He landed on his backside on something springy and damp. The sudden light blinded him. After so long in silence, the noise greeted Jig like a long-lost friend. He heard a breeze blowing. A rustling sound surrounded him, and in the distance, he heard the whistling of birds. Birds, in Straum’s lair? He shrugged. Sparrows and other birds flew into the tunnels from time to time. They made great snacks. Perhaps there was a crack leading to the surface, small enough for birds to fly in and out.

“Jig? Is that you? We were wondering if you’d be joining us.”

“Darnak?” Jig turned toward the sound. Everything was still too bright, but he could make out the dwarf’s stocky form a few feet away. “It was either follow you down or stay there and starve.”

“Good choice.” Darnak’s hand clapped Jig on the shoulder. “Since you’re here, mayhaps you can help us with a bit of a dilemma. See, this isn’t exactly what we were expecting to find down here.”

They waited for Jig’s eyes to adjust. When they had, he looked around in amazement. He sat in a field of soft green grass. Trees ringed the field at a distance of roughly a hundred yards. Sunlight warmed his skin, and he could smell the soft sweetness of pollen in the breeze. He scraped at the damp ground, digging up a clump of grass to find, not cold stone, but moist, black soil.

“I’m outside,” he whispered, not knowing whether to rejoice or cower at the news. He raised a hand and saw his shadow on the ground. It didn’t waver, as it would have done in torchlight. Clear and sharp, his shadow-hand followed his real one perfectly. Slowly Jig looked up at the sky.

“Wow.”

He even stopped breathing as he stared. He saw no sign of the rope he had used to climb down. Nothing but blue sky, and clouds like white clumps of fur drifting past. He reached out, but the clouds were too far away to touch. How high were they? They looked to be at least thirty or forty feet up, higher than anything Jig had ever seen.

And the sun! An orange circle that shone with warm, perfect light, like a thousand thousand torches all burning together. He squinted, trying to see if it burned like a normal fire.

“It’s not real,” Darnak said. “If ’twere, you’d be blind right about now.”

Jig ignored him. Real or not, this was the most incredible thing he had ever seen. He didn’t know how they had come here or even where “here” was, but none of that mattered. After spending his whole life underground, knowing nothing but the lair and a few dark tunnels, Jig had discovered a completely new world. Still gaping, he managed to tear his eyes away from the sun long enough to say, “It’s so big.”