Lily yelled.

"It's the C-Wing! To the east!" Hopper yelled.

Lily steered the wolf eastward. Now the flurry of bullets were even more frenzied. The guards kept trying to kneecap the creature but it was swift as the wind. We entered one of the prison buildings.

Hopper pulled out his gun and pushed a pin that was on its side. Something clicked inside the weapon. He aimed at the entrance behind us and pulled the trigger. A wall of flames erupted in the guards' way just before they could follow us through the hallway. "That might buy us some time," Hopper said.

I dug into my satchel and pulled out of the bottles I'd borrowed from Lily. A dark substance was swirling within. I pulled off the cork on the bottle's mouth. Black mist rushed out of the container and floated right next to us, keeping up with the wolf as it carried us down the long hallway.

The black mist materialized into the shape of a man. He gave me a subservient nod, as if waiting for my command.

"It's time to do your job!" I snapped at the Abyssal being. "Fly ahead of us and keep alerting me of any obstacles that come our way."

The man gave another nod before he turned back into a ball of black mist and whizzed right ahead of us.

"What is that thing?!" Hopper yelled behind me.

Before I could say anything Lily yelled, "Which way to go next?!" We were coming up to the end of the hallway which cut in two opposite directions.

"The corridor on the right," Hopper yelled back.

"No, there are guards coming from that side," I said when I heard the abyssal being's voice in my head, alerting me of the danger.

"To the left then," Lily said and steered the wolf the other way.

Hopper grabbed onto his top hat as the beast took a hard left. Guards were storming in from the right. Hopper shot another screen of fire behind us to throw off the men in pursuit. "We need to get to the C-Wing before its too late. I only have three more fire-screen bullets left," he said.

"Where to next?" Lily cried out.

"We'll have to jump out that window over there and get to the courtyard on the other side." Hopper pointed at one of the tall bay windows at the end of the corridor. He fished another gun out of his coat. This looked more like a regular pistol. He was about to fire at the window when the wolf shrieked in pain and Lily was shrieking along with it.

The beast tumbled ahead, disappearing mid air in a floury mist and the three of us slammed onto the ground.

"Whatever happened to that creature?" Hopper said as he stood up and straightened his jacket.

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Lily was still on the ground, groaning in pain and clutching her ankle. An arrow lay a few feet away from her. She looked at it and grit her teeth. "Someone managed to buck Pearl in the ankle." She rose to her feet and stomped down on the arrow, snapping it in half.

I suddenly remembered Lily's familiar's were made of flour, so the arrowhead wasn't stained with any blood.

"Can't you summon the beast again?" Hopper asked as he led us to the bay window.

"Can't. My wrath reserve is currently busy healing me," Lily said as she followed with a limp.

"Wrath?" Hopper asked.

"No time to go into details. I'll just say that when my familiars take damage, they are significantly weakened by the impact. It will take at least fifteen more minutes before I can summon one of them again," Lily said.

Hopper grimaced. “Is your leg hurting?”

"A bit. But don't worry, I won't slow you down."

The man nodded before retrieving his pistol and firing at the window. The glass shattered but I heard the Abyss's voice in my head. I sprang forth and tackled Hopper and Lily to the floor and away from the window.

“What in the–” Hopper stopped in the middle of his curse when he noticed a cluster of arrows flying in through the window.

The abyssal being I had released from the bottle appeared from the broken window. “At least two dozen guards are waiting outside in the courtyard, master,” he said. “It's dangerous out there.”

The hallway we were in didn’t have a door to any other room. Nor were there any other windows. I looked at Hopper. “Now what?”

The man frowned deeply. But he didn't get a chance to come up with a plan. The screen of fire he had shot in the hallway behind us suddenly disappeared. Around ten gun wielding guards walked through.

The three of us took a hesitant step back. “Uh, I think we need to reconsider our strategy,” Lily said.

My abyssal servant was still hovering in the air behind me.

The guards trained their guns on us. “You are under arrest for trespassing on government property!” one of them declared in a heavy baritone.

“Hopper,” I whispered. “Use that fire-screen bullet. Now.”

“Put your weapons down,” the guard said, aiming his pistol at us.

Hopper nodded and stepped forward and reached into his coat. The guards watched him with vigilant eyes. “I'm putting my weapon down,” he said as he pulled out his gun and crouched low. When its muzzle was just a few feet off the ground. He pulled the trigger. The cartridge exploded on the floor and another wall of fire rose between us and the guards.

I didn't waste any time to whip out my ritual knife. I carved a pentacle on the ground and a broken chain at its centre. While chanting the dismantling spell, I plucked a couple of my hair and laid it on the five headed star. Since I hadn't cleansed the ritual area with a broom, the impurities in the surface exerted a force against the force of the ritual. I could feel it within me as my teeth rattled slightly in their gums.

The ground cracked and crumbled under our feet. “Brace yourselves!” I said as the three of us fell through with two hundred pounds of brick and mortar on the lower floor.

The room that we landed in seemed to be the warden's office. The chunks of roof fell on top of the desk, shattering it instantly. I certainly felt the pain of the fall in my back. Hopper and Lily felt the same--it was evident from their grimaces. But there was no time to sit and moan.

I scrambled up to my feet and helped them up too. Then I reached into the pocket of my skirt and produced a small glass ball filled with a translucent blue liquid.

Asmod had given it to us in case there was an emergency. There was a small label on the ball that read: ocean orb.

I heard the footsteps of the guards converging towards us from the hallway outside the office. And from the roof above us. The door to the office was thrown open. Guards were rushing in.

Lily hurled the ball at the floor, smashing the glass and splashing the blue liquid onto the floor. A colorless mist rose from the liquid. Its sickly sweet odor quickly spread throughout the room. It wasn't going to affect the three of us, though.

The guards paused, their faces pale with horror and they all screamed and crouched low with their hands over their heads. Some of them tried rushing away.

Hopper pulled out his pistol and shot at another window. We climbed out and into the garden outside. The sweet scent of the blue liquid followed us out. The guards who had been loosing their arrows at us got a whiff of its scent and they gave the same shocked and horrified reaction as the guards who had come to the warden's office.

We kept running as Hopper led us to the holding cells. The blue liquid in the glass ball was one of Asmod's enchanted inks. It evaporated faster than rubbing alcohol and gave off the odor that affected the unguarded senses in an intense manner.

As soon as the guards caught a whiff of the ink's smell the first thing they saw was a huge tidal wave, moving towards them like a divine flood. As long as the scent was in their nostrils, they would keep seeing the ocean.

The smell didn't affect us because of the masks that we were wearing.

So while the guards were distracted we made a dash for the C-Wing and once were inside, we came to a halt in front of a particular cell.

The room didn't have any lights so it was engulfed in shadows. All we could see were the iron bars of the cell door and nothing else. Hopper leaned forward and said, “William Hammer, it's time to go home.”