Haha, Did We Slay the Dragon?

Listen to old Jack with his ever-smoldering pipe, spitting all over as he tells the tale of how four fools, by absurdly good luck, choked a dragon to death and saved the world? The story ends perfectly amid the laughter of the tavern and the clinking of gold coins.

But the next second, the scene freezes in a cold cellar, in a rusty iron cage——inside the cage are curled-up thin knees, the outline of a huge palm, and a faded scrap of pink cloth.

Haha, we killed a dragon? Or... did we become prisoners in a cage instead?

The end of the book. (The truth? You guess.)