Days went by, and the troll traveled many trails, making his way further and further away from his home.
One misty morning he came across a series of waterfalls, each more beautiful than the previous, tumbling down the rugged mountains.
Then there had been an evening, walking high on the ridges, looking out over a seemingly endless vista of wilderness. A limitless land of adventure and opportunity, danger and reward. He would explore it all.
Some days, nothing happened. The land was more or less the same for days or weeks at a time, so great was the scale of the landscape he explored. Yet even on these days, the more he noticed, the more he saw. One forest in particular, he couldn’t believe how many animals, birds, and insects he’d seen, to say nothing of the profusion of trees and flowers.
Eventually the shaman came to a place where the very air was gray. Bare rock lay on either side, gravel and solid stone beneath his feat. As he rounded a bend in the trail, he came upon a sight that made him freeze in his tracks. An enormous dragon reared its head before him. Even as he slowly realized it was some sort of stone shrine and not a huge beast, the scene was so chilling it did little to ease his growing sense of fear.
