Enigma of Sin

One of the soldiers looked over at Dr Elaine with a less than pleased look on his face. According to his rank insignia, he was a 1st class lieutenant and also the commanding officer of this group of soldiers.

"Dr Elaine, I'm going to need a plausible explanation of what we just fired at. We were deployed here to assist you in the security of a potential high energy source site, not to attack an unidentified, invisible, seemingly invincible, and now possibly hostile threat. So, tell me, have you communicated with it before? How did you know to fire when we did?"

Dr Elaine was quite lost herself, what she had just witnessed went beyond anything she expected. She was a physicist that specialized in all forms of energy, including nuclear, for the United Nations. After the war began, the best minds of the allied nations came together to further their technology in order to give them an advantage in the war, and she was one of those people.

She was originally dispatched to these sites to determine if whatever was going on had something useful that could serve as a more sustainable power source for both civilization and weapons. The United Nations Tactical Alliance certainly thought there was something to it.

However, what she just witnessed was making her question her rational thought. She had access to the knowledge of the most secret and restricted technology known to man. Yet, to her knowledge, no country in the world was even close to developing something that could do what just happened in front of her.

Sure, some countries had developed impressive cloaking technologies or even extremely resistant armor suits, but nothing that could perfectly cloak an individual and defend from thousands of bullets of all calibers at once without breaking the cloaking.

None of what happened made sense in her mind, but if one of their enemies indeed had this technology and was even able to harness whatever the mystery energy found in these temples was, she couldn't help but think they were going to be losing the war soon.

Just then, an even crazier thought entered into her mind. 'What if?'

"Lieutenant Faraday, I honestly don't have a good explanation for you at the moment. It was my personal guards that thought your presence was required. What I can tell you though is that I've been getting odd readings at several temples shortly before every trace vanishes.

"Then I have witnessed on several occasions a small amount of the same energy moving around before disappearing from the area forever and made a hypothesis based upon this."

Dr Elaine paused for a moment, but Lieutenant Faraday didn't look like he wanted a long and detailed description. He only wanted to know if he needed to treat this entire thing as a new threat so that he could take action appropriately.

"And? Explain." Lieutenant Faraday glared at the doctor as he hated wasting time on meaningless communication and she seemed to be stalling or drawing out her explanation rather than being forward with it.

"I theorized the possibility of something or someone taking the energy from the sources, but I had no proof and finding evidence was impossible. I did notice however, that before the energy completely disappears that there are fluctuations in the readings.

"So, once the devices I've set up around this region detected similar fluctuations at one of the temple sites, I had us move to this location. I assumed the possibility of it being someone or something that was harvesting the energy somehow, so I asked us to position at the entrance.

"Once the energy vanished, I figured it was only a matter of time before I saw a spike on my personal device if I pointed it towards the entrance. And as you know, I spoke as soon as my device alerted me. Though, I can't say I was intending for you all to fire without trying to trap whatever or whoever it was."

Dr Elaine could only shake her head, she was hoping to try a more tactful approach, but her guards insisted on bringing in a crew of specialists once they heard there might be a potential enemy stealing from right under their noses.

"Ha! Trap it? If it can brush off a .50 caliber bullet like a rain drop, I doubt any of our current technology could trap whatever it was. One of our enemies must have developed some type of armor that is far beyond anything we have. I need to alert the generals about this."

Lieutenant Faraday was about to make contact with his superiors over a secured line, but noticed that Dr Elaine was acting oddly, like she had something else to say.

"Spit it out, my team doesn't have time to waste if this is indeed a new threat to us."

Dr Elaine shuddered at the cold demeanor she was spoken to with. "I…it's just that, what if it's not some new technology?"

Lieutenant Faraday squinted his eyes at her with a questioning look on his face, "Not new technology? Then what else could it be? We clearly heard whoever was under that suit of armor talk to us. And don't spout some bullshit about ghosts or something like that."

Dr Elaine hesitated for a minute after that last sentence, but finally spat out the wild theory that came to her mind. "Lieutenant, what I've witnessed has all happened at these recently discovered temples belonging to gods of myth and legend. Each temple has some threatening energy which resembles what the gods themselves represented."

"What are you trying to say doctor?"

"What if it's not new technology, but a being related to these temples somehow? What if it's multiple beings, a different one for each temple?" Dr Elaine spoke with a bit of reluctance as what she spoke was illogical and crazy, especially to herself, someone whose entire life was based off of rationality and logic.

"Are you trying to tell me there is a god or multiple gods running around our world now? Do you know how ridiculous you sound? Get your shit together doctor. I'll inform command of what's happened and prepare for the threat accordingly.

"For now, we move when your devices locate another anomaly. I'll pretend you didn't just say that last part, and I suggest you do the same. Let's move!"

Dr Elaine thought to argue, but she couldn't even bring herself to defend her own theory as it was just that improbable.

…

On the other side of the country, Kayn had just arrived at the temple that was supposed to belong to the god Horus. He had to rub his eyes a few times to make sure that the scene in front of him was real and not some illusion.

Instead of the dozens of scientists or military personnel that he was used to seeing, there were hundreds if not thousands of what looked to be civilians spread out in camps all around the temple. This was definitely new to Kayn and he was immensely curious as to what the reason for this gathering was.

Kayn walked around the camps while making his way towards the temple entrance. Most of the people there were singing the praises of Horus and worshiping him, thanking him for the miracles he was performing.

As Kayn's curiosity about the situation was growing, he arrived at the entrance to the temple and became witness to an even more surprising sight. There were hundreds of people inside of this temple, spread around inside of the single massive room that composed the temple.

He couldn't help but stand in shock for a second as he never thought he would see regular people inside one of these temples without them being a corpse, that's just how harsh each temple was. It was typically either death or overwhelming fear would take over due to the unknown, such as in Nyx's temple, from what Kayn had observed so far.

However, the pleasant feeling that started to seep into his exhausted and aching body answered his question as to what was happening. Horus was known as a god of healing among other things, so of course his temple was a domain consisting of the light element aiming to heal anyone or anything that gathered there.

Kayn sighed a little as he was going to take away the blessing this temple bestowed upon the ones who made the pilgrimage here. He was honestly surprised that there weren't more gathered here now, but maybe it was being kept as secret as possible.

It was odd, but he also didn't care enough to know the details. All he cared about was what he himself could gain from this temple for himself. Normally Kayn was all about healing others and caring for them, but when it came to him getting home and being with his loved ones, his sympathy to their plight was non-existent.

He would do anything and everything he had to in order to find a clue to getting home, or even just the power he needed to get home in the first place if he did find a method.

Solidifying his resolve to get home, he used what little mana he had to extend his Mana Sense over the temple in order to find the place where the light element was originating. He ended up finding it inside of a massive hat that a giant statue of a falcon had on.

He jumped as soon as he arrived near the statue and landed on top of the hat, only to fall into it as there was no actual top to the hat, only the illusion of one.

Once his feet were planted on solid ground, he noticed he was once again in the middle of a glowing formation. Smirking to himself, he calmed his mind and sat down into a lotus position.