Fire licked at the dungeon walls, leaving scorch marks from floor to ceiling. Considering the place hadn't exactly been built for this, they weren't proving to be off to the best of starts.

A hole was beginning to form beneath a high up window. Chunks were crumbling away from it, and the dungeon designer's flaw had been placing this directly above the blood-stained wooden door, the blood having originated from an ancient prisoner's futile efforts to escape.

Often, the dragons would aim their fire at this door, deeming it unsafe to even attempt to enter.

This was the room which Avery had to enter. To free the dragons from their captivity and the iron cast metal chains which held them there, and attempt to send them back to their home land. Heart pounding, she cautiously approached the door, armed with only a small water bottle and a chainsaw. Time to face her fate.

The door creaked open, and Avery was immediately confronted with a blast of extreme heat, directed at her by two dragons at once. She ducked, causing the fire to merely skim the top of her head. The flames licked at her hair, making it necessary for her to waste some of her already limited water supply to put out the sparks that begun to form atop her head. Well. She'd been proved right. Mission impossible.

She powered onwards, peeling off her jumper which was drenched in sweat. She would do this. She had to. It was her job.

Sneaking up on the first dragon from behind, she began to hack at his chain. The movement alerted the dragon to her presence, earning her multiple burns and costing her even more of her water. Still, she ploughed onwards, successfully freeing the dragon from it's chain and safely capturing it into a fireproof box. One down, countless more to go.

All of the dragons but one reacted in similar ways. The one being the last one. She had exhausted her water supply, and was fully expecting to be set on fire with no way to put it out. But this one dragon had remained calm, watching her silently as she freed them from their now solitary confinement.

With all the dragons safely in their fireproof boxes, Avery emerged from the dungeon, triumphant. She drove them all over to the boat which would return them to their home, and happily loaded them all into the back room. Except, when it came to the last dragon, the one who had kept so calm and hadn't tried to set her alight as the others all had, she paused. He was staring at the bottom of his container, tears in his eyes as he looked up at her, a melancholy expression upon his face. She realized. She couldn't do this. She couldn't get rid of him!

Hiding the box in the back of her car whilst the people about to sail them home had their backs turned, she hopped into the front seat, rolled down the window, and told them that was all of them. They nodded, unsuspecting, and she drove off.

Once she arrived home, she fashioned a muzzle for the dragon out of an old pair of her fireproof boots and set him, down in the living room of her apartment.

When her roommate returned home that evening from her much less stressful job working in a restaurant, she was taken aback.

"You got a pet dragon!"