Hazaar - Chapter 20

Welcome to Your Future

Hazaar, startled by the voice, spun round to meet the eyes of its owner. Unfortunately, there was no one to be seen, only the shadows.
“Who is that?” Hazaar demanded, blinking into the darkness to try and see whoever it was, “Loz? Is that you?!”
“No, no, no” the voice replied. It was a gruff, male voice and, really, did not sound a thing like Loz.
A list of names ran through Hazaar’s mind as he tried to work out if he knew who it was. The voice sounded eerily familiar but he could not quite put his finger on it.
“It’s nice to see you’re up and about. I was afraid that I had used too much tranquilizer in that dart” the man continued, a calm, normal tone to his voice.
Hazaar suddenly realised how he had gotten there, it seemed so obvious now, he had been hit by a dart and that’s what had caused that horrific pain in his legs earlier.
“Yeah. What that all about? The dart, I mean” Hazaar questioned, curiously.
“Well I didn’t see any way of getting you to come down here,” he explained, “and we could not be having that.”
Hazaar’s face scrunched, this all seemed a bit surreal. “Stop with all the cryptic stuff won’t you. Just give it to me straight; who the hell are you and what have you done with my friends?”
“Your friends? Oh, don’t worry about them – they’re fine” the man said, “And me, well…”
Hazaar took a step forward, towards where he thought the voice was coming from, “Just come out of the dark.”
“I must warn you, what you are about to hear may sound farfetched but every inch of it is the truth.”
“Right, okay. Just c’mon. Show yourself.”
The man slowly stepped out from the shadows allowing the dim light of the pools to shine upon him. The hair on his body was a greyish black, not unlike Hazaar’s, and his head was surrounded by thick – yet tatty - locks of hair, turning a deep maroon at the tips. He was extremely tall, his body towering over Hazaar, and looked a good couple of decades older than him. His skin was covered in scars of the past, the worst being a deep scratch going from above his right eye to below. It appeared that this scratch had caused him to go blind in that eye as well, as the iris was a strange grey-white colour.
Hazaar squinted at the figure standing before him. “What…?” he murmured.
The man, still not moving an inch, asked “Familiar, am I?”
Hazaar took yet another step towards him, although not too close, he didn’t know what he was capable of. “Who are you?” he half-whispered.
“I think it’s time for you to find out what’s going on here” the man declared.
Silence fell upon the cave for a few moments, and was only broken when the man whispered, “Soona-mar.”
Hazaar watched on in amazement as fire-lanterns seemed to come from nowhere out of the cave walls. He had to blink a couple of times to allow his eyes to adjust to the bright contrast from what the cave had been before, but he was never prepared for what awaited his gaze when they did adjust.
The man had now moved from standing face on to Hazaar, to standing sideways, displaying an all too recognizable marking on his back…
“Yes,” the man said, “I am you, Hazaar.”

Hazaar actually chuckled when he heard this, “What is this? Some kind of sick joke?”
The man frowned, “You don’t believe me, eh?”
“Not a bit.”
“Okay then” the stranger casually said to him, carefully stepping around a pearly pool that lay in front of him so he was but a few metres away from Hazaar. “Ask me something that hardly anyone else knows about you. Anything at all.”
Hazaar narrowed his eyes at the man. Something in the back of his mind was telling him that he really was telling the truth, but how could that be possible? “Fine. What is my mother’s name?”
“Geez, come on, at least try to make it hard! It is Sophia of course” he replied smugly.
This was tougher than he first thought, what was something that he had never told anyone else? Hazaar thought hard for a few minutes, before he realised he was going to be forced to bring up the one thing that he had always tried to hide. “Okay. I want every single detail about the day they…you know…” he squirmed at the memory; it still pained him to think of it. “If you really are who you claim to be then you will surely know what I mean, and remember.”
The man seemed slightly less confident after being asked this. He strode back to where he had originally been standing. “Well, it’s a bit hazy with me being a good few years older than you, but if that’s what you need, then so be it - we’ve already wasted too much time. I can just remember my mother weeping, I wasn’t really too sure about what was going on – I was only a few months old after all – but I did know it was bad. Arphen and that old fool of his… What was his name again? Cae I think it was. Yes, they just led me to the mountains on the outskirts of Xyphoria and left me there. It was a couple of days before I realised no one was ever coming back, and of course I was too young to have any idea of how to get back home.” The man stared at the wall behind Hazaar blankly for a few seconds before asking, “Is that alright for you?”
Like the man, Hazaar had turned briefly muted and nodded sheepishly in reply. He was genuinely shocked.
“Good. Now we can get on with what you’re here for…”
“How…? How are you…me?” Hazaar questioned in disbelief. He did believe the man now. Even when he had been explaining the events to Loz and Raina he had done it as quickly and as briefly as possible. How could this stranger possibly know all that without actually experiencing it? As well as looking pretty much the spitting image of him?
The man sighed, “Yes, I thought you might ask that. Well it’s a little thing called time travel - I am your older self you see. It’s all part of the job being able to time travel, among other things. I found it really cool when I was your age, surely you agree, seeing as you are me?”
Hazaar completely ignored this question; there were more important things to worry about than whether he thought something was ‘cool’ or not. “What job?” he asked, rather suspiciously.
“I’m getting to that! I’ve got to repeat everything I said to myself when I was younger, it’s kind of annoying you know” Hazaar’s older self moaned.
Hazaar looked at him strangely, “Stop talking about the time travelling thing. You’re giving me a headache. Now tell me what this ‘job’ is, that’s why I’m here isn’t it?”
“Yes. That is why you are here” he replied, pacing towards Hazaar again, “Y’see kid, there are these special kinds of horses – you probably haven’t heard of them because Elders like to keep it pretty quiet, for some reason – but anyway, there’s the Bearer of Earth, Fire, Air, blah blah blah, you know, the usual. There is also the Bearer of Light who, obviously, is kind of our natural enemy. These horses are blessed with amazing powers that, like, correspond to their names. Are you with me?”
Hazaar half nodded but then gave up trying to be subtle and said, “You’re lousy at explaining you know. What exactly are you getting at?”
The man exhaled loudly, “Oh, I’m just going to give it to you straight. You – we – are the Bearers of Darkness. That’s why Xyphoria was so hasty to get rid of us. They knew that history would repeat itself, everything is just one big loop.”
“So that’s what…”
“Yes, that’s what all the creepy visions and strange powers where all about” he concluded.
Hazaar felt like laughing at his future self, he really was making a mess of this. It wasn’t too long till the humour vanished though.
“And today is the day you finally get to awaken these powers,” the man smiled, “Welcome to your future, Hazaar.”
Suddenly, a strong wind seemed to appear from nowhere causing both of their hairs to go flying everywhere. Hazaar was almost knocked off his feet because he was not expecting it. At closer inspection of his future self, he saw that both of his eyes had now turned a white colour, a menacing expression on his face.
“Ready, kid?” he asked, his voice now seemed even deeper.
The fire lanterns on the walls started to flicker violently as the strength of the wind increased.
Hazaar felt like bolting for the nearest exit, but then he remembered that there was no exit. He had no idea how his future self had gotten in to the cave, but it was probably something he would not be able to understand anyway.
All of a sudden he felt himself being pushed by some invisible force towards one of the pools – the largest pool in the cavern.
“What are you doing?! Get off me!” Hazaar screamed at the man. It was no use though, his eyes were fixated onto Hazaar – he looked like he was in some sort of trance.
As Hazaar grew closer to the pool he realised that wispy smoke was pouring out of it, and the pool was no longer a beautiful, innocent white; it was a weird dark purple colour.
“Snap out of it God damn you!” he yelled some more. But again his older self did nothing. He had began muttering some strange language under his breathe only seconds ago and the more he did, the more smoke that came from the pool.
Hazaar was but feet away from the glimmering water now, his fate imminent. Although everything about what was going on was crazy, the one thing that really shocked him was what he had become. This man truly was a monster; no wonder Arphen had seemed so worried about Hazaar’s presence.
Another thing suddenly sprang into Hazaar’s mind. Loz and Raina – his best friend and sister - what would happen to them after all this? His older self had not mentioned them at all apart from when he had asked. And yes, they may be fine now but even if nothing happens to them they may be trapped in these caves forever. He could not even bare to think about it.
All of a sudden, Hazaar stopped moving, inches from the pool. He struggled to try and escape but it seemed he was still bound by his future self’s power.
“What have you done?” his future self suddenly asked. “You brought them here didn’t you!?!?” he shouted, his voice wobbling slightly with rage.
Hazaar frowned at him, but it suddenly became clear what he meant when the wall behind him blew apart with a horrendous crash.