595 hauled her cargo up the stone stairs, pistol raised to cover a gap between two of the Rothian soldiers. The bottom edge of the spectrometer bashed against each step with a muffled *thud*. No one made a sound; each of them were completely focused on their surroundings. 

The rig’s lighting didn’t penetrate the temple interior. Apart from a few long shadows in the doorway, the contents were bathed in blackness. The Agent let her Cradle-tech augments adjust to the changing conditions as they crept inside.

The place was a mess. The roof had been torn clean off, and great chunks of masonry had fallen into the grand rectangular hall. Most of the pillars on either side of the central causeway had collapsed, with the few that remained looming out of the dark like watchful sentinels.

“This will do.” 595 murmured, putting the spectrometer down on the floor a few metres inside the temple. She pulled her main gun off the magnetised holster on her chest and turned it on. Ever so slowly, she brought it up to her eye, scanning up where the walls used to meet the roof.  “You sense anything here with us?” She asked over comms.

[hr]

“Hmm, maybe. There is a [i]strange[/i] energy profile in the back. Can you check it out?” Freyr replied, a consolatory ‘I want to talk to you about your interesting idea’’ finger raised to Artek. She then looked at the ceiling while addressing the whole rig. “Any chance we can clean this feedback up, guys? It’s all over the place.”

Freyr watched the grainy video coming in from Vreta and 595 for a few seconds, before turning back to Artek. She spoke quickly: “But why not use this energy in a more useful application? Why build a temple instead of, say, teleporting the first expedition right to it, rather than have them trek cross-country? Why did it even need to see them in-person anyway? It was likely speaking through that worm, couldn’t it have explained the situation there and then?”