I die again, but a creature such as me can never truly die. My corrupted soul is whisked back into the realms of demon limbo, where my true love waits for me, just as he always does. Soon we will be together again until I am taken from him once more and the cycle begins anew as living demons in another great age. He is usually the first to die, yet I am always the first to be reborn.

I am Lord Kunzite and I was once a man. I lived in an age scores of thousands of years before your own, and yet not much different. Does that surprise you? To know the men who built the sphinx wore trousers and had indoor plumbing? The sphinx endures, but the inventions you people pride yourself on have not been invented so much as rediscovered. The dinosaurs went extinct once, only to be reborn and become extinct again. So shall it be with mankind.

The following is a tale set before the final nighttime fell upon the silver millennium of the moon and the first (forgotten) age of mankind on earth. This might be considered a happy tale or a tragic one, depending on how gladly you are willing to embrace the darkness that exists within the hearts of all men. And women. Our hearts are not as different as we might want you to think.

I embraced the darkness willingly. I have always loved the dark. My beloved feared the dark. He fought against it, and I fought to keep it from claiming him. Yet it seduced him just the same. And with my only love claimed by the darkness, there was no reason for me to walk within the light.

Yes, you see we weren't always the demons we became. We were we once something much nobler, more pure of heart. We were also weaker, almost powerless, nearly to the point of being frail and pathetic. We were once human beings, just like you.

This is the story of how we were set upon the path that took us away from the possibility of reincarnation within the human realms. We did not choose this path. We were not that wise.

Part One – The Nights in Venus

Chapter 1

It started with Beryl and it ended with Beryl. She sat in the king's garden, spinning flax into linen with her spinning wheel as Endymion approached me He pushed me by the shoulder until we were beyond Beryl's hearing.

"Kunzite, you are coming with me to the moon," he said, as if it were a simple fact.

"Why would you think that?" I most certainly was not going to the moon. I was a warlord with a small army to lead across the frigid mountains that made up the spine of Pangea. I certain didn't have time for a tea party at the behest of Queen Serenity and her all-female tribe of courtiers.

"I need you there." He looked back at the court magician and he saw her sitting motionless at her wheel, staring back at us. "I need you to protect me."

"You'll have Beryl to protect you."

"I need you to protect me from Beryl."

Alas, poor Beryl. She put her head down and pretended to devote her full attention to her spinning, but her dark red cascade of hair was tilted and her ample bosom heaved with every turn of the wheel. "Beryl is going to stay there a while to learn magic. She might be obsessed with you, but she takes her work very seriously. She'll be far too busy studying the arcane to chase after you."

Endymion nodded. "Yes, but not before Father offers me up as a potential bridegroom to the Moon Queen's only daughter."

I couldn't help but smirk, even though Beryl had my full sympathy in this matter. "I take it Beryl didn't respond well to the news that your father has discovered and broken off your secret betrothal?"

"Um, it's not that," Endymion broke into a sweat and wandered away from me, his arm curled behind his head. "I worry she won't react well, once I tell her."

"You haven't told her yet?" I gripped him by the shoulder and spun him to face me. "You must tell her now. She needs to hear it from you before she learns this from someone else."

Endymion waved his hand. "Oh, I'm still going to marry her. Only, we'll have to sneak away and marry in secret, out of sight from my father."

I held up a hand to caution him. "You should not speak of such a thing so casually and within my hearing. I am the king's warlord, and I am loyal."

"Yes, but you are also my good and loyal friend. As well as Beryl's. This is what is best for the kingdom. My father just doesn't realize it yet."

I glowered at him. "Do not test the bounds of my affections against my duty. I swore an oath to the king, and I intend to serve him faithfully for the remainder of his days."

"My father is a heartless old fool who cares nothing for true love. He only cares for riches and power an alliance with the moon will bring him. You know that as well as I do."

The king was hardly an old fool. He was a hearty man in his fifties, barely yielding to paunch and graying hair. He only seemed old to Endymion, who was at that time callow enough to want to marry the first woman who seduced him. I barely paid attention to such matters, but Endymion was only twenty-two. Beryl claimed to be twenty-nine, but she had been claiming to be twenty-nine in all of the six years I had known her. The lines near her eyes lead me to believe she had been twenty-nine quite a few years prior. She came from common peasant stock, and as far as I knew Beryl was childless and perhaps beyond childbearing. Had Beryl succeeded in her plot to marry the crown prince, it would have been a tragedy for the king on many fronts.

Still Endymion persisted with all of the misguided passion only a young fool can muster. "I love Beryl and she loves me. Nothing will stop us from marrying. Not him, and certainly not you. But I need for her to be discreet, and patient, and discretion and patience were never her strong suits."

We looked back at Beryl, who had stopped her spinning again, and stared at us with her mouth fixed in a line of worry. I knew she couldn't hear us, but she must have judged our expressions.

"Tell her the king has discovered your plans and forbids you from marrying her," I said. "Tell her now."

"I can't do that! She'll kill me."

"Tell her now. Or else I'm not going to the moon with you."

Endymion smiled at the implied promise in my words. "Thank you, my friend." He said and kissed my hand in gratitude before he rushed off to Beryl. She smiled and rose, then frowned as he pulled her close and spoke with their heads together. For a moment I thought he wouldn't keep his word and sought only to deceive me. Then she shrieked and she lunged for her wizard staff. She tried to bash him with it as he took off running.

They didn't run toward me, and I thanked the heavens, since I wanted no part of this.