My Dearest Kiima,

I remember it as if it were a dream.

There are times where I truly wish that was the case.

I am older than most civilizations that have walked this earth and have seen the rise and fall of the empires of man.

Wars have been fought in my name.

Men and women, *good* men and women, have died to protect me even though I am not bound by the laws of mortals and cannot die.

As best I can recall, it began ages ago when magic was fresh and new.

During the early world there had been many races, created in the images of abstract gods. One to create, one to change, one to maintain, and one to destroy. There was a balance to this nature, and for a time it was good.

For most races, birth is something celebrated as both mundane and common as well as something profoundly miraculous. New life and the promise it brings is always celebrated but at the time mine was considered especially so.

I was born as the second "hybrid", borne of an angel and one of the race of man. Like a weathered stone, time has eroded enough of my memory that I know not who my mother or father was, their faces, or voices. I remember the warmth and kindness, the endless love they felt towards me, and the pride they felt knowing that I was something new with a destiny not yet written.

I also remember the hate and fear. Others had branded me an abomination and my youth was spent living up to that name. I had earned that fear and played off it, greatly disappointing those that branded me a savior. Can't you see that I didn't want to be anyone's savior? It wasn't fair!

My "brother" Ah Rin was the first of the hybrids and while not a brother by blood, but one of circumstance. He had showed me how to expand myself by taking the best traits inherited from my bloodlines. Oh you should have seen the glories I created! Many of them were labeled "wonders" of the world and were remembered long after they had finally fallen. This was my gift.

Where I was born to create, he was born to destroy and corrupt. Born of the Shadows, destroyers of things, and the Changelings who could mold their bodies, spirits, and minds to fill any gap in the world, he was capable of adapting to corrupt any soul. It would easy to say this was my excuse for his involvement.

We had spent many years together, it was hard to say exactly how long but we spent them as brothers. He (and sometimes she) had been my friend, my teacher, and lover. We had created an empire together stretching across the early tribes of man and bringing them such knowledge and power as to inspire them for millennia. This wasn't enough for us and we expanded our empire to cover much of the old world pushing the angels offworld and the changelings scattered to the fringes of it.

The shadows. Dear gods forgive me. We slaughtered them.

It was our first genocide.

Ah Rin had decided that his kinfolk would be our greatest threat to our empire. We did more than just kill them. My talents had been put to their test and the greatest of my early works was a horrible atrocity. I had worked out a manner of not just killing the Shadows, but in distilling their essences and feeding it to my companion. I had "cooked" their raw magics.

It was at this point we had incurred the wrath of my kin and the Angels descended upon us. We had upset the balance of creation and destruction and the gods were angry.

They didn't stand a chance.

I could say that it was a glorious battle, but it was a slaughter.

The evening after the battle we found ourselves engaged in our final embrace. Seeing the carnage we had wrought upon this world had changed me. I had seen in his eyes the true measure of what we had become and I found it hard to live with myself. We had become more than emperors, we had become the new gods and the world trembled at our approach.

Over the years a sorrow had built itself upon my soul. Guilt or fear at what I had become had peeled apart my soul and made me hate the thing I had become.

It was perhaps at this time I realized that the empire I had helped build became nothing more than an instrument in the destruction. All that remained in the world were pockets of the Changelings and Man and I feared that even that wouldn't be enough for my companion. For a few hundred more years I lived with the regret of knowing that more lives would be sacrificed in his pursuit of power.

When word had reached the court of a rebellion, it seemed as if this was the final excuse and the decision was made to remove the changelings from our world. The site of our battle would become the grounds now known as Jusenkyo. The tribes of man sympathetic to the rebellion had aided by the Changelings and it would seem that their more potent magic had been enough to make this a more interesting battle.

I watched as Ah Rin dispatched the rebelling creatures with an obscene gracefulness. I watched with horror and fascination as the third race to fall to our might was about to breathe its last and felt a cold rage take hold of my heart.

It was at that moment I had poured my life, literally, into Ah Rin. Though perhaps this is the wrong choice of words. I was pouring his life into my own, feeling his strength flowing into myself like a river, his body shriveling and my own expanding.

For all the raw power we both held, this seems to have been the first time he was at a loss. He started to shrivel, weaken, and I felt myself reach a limit on power I had not felt again in my lifetime.

I awoke sometime later in a changeling hovel and the story of what had transpired was related to me. I had so weakened my friend that the battle had quickly turned. Unable to fight against the rebelling army and myself (and growing weaker by the second), my companion finally succumbed. The amount of life and magic I had taken from him however was far too large to contain and the resulting explosion nearly ended those who remained on the field. I had lost some of my own essence as well and had reverted to a younger form.

As he was the last link to the race of shadows, and half changeling himself, the elders of what remained of this tribe found themselves unwilling to end his existence and cursed both of us, banishing him to a purgatory devoid of light, sound, and warmth, and binding our life essences together so that if he should ever return the flow of life would be reversed. Like all curses, there were no absolutes, but the condition for his return was set to something no one had expected possible.

Ah Rin would only be free if a mortal survived the act of me draining their essence.

I could recount to you the tales of how I had sought redemption. How I found a loving wife and of the children who would become the forefathers of what is now the Phoenix. How we built a civilization here and avoided further conflict with man for generations. Or I can tell you something more recent, about like in all things, my absolute power in this domain corrupted me again.

I'd like to say that was when things went wrong, but to be truthful it was a hundred years before you were born.

I don't know if you'll ever read this, but I do know that I need you to know. Despite all the wonderful things you have grown up believing about me and the legends and myths built since before we lived in this mountain, I am still just a man and I have failed when it really mattered.

You must find Ranma, and his Akane. I can feel myself withering inside and I now know that the darkness of my past has returned. If that mortal could kill one god then perhaps he's the only hope you have left of survival.

Always yours,

Saffron