Mad Empress of Callisto

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Man’s inability to foresee future events is one of Nature’s kindest gifts.

Had I but known what would come about from that day’s idle hunting expedition; no power in the world could have forced me to stir from the city of my beloved mate.

But a month of festivities and celebrations had begun to pall on one who was more accustomed to peril and adventure than to interminable laudatory speechmaking and the laying of cornerstones. And besides, the vanth were migrating.

Once each year this species of game traverses the Great Plains of Haratha to their mating grounds in the valleys of the Black Mountains. You might describe the vanth as stag or elk, for they are the closest you can come in terrene equivalents. A large quadruped, hunted for its succulent meat, which is greatly favored by the Shondakorians; a beast, however, not befurred but covered with a slick, supple hide like that of the seal or the dolphin; but a beast whose brow bears up a branching staglike crown of antlers nonetheless.

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