Elasmotherium

Elasmotherium stood on the frozen steppe like something from a myth that

had not yet been written. A rhinoceros — but that word does not do justice

to the scale. Taller than a man at the shoulder, heavier than any rhino the

modern world would ever know, and crowned with a single enormous horn that

rose from its skull like a lance aimed at the sky. When it charged, the

ground shook. When it lowered its head, nothing in the Resurgence was

foolish enough to stand in its path. It grazed the steppe grasses with

the same quiet authority as the mammoths, but where the mammoths traveled

in herds, Elasmotherium walked alone — or nearly so. It did not need a

herd. That horn was its own army. Millennia later, when the ice age was a

distant memory and humans told stories of impossible creatures, some would

speak of a great beast with a single horn — beautiful, powerful, untouchable.

They called it a unicorn. They were remembering Elasmotherium. The truth,

as always, was grander than the legend.