Ḥāmin Tower

Draco felt an indescribable anxiety during the car ride to the Ḥāmin Tower.

He couldn't quite put a finger on it, and as he watched the grounds of the Royal Palace speed past him through the tinted windows of the SUV, the feeling only intensified.

Only once the pristine white walls of the Ḥāmin Tower became visible to him did Draco realize the source of his unease.

Draco watched as scores of powered Ḥāmin super-soldiers ran to and from different places within the palace.

When he looked back into the SUV, and then at his own robes, everything became clear.

'I'm an imposter here.' he thought to himself, coming to a realization.

He gazed up into the sky, watching as a pair of fighter jets raced through the sky.

When he looked in another direction he saw half a dozen helicopters moving in unison towards the horizon.

Just to his right stood a hundred white robed Ḥāmin performing exercises in harmony.

Their tight formation on the grass field gave a vision of perfect unity.

'I'm just a Los Angeles drug dealer in the uniform of an elite soldier.' he thought ruefully, just now realizing how in over his head he was.

Truthfully, Draco was having a crisis of sorts. If anyone were to label it, then it would have to be called Imposter Syndrome!

This was only inevitable, as even the most seasoned of individuals might eventually face such a psychological effect in the face of wild success.

It couldn't be helped, for Draco had dragged himself from the streets of LA and somehow ended up here.

After all, Draco was now in Saudi Arabia! This was a place that was secretly home to the Khalid Dynasty, a secret known to few mortal humans.

He had also just separated from his only tie to the Dynasty, and he understood that meant that he had to tread carefully from now on.

However, Draco wasn't one to succumb to his nerves, and he quickly shook off this wave of anxiety.

'Regardless of how I ended up here, all I have to do is find a way to stay. If I can work my way into the good graces of the royal family, maybe I'll be able to fake it 'till I make it.' he thought to himself, a sly grin creeping onto his lips.

As Draco was plotting on how to get closer to the royal family, the SUV slowed to a stop in front of the Ḥāmin Tower.

Draco was expecting the main gate to open for them, but unexpectedly, the ground next to the gate began to open up into a large tunnel!

This tunnel had a long ramp leading down into it, and Samir steered the car through it.

The tunnel was dimly lit, giving Draco an ominous feeling as their car passed through it. At one point red lights flickered over their vehicle's surface, scanning the SUV and its passengers.

They passed through two more checkpoints, each one guarded by a robotic sentry.

Draco marveled at this, for this was his first time actually seeing a true robot.

Similar to the Ḥāmin, the robots were wearing Savior Robes. However, unlike the Ḥāmin, they had a face entirely devoid of facial features.

The only thing remarkable about their faces were their four large eyes.

The automaton's four eyes were soulless, and they glowed a piercing white in the darkness of the tunnel.

They followed the vehicle's passage with a head that moved like an owl, never once taking their eyes off of the SUV.

Each time they reached a checkpoint Samir was forced to interact with these eerie sentinels, for he was required to present a crest or badge at each checkpoint.

Interestingly, during the entire drive through the tunnel Draco didn't notice a single Ḥāmin soldier.

'I wonder why they don't station normal Ḥāmin down here.' he wondered to himself.

Eventually their vehicle reached the end of the tunnel. A wide metal gate stood before them, and as the car pulled up to it red hazard lights and alarms began to flash within the tunnel.

This massive underground door then began to slowly slide open, causing the large gears on either side to start whirring as if straining from the effort.

As the gate was opening Samir began to drive through it, and Draco waited with bated breath to see what could possibly be beneath the Ḥāmin Tower.

After the white SUV had driven past the gate, what Draco saw left him speechless.

This was because Samir had just driven them into what could only be described as an underground parking complex!

'All of that buildup, and for what?' Draco grumbled internally.

However, when Draco began to look around he re-evaluated if this was just a normal parking garage.

To start off, the ceilings were abnormally high. At over 25 feet high, they were triple the size of most parking garages.

As Samir pulled the SUV around the corner, Draco was able to finally understand why this place was so secure.

Arranged in rows all throughout the complex were many scores of vehicles. These vehicles ranged from big to small, and long to wide.

There were trucks, vans, and luxury vehicles everywhere he looked.

This wasn't even mentioning the wall to the left of them that had a dozen tanks parked in front of it!

There were immense gaps between each row of parking spaces, serving to make the place look spacious instead of cramped with vehicles.

Samir drove their car through the parking garage, and Draco stared slack jawed at the assortment of vehicles parked beneath the Ḥāmin Tower.

He even spotted several rows of armored motorbikes, each one with a weapon of some sort welded or built onto it.

Behind the bikes were a few sports cars that stood out because they were the only non-white vehicle as far as his eyes could see.

Their appearance was pitch black, and they looked like something that would belong in an apocalypse.

Each one of these fearsome vehicles had small missile batteries on one side and a kinetic rifle on the other.

They were also heavily armored with thick metal plates, something Draco thought was an uncanny look on a luxury sedan.

As Draco was thinking this, Samir pulled their vehicle into a parking space next to a score of identical looking white SUVs.

Draco, Samir, and Sada then proceeded to get out of the vehicle.

Samir silently led the both of them to an elevator. To no one's surprise, this elevator had a flawless white-jade interior. In this elevator they traveled upwards for at least a minute while soothing tunes played from speakers above them.

Once the elevator doors opened, the three of them were greeted with the sight of the spacious main floor of the Ḥāmin Tower below them.

Draco was surprised to see that they had appeared many floors above the main floor.

Looking around, Draco saw that the place was unchanged since he had last seen it, and no less impressive.

The Ḥāmin Tower was built around a powerful mythical-grade spatial-compression artifact, and as such the vast interior of the Tower seemed to stretch infinitely upwards into darkness.

In truth, the ceiling was simply far too high to see.

Alongside the walls of the strange tower were hundreds upon hundreds of holes arranged in neat rows.

These holes went around the base of the tower and all the way up into the darkness above them. There was no way Draco could count all of them, but he figured there had to be over a thousand of them.

Draco was under the impression that each one of these holes was the bedroom of a Ḥāmin soldier, however, that was only half of the truth.

In reality, many of these holes served different functions. Some of them led to sleeping quarters, some to random facilities, while others simply led you down long hallways.

As they exited the elevator, Draco saw that they were in one of these such holes.

In the center of the Ḥāmin tower stood a wide, spacious dome.

The dome had a white exterior, and numerous robed Ḥāmin could be seen walking in and out of it.

Draco watched as Samir stepped forward, noticing that Samir's eyes began to faintly glow with a golden light as he looked out of the hole's entrance.

Suddenly, just when Draco was wondering what he was going to do, Samir jumped out of the hole!

Draco rushed to the entrance to see where Samir went, and when he looked down he saw that Samir was moving alongside the walls of the Tower.

At first Draco thought that Samir was flying, but upon closer inspection he noticed that Samir's feet seemed to be leaving golden imprints on the air every time he took a step.

'He's not flying… he's just walking, in the air.' Draco thought to himself, a smirk on his lips.

He was trying to figure out how to follow Samir when he suddenly saw a brown flash next to him.

He turned around to see Sada swiftly jump out of the entranceway. There was a faint golden glow emanating from her eyes as well, and wherever she walked she left golden steps on the ground.

Seeing this, Draco started to get annoyed, 'Of course I'm the only one who can't do that.' he thought.

He decided he could no longer wait or he would surely get left behind, so he quickly made a snap decision.

Getting a running head start, Draco leaped out of the entrance way, only belatedly realizing that he had overshot his jump!

He looked around, but couldn't spot Samir or Sada.

Fortunately, he was able to spot them below him.

However, unfortunate for Draco, he had vastly underestimated the strength of his jump.

This was to be expected, after all. The days he spent training within the Gravis Chamber had increased his strength by vast amounts.

Since leaving the chamber Draco had yet to acclimate to normal gravity levels. This blunder had caused him to overshoot his jump from the entrance.

Draco flew through the air, twisting about in his white robes. To any onlookers, it looked as if a fish out of water was flying through the air.

More concerningly, this white fish was flying straight towards the Ḥāmin Tower's central dome!