Passageways should define their destination, let the traveller know to where they are going. Not this one. The route to the outside was bare rock, smoothed and cleansed to render it almost polished, all to ensure that there was no place to hide. Coming out of the city, it was entered from cleared defensive perimeter, one hundred metres of smoothed rock, brightly lit and overlooked by guard posts both in the ground and hanging from the cavern roof. After the initial entrance it quickly shrank into this passageway. Deliberately narrow, made to allow those within to pass through in single file only, For the half-ogre it was tough going, the path did not leave much space on either side of his large frame, the low roof making him hunch over as he walked. Jeria at slightly over two metres in height fared better, but not by much. His head scraped the ceiling the few times he had stepped too high. No army could go through here and no scout could infiltrate, easily detectable by those standing guard at the entrance. Briefly he wondered about those who could use magic to conceal himself, then mentally shrugged. If he could think of it, so could the city’s military and he doubted precautions against that had been neglected even if he could not see them. He wondered what precautions had been taken at the city entrance for merchants. Clearly much was hidden from the soldiers that stood guard there.

The door at the end was iron marked with faint magic sigils glowing gently in the dark. They passed through the door, an anti-climax to what Jeria had expected, not the outside world that he had expected. The passageway continued till they came to a corner, after which the path finally changed. From here, the walls were covered in roots and sand; brackish red water seeping down onto the passage floor. It widened out into a natural cavern, roots dangling from the roof, puddles of water lying on the floor, moss and various fungi growing on the ground making it slippery. Some of the moss glowing softly, providing the cavern with some light though not much.

Gruzz looked at Jeria, his face serious. “Don’t drink this water or eat these plants. A lot carry taint and while the concentration is low here, there is always the chance you end up infected.”

Jeria nodded. Everyone had heard of taint, though few knew how widespread it was or how far it had spread. He frowned, thinking of the fact that it was this close to the city. He brought his torch closer to the water, seeing the slightly pinkish colour, discolouration from the taint with.

They crossed the cavern, crawling through a passage between roots to a covered exit. Finally, Jeria felt something, he could smell a difference, feel a difference as they approached the exit. Jeria felt elated, buoyed, every one of those last few steps of the trip a revelation. The air slowly filtering down from above carried scents of an outside world never looked upon, smells that never reached the city hidden below. The exit did not immediately reach the outside, but into a passageway filled with earthy smells and a subtle aroma of rotting. Gruzz turned to look at him when the passage started widening.

"We'll rest here. It's not far to the surface and you need to prepare for it. You've grown up in Weald Hall, in the cavern city. You have never seen the open sky, smelt the open air, felt a true wind or been caught in the rain. So, we will go slowly. Tonight we will go out and sit tight. You will feel the air, look at the sky. If, and that's a big if, you are ok under the night sky, tomorrow we take a walk. If not, I drag you back inside and you do inside duty only." He laughed. “Yeah, not all Outwalker’s go out, you can serve well within the caverns only, though obviously you are more useful to us if you can bear the open sky.”

The final cavern was huge. Stalactites and stalagmites formed a treacherous maze, the entrance into the cavern but a small sliver in the wall, hidden behind massive columns of rock. Jeria wound his way through the gaps, keeping Gruzz in site. The half ogre looked back at Jeria.

"I'll go first, you follow after."

Jeria watched as Gruzz disappeared. He could feel the wind blowing through a gap in the rocks, carrying the unknown scents from what lay beyond. He moved forward, touching the rocks at the edge, taking deep breathes, his heart pounding, sweat pouring off his brow despite the cool night air. He felt the start of panic within, the thought of the sky, nothing above him, no comforting ceiling overhead, just the sky going on forever. With the moment upon him, he suddenly realised his fear: The loss of the comforting, embracing presence of the cavern, a womb of comfort to those within its halls, protecting him from the outside, from the unknown terrors that he would encounter when he was reborn, emerging into the outside world. He steeled himself, taking one last deep breath before stepping out, before looking up.

The sky. It was a clear night, cloudless. Overhead no moon shone, but the stars spread across the heavens like a blanket of white lace, a canopy of diamonds that glittered in the night. Jeria looked up, marvelling at their beauty. People compared the cavern posts, hanging down over the city, to the stars. They were not comparable! The stars were so much more, a beauty he marvelled at as a soft breeze caressed his cheeks, rifled through his hair. He stood, staring up into the night sky, looking at their beauty and felt the breeze across his lightly scaled skin, and the hot tears that slid down his face as he sank to the ground, his hands reaching up to the unknown, uncaring sky. For an age, he just stared up, until a huge hand landed on his shoulder.

"Yeah, wonderful isn’t it? And we must live hidden, never seeing this. Generations live and die never knowing, never feeling the wind or seeing the moon and the stars. None except us, we lucky few that make up the Outwalkers. We guard, protect and keep watch on an enemy that draws ever closer. We are lucky to see these sights, to have this knowledge. More than sufficient compensation for the danger we must face. And we do face danger for it, many of us die, many go mad, many never return home." He stood over Jeria, giving him more time to absorb, to feel, to taste the air of freedom. Eventually he lifted his hand, "For now we must move away from the gate. It is the first rule: never camp by the gate and never leave by the same path. Come now, let us go to where we can await the rising of the sun."

The wonder did not cease for Jeria as he followed behind Gruzz. The massive trees were yet another wonder, their leaves soft beneath them as he walked, as his boots pushed them into the ground. The grass, brown and dying from the onset of autumn, felt strange beneath him as he sat, the feel of the bark of the tree, upon which he leaned, rough on his skin.

"Careful there. Many of these trees are tainted. Cut yourself on this bark and you run the risk of being poisoned." A pause and Jeria just caught the last part muttered under the half-ogre’s breath "or worse."

Jeria settled down under one of the trees, his back touching the arm of Gruzz. Together they sat, waiting for the dawn, for Jeria to see his first rising sun; his first dawn without a sky of stone overhead.