# Chapter 298: The Living Battery
The laboratory was a hive of controlled madness. A dozen acolytes in pristine white robes moved between humming consoles, their faces illuminated by the shifting crimson light, a mixture of religious awe and primal terror in their eyes. Technicians in grey utilitarian vests barked orders, their voices strained against the machine's deafening thrum. The air was thick with the stench of ozone and hot metal, a metallic tang that coated the back of the throat. Every surface vibrated, from the grated floor under their boots to the crystalline panels lining the walls, which now pulsed with a sick, arterial red. At the center of it all, ruku bez screamed. It was not a sound of a man, but a raw, amplified agony, a psychic and auditory assault that tore at the mind. His massive frame was contorted, fused with the machine by a web of crackling energy conduits and shimmering, semi-solid restraints that seemed to be grown from his own flesh. The light of the Bulwark was his life, his pain, his very soul, being torn from him drop by agonizing drop.
The sight broke something in Soren. The pain in his leg, the fire in his shoulder, the crushing weight of his own Cinder Cost—it all vanished, subsumed by a wave of pure, incandescent fury. It was a cold, clean thing, a glacier of rage that scoured away everything but a single, absolute purpose. He saw the face of his friend, a gentle giant who had known only kindness, twisted into a mask of perpetual torture. He saw the smug, focused expressions of the acolytes, the detached efficiency of the technicians. They were not just people; they were cogs in the engine of his friend's suffering. And he would break them all.
"Now," Nyra's voice was a whip-crack, cutting through the noise. She didn't wait for a response. She moved.
Boro was a cataclysm given form. With a roar that challenged the machine's own deafening hum, he charged. His Gift, the ability to draw stone and earth to his skin, erupted. Slabs of the grated floor ripped free and slammed onto his body, forming a crude, jagged armor. He was a walking avalanche, and the left flank of the lab was his mountain path. He slammed into a bank of consoles, shattering glass and sending showers of sparks into the air. Acolytes scattered like pigeons, their chants of devotion turning into screams of terror. Boro's fists, now encased in rock and steel, crushed a technician's chest plate and sent him flying into a wall with a wet, final thud. He was grief and fury given unstoppable momentum, a force of nature that would not be denied.
Isolde was a phantom of cold precision. Where Boro was raw destruction, she was a surgeon's scalpel. Her face, once a mask of pious devotion, was now a canvas of shattered faith and grim resolve. She moved with a speed that defied her robes, her hands striking not to kill, but to cripple. She jammed a ceremonial dagger into the power conduit of a primary monitoring station, causing the entire bank to flicker and die. She kicked the legs out from under an acolyte raising an alarm, her elbow snapping down onto the back of his neck with chilling efficiency. She knew this machine, knew its priests, knew its weaknesses. Every disabling blow, every sabotaged console, was an act of penance, a scream of defiance against the god she had once served.
Nyra was a crimson blur, her blade a whisper of death. She carved a path directly toward the heart of the chamber, her movements a fluid dance of lethal grace. She was the point of the spear, the unerring arrow aimed at the machine's core. A technician lunged at her with a maintenance prod; she parried, spun inside his guard, and her blade opened his throat in a spray of crimson. An acolyte chanted a warding prayer, a shimmering shield of golden light flaring to life before her. Nyra didn't break stride. She feinted left, then drove her sword through the console at his side, the feedback surge causing his shield to implode in a shower of golden sparks. She was a commander, a tactician, and a killer, all in one terrifyingly efficient package.
Soren forced his broken body to follow. He was a ghost in their storm, a limping, desperate shadow. He grabbed a fallen acolyte's ceremonial staff, its polished wood cool and solid in his grip. It was a poor substitute for his missing strength, but it was something. He saw a technician raising a heavy wrench to strike Nyra's exposed back. Soren didn't think. He threw his weight forward, ignoring the searing protest from his leg, and swung the staff with all the force he could muster. It connected with the man's knee with a sickening crack. The technician screamed and collapsed, and Nyra, without even looking back, dispatched the man next to him. Soren had bought her a half-second, and in this maelstrom, that was an eternity. He leaned against a sputtering console, gasping for breath, his vision swimming, but he was still in the fight. For ruku bez, he would always be in the fight.
They were a storm, a force of pure vengeance, and they were winning. The organized chaos of the laboratory had devolved into panicked, self-preservation. The base of the Divine Bulwark was only a few feet away, ruku bez's tormented face now visible in terrifying detail. His eyes were wide, unseeing, rolled back in his head. His mouth was open in a perpetual, silent scream that the machine amplified for all to hear. The pulsating red light of the machine washed over them, a final, defiant heartbeat. They were almost there. Boro smashed the last remaining console between them and the core. Isolde neutralized the final technician. Nyra raised her blade, ready to strike at the central conduit, the massive, pulsating artery that fed on their friend.
And then, a voice, calm and familiar and utterly devoid of fear, cut through the din. It came from the shadows near the central console, a place that had seemed empty moments before. "I wouldn't do that if I were you, Soren. You might hurt him."
High Inquisitor Valerius stepped into the light. He was not in his ceremonial armor, but in a simple, high-collared tunic of black and silver. He looked serene, almost bored by the carnage around him. A faint, pitying smile played on his lips. His hand rested gently on a control panel that seemed to pulse in time with ruku bez's agony, a master musician at his instrument. The air around him felt still, the chaotic energy of the battle bending to his quiet authority. He was the eye of the storm, the calm center of all their pain.
"Valerius," Nyra snarled, her blade dropping into a defensive guard. The fury in her eyes was now tempered with a cold, sharp dread.
"Sableki," he acknowledged with a slight nod, as if greeting her at a formal function. His gaze then shifted to Soren, and the smile widened. "And Soren Vale. The unrefined spark. I must admit, I'm impressed. You've caused more disruption than I anticipated. But then again, you always were a creature of pure, unthinking emotion."
Soren's rage, which had been a roaring inferno, suddenly condensed into a single, white-hot point of focus. The pain in his body returned, a dull throb compared to the fire in his soul. He took a hobbling step forward, the staff scraping across the floor. "Let him go."
Valerius chuckled, a dry, rustling sound. "Let him go? My dear boy, you don't understand. He is the key. The final component. The Divine Bulwark requires a power source of immense purity, a Gift of raw, untamed potential. Your friend here… he is a perfect, living battery. To 'let him go' would be to render generations of work, of sacrifice, utterly pointless."
"He's a person!" Boro bellowed, taking a threatening step forward. The stone plates on his arms ground together.
"He was a person," Valerius corrected, his voice losing its gentle edge, sharpening like a blade. "Now, he is an instrument of the Synod's will. A holy vessel. His suffering is a sacrament, a necessary price for the stability of this world. A price you, in your selfish ignorance, seem unwilling to pay."
As he spoke, the machine's hum intensified. The red light grew brighter, and ruku bez's body arched, a new wave of silent agony washing over him. A fresh conduit of energy, thick as a man's arm, snaked from the machine's core and plunged into the giant's chest. The scream in their minds intensified, a psychic pressure that made Soren's teeth ache.
"See?" Valerius gestured to the writhing form. "He is giving everything for the cause. What have you given, Soren Vale, besides chaos and grief?"
The question was a physical blow. Soren saw the faces of his mother, his brother. He saw the caravan burning. He saw the bodies of the friends he'd failed to save. Grief and rage warred within him, a tempest threatening to tear him apart. He looked at ruku bez, at the friend he had sworn to protect, now a sacrificial lamb on the altar of a madman's god. The white-hot point of focus in his soul expanded, consuming everything. He didn't care about the Synod, or the Concord, or the price of stability. He only cared about the man on the table.
"He is not your instrument," Soren said, his voice low and shaking, but clear as a winter morning. "He is our friend."
He pushed off the wall, every nerve ending screaming in protest. He ignored it. He took another step, and another. The staff in his hand felt impossibly heavy, but he held it tight. He was no strategist. He was no commander. He was just a man who had lost too much, and he would not lose this.
Nyra saw the change in him. She saw the shift from desperate fury to something else, something absolute. "Soren, no! It's a trap!"
But Soren wasn't listening. His world had narrowed to the space between himself and Valerius, to the control panel that held his friend's life in its indifferent circuits. He raised the staff. He was going to break the Inquisitor. He was going to smash the console. He was going to tear this whole profane temple down with his bare hands if he had to.
Valerius watched him come, the pitying smile never leaving his face. He didn't move. He didn't call for guards. He simply rested his other hand on the panel, his fingers tracing a glowing sigil. "As you wish," he said softly. "But remember, you were warned."
He pressed the sigil.
The effect was instantaneous and horrific. The energy conduit feeding into ruku bez flared with blinding white light. The giant's body went rigid, his silent scream cutting off abruptly. The red light of the Bulwark flickered and died, replaced by a blinding, sterile white that flooded the room. The humming stopped. In the sudden, deafening silence, a new sound began—a high-pitched, keening whine that came from ruku bez himself. It was the sound of a soul being unraveled.
"What have you done?!" Isolde shrieked, her face a mask of horror.
"I've accelerated the process," Valerius said calmly. "His Gift is being fully integrated. If you strike this console now, the feedback surge will incinerate his nervous system instantly. He will be gone before he hits the floor. So, by all means, Soren. Take your swing."
Soren froze, the staff raised high. He was ten feet from the console. Ten feet from saving his friend. Ten feet from killing him. The white light was painful, the keening sound a physical assault on his senses. He looked at ruku bez, at the stillness that had replaced the violent struggling. He was being erased. And Soren, in his rage, had just handed the Inquisitor the perfect weapon.
The choice was no longer between fighting and surrendering. It was between a quick, merciful death and an eternity of torture. And it was a choice only Soren could make.