All my life I have been afraid. The servants whispered their fear to each other, not knowing I could hear them even behind closed doors. I didn't understand at first, but as I grew my powers began to manifest at sudden and odd times. Because they were afraid of my powers, I learned to be afraid of them as well.

I tried to deny that I was anything other than human like anyone else, but then my body, not just my powers, began to betray me. I would have episodes where I could do nothing other than lie on my bed in excruciating pain for sometimes days as things happened inside that I couldn't even imagine, other than to believe what I had heard whispered behind closed doors. Something was inside me that was going to make me change into something I didn't want to be.

Those physical changes inside became external changes once I had enough of the painful episodes that made me lie in my bed completely exhausted for sometimes two to three days or more. After every episode, I would have more scale-like lesions on my arms above my wrists, and eventually down the center of my back. If my powers manifest, my canines elongate, my ears become pointed at the tops, and my eyes change. Normally my eyes are brown with flecks of green, but when my powers escape, or if I need to call on them to a high level now that I can control them, they lighten towards a blue-green and the pupils narrow, like an animal's eyes.

I wore long sleeves and high collars on my shirts and jackets regardless, but when the physical changes began, I chose to wrap my wrists and arms, particularly after my mother exposed them one of the times she attacked me before she was locked away. I began to grow my hair long to cover my back, in case the ones on my back should be exposed at the collar of my jacket. My hair is straight and black, not like the hair of the people I lived with. Even that was a difference.

Today, everything is long, my hair now reaching half-way down my back. I keep it tied back from my face with a bandanna, a clothing habit from when I was young to hide my ears tips when they would elongate. I even wear long jackets, down to my knees to cover what I am, although it's only a psychological need to somehow soothe the fear I feel.

It was my mother's fear that was the worst. My mother's fear broke her. I loved my mother and couldn't bear to have her afraid of me. Her fear left me with nothing of hope to hold on to.

When the first of my powers manifested, she would cry and bemoan that she had ever been willing to give birth to the terrible monster that would one day destroy our world. At other times she claimed she wasn't my mother, that I had been brought to them by a monster to take care of. Both made me even more afraid.

I appreciate the world I was born into and the beauty of it. Everyone who lives deserves to live well and try their best, I believe. To learn I would be Destruction brought me my own darkness long before I would ever bring any darkness to anyone else.

The day my mother broke, she came after me with a knife. I begged her to not attack me, knowing by then that she couldn't kill me regardless. It was already too late for that solution. My powers protected me from her, even though I tried to hold them tightly inside myself.

She pushed me to the floor despite my protests and pleas to her to stop so she wouldn't be harmed. It wasn't until the knife descended for me that my powers threw her off of me. I didn't want to die, but I didn't want to hurt her either. Her screams cut me as if the knife had.

The doctor said the knife had cut her, but I never could be sure. I stayed away from blades for a very long time after that. They locked her into her room, her mind never recovering. I couldn't stay there, hearing her sobs and grief. Nor could I stand to see her locked up in her own home. It would be better if I left so she could at least have the house and gardens to walk in, even if the servants never let her leave the house beyond that.

When I approached my father with that plan on one of the rare days he was home from his business in the city, he was completely against it. I will never forget his words to me that day. They horrified me.

"No! You can't leave our house. Our family is prospering because we take care of you. That's the commitment we made. You are a child with enormous powers, a devil incarnate. We signed a contract agreeing to raise you until you become the Sky Demon and shake the world with your might."

I couldn't comprehend it at all. I could understand my mother's fear and remorse. Why would anyone willingly raise a child who would destroy even them in the end? And even worse, how could there be anyone else in the world so evil as to actually want me to be kept safe to become that?

I didn't want to become a demon, a monster of destruction, and I most definitely didn't want to become one used by some evil in the world that wanted to see it destroyed. When my father left on his business again, I left with a knapsack of supplies out the back door. Perhaps mother would be allowed to walk the house in peace if I wasn't there to make her afraid, or feel guilty. I could only hope.

For a long time I hid, going far enough from the manor to not be found by the searching servants. I worked hard to learn how to control my powers. I learned that I could speak with the animals of the forests in a way that seemed unusual to me. I could manipulate wind very early, although now I made it a conscious thing.

I discovered rather suddenly I could create and manipulate fire. I was attacked by a monster I'd been trying to avoid and instead of power blowing it away, like I had my mother, it was lit on fire. I had to control that fire to prevent the forest around us from burning and hurting the animals living there. It was sufficiently effective at killing the monster, and training me through desperation.

I worked hardest at not injuring things with my energy and power. I couldn't be with people if I couldn't control those. Still, I eventually did run out of supplies. I carefully made my way to a shop. I was very nervous, but I'd practiced. While there I overheard two men talking about a manor home that had been burned several valleys over. Gossip spreads far where there aren't many people, nor many grand things happening.

I froze when the one said to the other, "They say it burned down, killing everyone inside, because the boy they were protecting left them, and it was their punishment for letting him leave." It couldn't be, could it? But in my heart I feared it was.

My father had said it himself. If an evil had wanted them protecting me, who would destroy, then it was quite possible that they would have been punished by that same evil. Somehow I managed to finish my shopping in my daze. I had to go back and check.

The burnt husk of the manor home, black beams at odd angles rising to the sky, made my heart feel empty at the same time as the pain made tears fall from my eyes. I had only wanted my mother to be at least a little more free. Instead I had killed her as surely as if I'd stayed and done it with my powers. I fled, not wanting to be captured by whatever evil had done this. This wasn't the life I wanted. I only wanted to live a normal life, doing my best to help other people.

I didn't stay in one place any longer. I walked through unpeopled wilderness unless I had to purchase supplies. I would stop at a few farms to help with the animals, never speaking much, until I had enough coin, then shop and return to the solitude.

Eventually I made my way through two countries to a third. I was just old enough to be hired on and found a caravan owner who was willing. For years I traveled constantly that way, always staying away from my home country, trying to stay hidden from whatever evil wanted to own me and my powers.

Being with other people in those caravans, I learned how to hide my powers. If I was attacked (and I was regularly because I looked like an easy target - young, skinny, weak, a loner) I learned how to dodge and defend myself with my hands, holding my powers close to me.

I learned how to throw a man and not so hard or so far as to have it be odd. I had to leave the first caravan early. It scared them that as a child I threw a man a block and a half through a shop window. That also gave me away to anyone who might be looking for me, I feared.

I also had to control my powers when with people because using them made the physical changes come. The early times that happened, I was frequently called a monster as the man who'd chosen to attack me fled in fear. It was a sorrowful sign that I was different, not just human.

I came to hate the changes, hate being called a monster, and eventually, to become angry at whomever had made me call on those changes in order to defend myself from them. I didn't want to be the monster, but they'd forced me to become it all because they wanted to have "fun" picking on someone they felt was weak. It taught them to think twice in the future, I could only hope.

Sometimes I would think that if most of the men in the world were like that - having "fun" being mean - then perhaps I should let them have what they'd asked for. But I always regretted it after I calmed down. I didn't want to be alone and feared, and I didn't want to hurt people. It was - is - a hard life, to keep my secret and be drowning in fear alone.

In desperation, one of the times I'd been paid a little extra, I went to a seer in one of the towns and paid to have my future seen. I was afraid they would see I was the Sky Demon and give me away, but I'd become more afraid of myself.

The seer looked into his scrying tool - a mirror on the table in front of him. His look went to confusion. "I don't see anything. It's just a swirl of chaotic colors." He looked at me with the same eyes of suspicion of those who'd known what I was.

"What does that usually mean?" I asked, after I'd swallowed around the lump of fear in my throat.

"That we can't tell what your future is," was all he could say.

"Is there anyone who could?" I asked.

He frowned. "A strong seer, maybe, but they're usually either very expensive or hired by nobility. You can't afford that." He'd let me only pay a quarter of his fee, since he hadn't been able to see anything. I started saving up all of my extra coin. It would be worth it for even just one strong seer to look, I thought.

As an alternative, I started asking seers instead what they knew about the Sky Demon. I tried to do that at taverns when I found them relaxing over alcohol. Many were willing to tell stories to a youth interested in the world. That was how I learned about the Awakening.

It was both relieving, and worrisome, to learn that the Awakening was foretold like the Sky Demon. The Awakening would come to the Sea of Trees, appearing on a bed of golden moss under the largest tree of the Sea of Trees. And then the Awakening would "awaken" the Sky Demon of Destruction. It was relieving to know I wouldn't just over time on my own become Destruction. It was worrisome that I might not have a choice, that something outside me would make it happen regardless of my personal preferences.

I worried even more after that, and worked harder to earn my extra coin. Now I wanted to know for sure if there was any way I could change my destiny. The seer I paid still couldn't do it. She tried as hard as she could, but nothing came to her vision other than the chaos. She'd only been able to shake her head and tell me that at best it meant my destiny was unknowable. That didn't help my fear much. Even having her be the one to look, I took courage enough in hand to ask her if anyone knew when the Awakening was going to appear.

She shook her head at that one, also. "We believe we seers will be given to know when it happens, but that's also unknowable at the moment. For all we can see many things into the future, there are even more we can't. The world is a strange and marvelous place, and we can only do what we've been given to do." After that, I would regularly pay lesser seers, usually in drink at a tavern, to learn if there had been any signs of the Awakening appearing yet.

I haven't traveled with a caravan in nearly two years. I was taught a gentle way to use the sword, and it allows me to use my power more effectively. Now I travel as a lone wandering swordsman, earning my pay protecting people on their travels. I like being able to pay forward for the debt I may owe everyone in the future.

Last month, I finally received a positive answer. The seer I was talking to was looking into the drink I'd bought him and he froze, his eyes going distant. Quietly he whispered, still in his trance, "I see it, the Awakening arriving." His head came up in shock and he stared at me in the same fright I was feeling. "Forget I said anything, if I just did."

I shrugged at him as if I hadn't heard anything come from his lips. I didn't want that news spreading any more than he did. I was relieved he was someone who didn't want destruction, too. Knowing men the way I do now, there are plenty who would use that news to their own selfish benefit. We both left the tavern shortly after that, each as shaken as the other.

I am now in the Sea of Trees, moving from tree to tree towards the tallest one in the center. My power now is so strong most monsters who aren't hungry stay away. It's not worth fighting a stronger monster than they are, most of the time, and I've learned how to make myself be hidden from them anyway. The Sea of Trees is full of the flower monsters, though, so it's hard to pass through unnoticed.

I pause to look down from a tree top at the large canopy of the largest tree, my target. I can feel it. I can feel the Awakening approaching my world, coming to turn me into something I don't want to be. I will be there first to find it, first so that I can kill it. I refuse to become the Sky Demon of Destruction.