Khatar

The flight back to Saudi Arabia was comfortable yet uneventful.

Draco sipped on half a drink the entire flight and got comfortably buzzed, and Sada simply looked out of the window in silence.

Not even six hours later their plane was flying above the skies of Saudi Arabia, and soon the massive Royal Palace could be seen below them.

Draco noticed an unusual amount of air traffic above the palace. He saw another plane touching down just across from them, and numerous white helicopters moving about.

These helicopters seemed to be filled with Ḥāmin soldiers and were entering and exiting various hangars located within the palace itself.

As Draco was watching all of this, the plane touched down on one of the Palace's landing strips and was ferried into a private hangar off to the side.

Shortly after that, Draco, Sada, and the crew of the Bombardier exited the plane.

To Draco's surprise, there was actually a squad of six Ḥāmin standing at attention outside of the plane.

The Ḥāmin didn't kneel when Draco walked past them. Instead, they fell in line behind him and Sada as they got into a white SUV next to the plane.

Draco wondered how these Ḥāmin were going to follow them since there was only one vehicle, but as his car began to drive off his questions were quickly answered.

The SUV began to pull out of the hanger, and the squad of Ḥāmin soldiers promptly started to run behind the vehicle.

Even as they picked up speed on the palace roads the Ḥāmin continued to maintain a steady pace behind the car.

After seeing this, Draco turned to look at Sada, "Why are they following us like this?" he asked.

"It appears that the palace is in a state of khatar." she replied.

"Kha-tar?" Draco asked, confused.

Sada sighed, "It means danger, essentially the royal family has put the palace under a state of emergency."

"So that's why the Ḥāmin are doing this." Draco said.

Sada nodded, "We seem to have been designated as Shahiir, or VIPs as you Americans might say. These Ḥāmin were tasked to protect us, and they can't very well do that from within cars."

This all made sense to Draco, and in all honesty it felt kind of cool to have a squad of superpowered bodyguards following behind their car.

It did cause him to pause though. After all, he wondered what kind of emergency the palace could be in to require them to be followed by so many Ḥāmin.

'The only reason anyone would even target us would be to get at Amira, we have no political importance otherwise. But, why would anyone here even want to do that? Am I just overthinking things?' Draco thought to himself.

As Draco pondered this 'state of khatar', their car passed by scores of Ḥāmin running through the palace grounds.

This was the busiest he had ever seen the royal palace, and he figured he better brace himself for whatever could disturb this nest of powered beings.

Not long after they had left the hangar, the white SUV pulled into Amira's private courtyard.

Inside the courtyard were two squads of another dozen Ḥāmin. These Ḥāmin were split into two rows and spaced out on either side of the courtyard.

The car came to a stop in front of Amira's mansion, and Draco and Sada promptly exited the vehicle. Amira wasn't waiting for them outside, so they went into the residence while carrying the fruits of their 'mission'.

Amira's mansion had a similar number of Ḥāmin on the inside, and they were silently patrolling the building's wide halls.

Draco followed Sada up the massive staircase in the center of the mansion, and down a few hallways occupied by several more Ḥāmin.

They soon came across a large silver door. The door had beautiful and ornate designs of flowing blue rivers and thrummed with a silent power.

Draco couldn't identify what it was exactly, but by now he could at least identify it as some sort of powerful artifact.

"The Princess should be in here." Sada said. She then put Amira's items down and inputting a series of commands into a control panel on the wall.

Draco watched as the door swiftly slid open, and saw a cold breeze of air rush out of the room.

When he first looked into the room Draco had to adjust his eyes to see past the brightness. Once his eyes had adjusted, he was able to see a gleaming blue sky.

Looking down from the doorway, he was stunned to see what looked like a vast and boundless sea.

This crystalline blue sea was at least 100 feet (30 meters) below the doorway, and had completely calm waters.

From what Draco could tell the sea shimmered with some kind of energy, and when its scent reached his nose he could feel his fatigue and worries washing away.

When Draco looked deeper into the sea, he noticed what looked like numerous stone pillars extending from the sea's depths.

These pillars were absolutely monumental in size and extended far up towards the sky, but Draco couldn't tell exactly how large they were from where he was standing.

Draco saw that some of the stone pillars varied in size, and he estimated that they had to be well over a mile away from the doorway.

'This place must be using some ridiculous kind of spatial-compression artifact.' Draco thought to himself, awed.

He turned to look at Sada, "Amira's in here?" he asked, confused.

Sada said nothing, however, and instead walked forward towards the doorway and leaped into it.

Draco watched with interest as Sada jumped through the door and fell towards the shimmering sea.

Sada descended with a grace seen only in the Ḥāmin, and her brown robes fluttered around her as she approached the water.

Instead of falling, Draco felt that it looked more like she was floating.

When Sada was just about to land in the water, Draco was surprised to see that instead of dropping into the sea, she landed softly on top of it!

'How in the hell did she do that?' Draco wondered, 'That must be some kind of Ḥāmin technique she learned, it looks useful.'

As Draco was thinking this, Sada had begun to run across the surface of the sea, leaving only small ripples in her wake.

'She can't really expect me to follow her." Draco thought to himself, but when Sada started to pick up pace he realized that she was actually going to leave him behind.

Draco made a snap decision and decided to strip down from his Savior robe. It might sound strange to abandon the lifesaving robes of the Ḥāmin, but he had his reasoning.

Draco knew that there was no way he could run across the water like Sada could, which meant that he had to swim.

Luckily for Draco, he had extensive training in swimming. He swam competitively in high school, and as such he knew that his long, baggy robes would hinder his movements.

After stripping down to his underwear he stood at the doorway and held his silver cane in his right hand.

He stood for a long moment and let the cane's empowerment course through his body, and then he jumped.

He dove towards the water as if he was jumping from an extraordinarily high diving board, holding his cane straight out beneath him.

As Draco fell he just hoped that his body enhanced with the blood of Chiron would prevent him from breaking his neck.

Not long later, Draco was relieved to feel his fingers cut through the surface of the water, and he felt the cool waters of the sea coat his body as he dove deep under the surface.

The waters of the sea wrapped around Draco, and as he looked around they appeared to be swirling around his figure. Flexing his muscles, he noticed that he also felt slightly stronger.

The sea itself had almost crystal clear water, but it was so deep that Draco couldn't see the end of it. Other than the towering pillars off in the distance, there was nothing remarkable to see from where he was floating.

He then began to swim towards the surface. As he swam he could feel that his strokes were getting faster, and by the time he reached the top he realized that he wasn't even tired.

Draco didn't know whether to attribute that to his powered status, his silver cane, or the mysterious sea. However, he now knew for certain that these waters harbored some sort of power.

After re-orientating himself, Draco began to swim after Sada who was now several hundred feet off in the distance.

Holding his cane in his hand he executed a flawless butterfly stroke, and to any onlookers Draco would look like a human dolphin speeding through the waters.

Draco was able to reach speeds that would make even Olympians watch in awe, and he was now almost keeping pace with Sada who was still far ahead of him.

This game of cat and mouse continued for almost a minute before Draco realized that Sada was now slowing down.

Draco was now only a few dozen feet away from Sada when he heard her shout out, "Draco! You dolt!"

As Draco was in mid-air during one of his strokes he shouted, "What?"

"Who told you to follow me? These waters are not safe to swim in!" she exclaimed, still running towards the stone pillars in the distance.

Draco couldn't understand everything she was saying since he was constantly diving underwater, but he got the gist of it and didn't like what he was hearing.

He continued to swim after Sada, but as if on cue, Draco began to feel strong vibrations coming from the depths of the sea.