Chapter 11

Fares was so surprised by what he saw that he took a few steps back. It was not that the guy made a fireball materialize in his hands, but it was the guy himself that surprised him.

The guy had a handsome face that looked to be in his forties with blonde hair, a goatee, and a mustache. He had perfectly sculpted square jaws and tightly packed muscles.

However, that wasn't what surprised Fares though, what surprised him was that the guy had no irises. Not in the sense that they are there but whitened due to blindness by glaucoma, but in the sense that it wasn't actually, to begin with.

"You! How?! A-are you even ah-human?" Fares stuttered while pointing at the guy and covering his mouth.

"Relax my friend from a distant world. Come on site down and let us talk for a while." The guy pointed at a tree stump at one end of the room for Fares to sit down on.

Fares took a deep breath and went forward to sit. He was scared and a little overwhelmed by what was going on with him lately, but he needed answers, and the only one who could provide him one is the guy opposite to him.

Zena took a seat next to him, even though she couldn't understand their conversation she wanted to help Fares as much as she could to repay him.

"So who are you, and why do you know Arabic and what do you mean you were waiting for me?" Fares kept firing one question after the other.

"First things first, my name is Azkar, and I was born in a lineage of what we call here Future Seekers. We were once heroes to the people, as we saved them from many natural disasters. Unfortunately, I tried tapping into the disaster that would befall these people." Azkar looked sad for a moment but returned to normal quickly and continued.

"It was too great of misfortune that just by looking at it, it completely took my eyes from me. But I fulfilled my part, and the next is yours."

"For even if I can't see you physically, I know that body of yours way too much. I haven't been sleeping thinking when are you going to finally arrive."

Fares cut him while covering his chest and said "Wait, what do you mean by 'that body of yours' exactly?"

"You don't know it yet? I may have lost my sight, but I can still see energy, and you, my friend, seem to be made purely of energy now. I don't know how you did that or where did you come from, but if you lose that energy you'll be dead for sure."

Fares was lost deep in his thoughts for a few minutes and Azkar just let the information sink in.

"What do you mean energy? Does that mean I have no physical body? But it makes no sense I have been coming into contact with objects ever since I came here, I was even close to dying a couple of times." Fares rebutted.

"I have no knowledge how can you not have a physical body, but everything around you here already has energy in it, that your energy clashes with it making you feel that you are actually in contact with it."

"As for your near-death experience, I've heard about it from Healer Raya, and apparently, what you felt was losing energy to a critical point that you almost died. Fortunately for you, you ate a good energy source, so you had an abundance of energy before the fight started." Azkar said slowly and patiently as he waited for Fares to digest the new information.

'So that's how it is… But what does he mean by energy? For any two objects to come into contact their atoms must touch. If what he said is true then does that mean that 'energy' is present in atoms as well? And what exactly is that energy… It couldn't be… right?'

Fares was thinking too hard about it, but he couldn't accept this, he needed to know what is this 'energy' Azkar was talking about.

"What do you mean when you say energy?" Fares went to the point directly.

"I am not entirely sure either, but we got so accustomed to using energy that it has become a second nature to us." Azkar shook his head at his lack of knowledge on the subject.

"Then teach me how to use it." Fares said with absolute seriousness in his eyes.

"This is a tough one. I only learned Arabic after hearing and repeating the future where you learn our language over and over again till I finally got it. The incantations you need are in ancient Xire's tongue that not even I know what it means anymore. So you must start from scratch if you want to learn any of that." Azkar said.

"So you're saying I just need to learn your language first then figure my way around that ancient Xi… whatever language?" Fares raised an eyebrow.

"Yes, and it's ancient Xire. It was a kingdom built by the first humans to step foot on earth-" Azkar didn't even finish his sentence before Fares interrupted him.

"WHAT? YOU MEAN THIS IS EARTH?" Fares said shocked by the fact.

"Yes young man, and I can only assume you know about Earth. That would make things easier. So as I was saying, the Xire kingdom has thousands of years of history, but it came to an end when the newly appointed king forced my ancestor to tell him the future for the next disaster. "

"At first, my ancestors refused to give him any details, as it was only when you disturb the flow of time that you 'get forgotten by the times'. "

Azkar started shaking angrily as he continued "But he forced my ancestor by using his son as a hostage to tell him. After fulfilling the King's wishes he took his son and wife and whoever else believed they would be safer staying away from the Kingdom and left to start this village, hidden from the kingdom's reach."

"Nobody knows what happened, but the entire kingdom just vanished into thin air as if it never existed, to begin with. Even the memories of everyone had been long gone, except for a few books where my ancestor wrote about what happened, there is no record of it." Azkar sighed as he finished talking.

After a few minutes of silence, Fares was the first to break it "I have a few theories of what might have happened to the kingdom, but I need to understand what that energy is first."

Growwwwwl~

Both Fares and Azkar looked at Zena and burst into laughter, making her blush and turn away.

"What do you say we go and eat first?" Azkar offered.

"Sure." Fares didn't want to be a bother to Zena more than he already has been, so he agreed and got up ready to leave.