Akʰa is not very clear on the exact length of a solar 'year', but she is also not that unclear. Twenty thousand? That's too many years! Put some back!

"And - you guys know how to summon demons, they just torture you about it? Why have I never got summoned here before, that's not remotely fair."

“I’m not supposed to know how to summon demons! Thats what I’d be tortured about. Just for knowing how, or knowing that demons are more than just religious stories and actually exist. Also because I actually did summon you. But they were already going to maximally torture me or scoop out bits of my brain so I had nothing to lose.” 

Wow… the inquisition really should not cause people to fall further into heresy because they have nothing left to lose. Thats a real design flaw! Maybe they should have levels of torture for offences instead of torturing everyone to death over every offence. Well, it’s not like Alden can politely tell the inquisitor his system is set up wrong.

"Man, I really can't be worse for you than not summoning me." She manages to somehow sound disappointed but also upbeat about this? And claps, once. "Okay, what's the most normal and non-witchcrafty form of protein you eat? Ideally hide-in-hand ish-sized."

(There are still lots of things she doesn't get about this situation, but that is the default state of all her interactions with humans... and one of the general Principles Of Humans that she has grasped is that most humans at most times in most places have absolutely no idea about all the other places.)

“Ration bars I guess? The food for menials? Those are technically edible and very common.” Though Alden would rather not eat any of those. There were persistent rumours they were made from corpse dust. Bugs you at least know are made from bug.

Unfortunately for Alden Akʰa can neither hear his thoughts nor work out what they're likely to be! Accordingly she make a palm-sized chunk of ration bar in the curve of her hand and passes it into his hands.

"Technically, you say."

Loud slightly hysterical whispering ensues. “How did you do that! Did that just show up out of thin air? Can you teleport things?” If demons can teleport whatever they want they suddenly became even more scary than the pict-feed footage of them eating and mutating people led him to believe they were.

Casual glance around grotty potholed road for persons in earshot. "Teleport things. No."

“Is it… real?” He pokes the ration bar with a mechadendrite. It sure crumbles like a real one. Hard and waxy and you have to break chunks off of it. If this is an Illusion he is impressed. And also still more scared of that capability than the mutating and eating.

"Mmhmm!"

Next guess?

Alden has, he thinks, only a very minor amount of hysteria in his voice from this revelation. “You can just make things? Hoooowwwww??” What kinds of things? Honestly even if it’s just ration bars and bugs he could simply drown the inquisition in them and win that way.

"Easily!"

“That is not an answer! What kinds of stuff? How have the demons not just…. Won?” No really, even an Astartes would find it annoying to swim through a hallway of ration bars. If it’s easy to make stuff, doesn’t really matter what kind of stuff, they should just have taken over the whole hive by now and be feasting on everyones eyeballs.

She shrugs. "Won what?"

“The trying to murder everyone they do? To mutate and corrupt the emperors chosen? To get whatever it is they get when they scream ‘give me your tasty tasty eyeballs!’ And proceed to disembowel a room full of menials?” Did this demon not get included with the other demons plans in demonland?

"...you have such poor luck in demons."

“I’ve never heard of a demon… not doing that? Or well, doing something corrupting, not always the mindless slaughter. Sometimes it’s not killing people it’s giving them tentacles and making them eat their pets or whatever. You have to read between the lines in the stories because saying too much gets the inquisition on you.” It’s not like the footage he saw wasn’t very illuminating on what the stories alluded to.

Is she really implying there are demons who are… not terrible? That seems like a pretty obvious lie. She’s even doing all this helping him escape for his soul. Leading him further away from the emperors light instead of letting the inquisition kill him like was good and proper is obviously a corruptive act. He just doesn’t want to be killed more than his faith in the emperor tells him to lay down and die.

Huh... "Are you sure those weren't angels? ...did the tentacles, like, work, that's so much harder on humans, like I'm not saying no one could do that but I feel like that's more of an angel thing." Also she will generally believe reports of angels being annoying & uncool.

“Aren’t angels like… The emperors saints or something?” It’s a word Alden knows, but Angels are even more of a vague concept than demons. Its certainly not talked about in official scripture like how the demons are alluded to.

“If you really can make stuff, make me a portable Pict-viewer?” If he just shows her the demons and cultists then she will stop trying really obvious lies, and they can all save some time.

"Angels... change things. Slowly, and they're bad at it. They get jealous a lot."

She makes a pinprick scaled model, ice in her epidermis, to gauge the size—steps ahead of him, turns, clicks all her fingers quietly and makes a pict-viewer between them.

She could kill him at any moment, so why is he worried about slotting into an unsecured terminal? Decades of safety training are hard to ignore. But he picks up the screen and plugs one of his smaller mechadendrites into the pict viewer, playing the footage he found that is what got the inquisition on his ass.

Body cam footage from the arbites clearing out the cultists. Circles of blood bringing daemons into the world. And the first thing most of the daemons do is tear apart the cultists who summoned them even as the cultists plead to them for salvation. The surviving cultists rapidly start mutating, growing limbs and fangs and tumors. The daemons lead the cultists who were still mobile into the firing line of the arbites troops, soaking up their fire before coming in and wreaking murder and mayhem themselves. Alden changes the point of view of the footage multiple times to show the different and bizarre monstrosities that were the summoned deamons. Through the tinny speakers you can barely hear various mad gibberings they yelled as they bathed ally and enemy alike in unholy warpfire.

”behold, demons and their whole kill everyone thing. Really very obviously their goal. If they could make anything they wanted why aren’t we all dead?”

. . . those aren't demons. Aren't angels, aren't fairies. They kill their summoners. Like. What?

There's more gore than she's used to seeing coming off of actual people. Could just be uncomfortable changing their bodies or - nnno these are just not - (she flips through a couple different languages) - not daeva, at all.

Her cheeks prickle with a speck of ice for every person in straight line-of-sight—the path is a cavern, wide and high and no one close but still a handful of people passing who would indeed see if she decided to demonstrate how that soaking fire would fare against her flesh.

"Why not those guys? They don't look like they're dying."

“Huh? The demons? They probably eventually got bombed so hard they couldn't heal. I think some proper Guardsmen were sent in too, rather than just Arbites. I mean I have to assume that they got killed eventually, or they’d still be at it and I don’t think that could be covered up.” As an Imperial, and a member of the cult Mechanicus, Alden was firmly of the opinion that nothing couldn’t be solved if you just keep throwing bigger guns or bombs at it.

"Wow, bombs, that's so impressive."

Even with his level of human social ineptitude, he feels… patronized. “Making a bomb that burns out a hab block without collapsing the whole floor is really hard.” Alden was in biologos training, but he knew enough to know getting explosives just right was very hard, especially without succumbing to the heresy of invention. He has to defend his fellows! Or former fellows, since he is a heretic now.