Wearing clothes with words on them cuts the number of random summons down enough they're not annoying. When one floats by anyway—yeah, she's bored.

Now she's somewhere else.

"Greetings, summon... wow. Okay. Loving the mechadendrites," says a tenctacle-less humanoid woman with tightly curly red hair, a baggy black t-shirt with the English letters PARAFFIN NEVER WORKS written across the front, dark red wings, and no soul.

It’s a good deal less monstrous than he expected, and it(she?) is speaking perfect low gothic instead of screaming horrible noises like the monsters in the footage. But he just summoned something with some kind of incredibly heretical witchcraft and so will take what he can get.

”Save me from the inquisition and you can have my soul! Anything! Just save me!” Alden yelps at her in a panic.

The inquisition is done knocking. Las fire is melting down the door and a power armoured boot is stepping into the room.

”Surrender now! How dare you block our access, heretic! If you resist arrest your death will not be quick!”

why do people keep offering her souls

she can't do anything with those and it's gone past embarrassing to irritating—on the other hand this place is weird and if his death is quick she has to go home.

"Sure," she says, and makes a that-a-kinda greyish-hard-nonmelty-thing shell around the melting door.

“By the Omnissiah*!” Alden squeaks out when the door is covered up sealed again. None of the monsters in the footage could do that.

(* the concepts in this word translate roughly as: God of technology/source of all motive force/god of mankind )

Alden wonders if swearing by the Omnissiah after just having done witchcraft is double extra heresy. Wait why is he worrying about if its okay to still swear by the Omnissiah when hes just committed witchcraft! He summoned something! And the inquisition will kill him for it! They were right there on the other side of that thing that appeared!

”Oh scrap, oh I’m so fucked. Why did I do this. I should have just killed myself like a normal person instead of summoning something! At least my soul would be safe then. Oh emperor, when the inquisition gets me they’ll torture me so long that my future great great grand nieces will still be able to hear me scream.” Alden is rambling and catastrophising, and the thing he summoned, while not looking like a horrible toothy monster, still is radiating a ‘wrong’ and ‘not human’ presence to it. Deep down he just knows its ‘other’, and now that thing has a claim on his soul!

Theres banging and the sound of las fire coming from the other side of the shell. Eventually the sound of plasma fire can be heard. The metal around the shell is getting rather red and glowy as the weapons fire dumps heat into the area surrounding the door.

Dude would rather be dead than have summoned her? Gross. She forms an immediate ambition to be way better for this guy than not having summoned her. Or possibly way worse, though it sounds like that's a gimme.

...better's going to take some more work. Is there another door? Should she make one? Two-hands-sized diorama of the immediate surroundings in coloured ice?

There is one door from this workshop to the hallway. The one she sealed.

The hallway has: a man in power armor and a coat and hat that a 21st century earthling would find very reminiscent of an SS uniform. Various other intimidating looking goons in non powered armor with laser guns. And a few…. Robot zombie looking things with robo tentacles like the summoner has. The robot zombies are the source of the plasma shots.

The rooms above and below and to each side look like more workshops like this one.

Alden is just hyperventilating and panicking. Part of him wishes he had upgraded his lungs so he could stop hyperventilating.

Akʰa has approximate knowledge of many Earth things but "nazi uniforms" did not make the voyage.

She melts her map in a puff of plasma then conjures specks of dust corresponding to the composition of - wow there are wires heading all through this place. How does summoner feel about electricity. Hmm.

Picks a largeish patch of floor. Appears circle of air thru the edges and the patch drops away, landing flat on the floor below.

"Hey dude! C'mon, let's move."

“By the Omnissiah!” How is it doing that! How powerful is this thing? Alden doesn’t know wether to be hopeful or worried.

The wall to the hallway is getting very red hot and melty looking. It wont be long before they get through. Alden jumps down the hole into the workshop below his.

”I need somewhere they wont find me. They’ll turn the this whole block upside down to find me, especially after what you just did. I didn’t know witchcraft could do that! But its very clearly witchcraft! They either think I’m a mutant or know I summoned something, the inquisitor is going to never stop hunting me down. Oh scrap oh scrap” He gets rambly and thinks aloud when he is stressed.

Akʰa floats down with warm air under her wings and replaces the floor ceiling seamlessly.

"You haven't met cool enough demons. Where's a not-this-block, what kind of way?"

“I only summoned you because I was about to die! You think I’ve done this before?” He lets out a slightly unhinged giggle. “I’m not even a cultist. I just copied what they did from footage I saw. The demons they summoned were much more toothy and stabby and eating peoples heads.“

If he was a mutant or heretic (and he IS, in fact, a heretic) … where would he hide…

”We need to go down, way down, all the way to the underhive. I Should be able to handle the lack of life support due to my augments, do you need to breathe?” The underhive is not very liveable but it’d be almost impossible to find him there.

Why was he talking to eldritch being he summoned with witchcraft as if this was just a normal thing to do!?! He wants to shut down and cry but if he does that HE WILL DIE.

Other thing that did not make the voyage from Earth to this here brain: working model of how weird it is to know nothing about demons a couple decades after Revelation.

"Man, eating people's heads is so boring. Terrible texture balance." Presumably they did... not eat their summoners/'s heads? Left those for last? Why would the summoner/s not dismiss... eh, whatever. "No need to breathe, I am not a thing that dies. You good to keep jumping?" Icy diorama of the straight below.

There are a few spots in the floor that have plasma conduits! Breaking those would be bad. So slight detours are needed rather than jumps straight down. And some rooms below are occupied.

Alden does not pick up on the sarcasm at all. Somehow hearing about it eating people makes him less scared. More within his expectations. So it was the kind of horrible murder monster he expected after all if it had opinions on head texture, it just looked more human than the others, and it could make (temporary?) holes in things. 

“We should take an elevator eventually. Before they get locked down. But another floor down at least probably wont have the halls guarded.”

Alden is correct to pick up no sarcasm! Hair and bone have awful mouthfeel, and unless former-ensoulment does wonders for the flavour brain is just dull... whoops, there goes her map. See she was so smart to check ahead!

Is there an unoccupied room straight a plasma-less floor-patch below? Or... any guards horizontal to this room?

In the corner of this room they safely can drop down into what looks like a janitors closet! In the 40th millenium they still use mops and buckets, a small room with mops and buckets is probably a janitors closet.

The hallway has one of those robot zombies, but who knows if that’s a guard robot zombie or not. The hallway in the floor below is empty.

Alrighty ho. She picks up the loose chunk of flooring and drops it through her next, cornery hole.

"Mind your landing, there's clutter."

Alden uses his thicker mechadendrite tentacles to lower himself down. Gosh this would have been a tricky jump with a baseline human body. How does anyone get by without mechadendrites.

”You are awful helpful for a man eating monster, I didn’t know my soul was so valuable.” He’s been panicking so long he’s getting a little numb to it. His brain has enough room to run his big dumb mouth now.

Kiddo, what you offered was anything... shouldn't bring that up until she's thought of something to ask for, it'll be awkward.

"It's the tentacles," she says drily. "They fascinate." Come to think of it, that's basically true!

She'll float down after, if there's space, or wait for him to exit the closet.

“You have not ever seen a member of the mechanicum before? Mechadendrites are pretty standard… they come standard on servitors too.”

Alden peeks out of the closer to see if anyone is in the hallway, makes sure the demon is following, and rushes down the hallway.

”do you have any way to hide the wings? It gives away you aren't human from a much greater distance.” This close the sense of otherness she gives off is rather strong and probably impossible to hide, if he wasn't so scared of death by inquisition then that feeling would bother him quite a bit. But if they covered the wings then people might not her at a distance.

Following! She flexes her wings out, then folds them back... somewhat. They're not obviously not-a-backpack from the front.

"It is correct for people to think I'm not human, because I'm not."

“Yes but if anyone else knows that they’ll shoot me! Even if you can’t die I can. Im really very vulnerable to being shot! If I didn’t mind being dead I’d just be dead instead of doing something as incredibly heretical as summoning a demon!” Now there’s any hope of survival, the idea of being shot is actually more scary. When there was almost no hope it was somehow easier to bear.

”If we can find something to cover those up we might make it to the elevator.” The main paths are usually at least a little busy, they won’t only see her from the front.

But is it really a big—she conjures a speck of water for each person in the relevant vicinity, just inside the top layer of her palm for better sensitivity.

ugh fine 'shoot the summoner' is reasonable response to unbound-demon she will try not to prompt any of those people to squint at her nonbindings. wings are useless extraneous baggage now, not Her.

"You'll also wanna stop—gah—babbling about it," she says, cutting the wings off with only a slight sprinkling of viscera, sealing both ends with skin, and...chucking them back in the cupboard, why not.

Should he be surprised the demon can casually cut off its wings like that? Maybe. It sorta makes sense that it could do that and be fine though.

Alden is no stranger to miscellaneous viscera.

”Okay at the end of this hall will be a more open throughway, don’t look anyone in the eye, stay close, let me do the talking. Maybe I can actually manage to get us into the underhive.”

Alden winces. “Then I guess I count that as being saved and you can yank my soul out and dance in my entrails or whatever it is you wanted with me.” Summoning a demon was such a bad idea, but it’s not like hes strong enough to deny the demon whatever it wants to do to him, and he did make a deal contingent on him being saved. Just because it ends in his probable death doesn’t mean he wont stick by the deal he made. At least its not whatever the inquisition would do to him.

He leads them to the end of the hallway and the main causeway is about as wide as a highway, just inside a building. There’s plenty of people walking down it, but theres enough space to avoid getting close to anyone coming in the other direction if you are careful with timing and pathing.

D'aww. Would she dance in this guy's entrails? (no. why. sticky and slippery. inferior dance experience.)

...he doesn't know she needs him alive, huh. Hmm. Well, between thinking about that and smiling ominously and observing the latest developments in Earth architecture she won't get too bored following him calmly.

The latest developments in not earth but imperial hive city architecture is lots of definitely real human skulls on things, and eagle reliefs, and gold leaf. At least on this floor. The walls (and doorways, and mechanical bits that stick out, and banner hanging poles, and machinery buttons, etc) have more skulls than your average depiction of the humans religious hell. The major colour besides gold and bone is red. Red banners with cogs on them.

Everything looks VERY old, well maintained, but worn down in a way that it would take at least a century and maybe even longer for the kinds of sturdy materials this indoor road hallway seems to be built with to wear down like that.

Some of the people coming down the road have red cloaks and robot tentacle mechadendrites, like Alden. Some of those people seem to be made more of mechadendrites than human flesh. Some of the people look like malnourished regular humans, wearing much simpler clothes and never dressed in red like the ones with mechanical augments are. There’s even a few robo zombies, staring dead eyed and slack jawed as they lift or drag something too heavy for normal humans to carry.

Alden looks pretty nervous but they manage to make it a few Kilometres down this road without attracting anyones attention. Aldens focus as they approach it is on a big half cylinder thats coming out of the wall that goes to the ceiling. The elevator.

Rich people who like blood and death, got it. Maybe ex-rich people, who etc etc. She's mildly vibrating with boredom after a while but can stick to her plan for the unexpected  k i l o m e t r e s  of walking involved here. As long as no one notices her legs get fractionally longer, or the sporadic sprinkle of dust from between her clasped hands, they can reach the elevator very normally.

(Bone dust. She knows the consistency of bone, and is checking if all those skulls are real.)

Yep! All real! Even the smaller ones that had to have come from not adults. It is possible these skulls were sourced ethically with a big enough population and the apparent age of this road.

A few kilometres walk is not that far even by the standards of people who aren't winged immortals and who run on biology and can get tired. Like 20 minutes walking.

Alden nervously looks back at her as they approach a door in the cylinder tube, him getting them onto the elevator is the closest people will get to the demon, he hopes they don't notice her weird ‘not a person’ vibes she’s giving off. 

Despite Aldens worry, the guy manning the elevator controls (who seems to be permanently attached and wired into the wall beside the door) doesn’t even care when Alden walks up and motions he wants to go down. Doors open, on the elevator platform they go! Its a BIG elevator, you could fit like 4 earth battle tanks on this platform. Alden leads them off to the far side from the door, far away from anyone else who might get on.

It's possible they were ethically sourced from demonic conjuration, if you don't think about it hard enough to notice how this does not fit with any other evidence about their culture! (Guess who.)

Totally staring at wired-into-the-wall guy. She's going to be dissecting that set-up when she has free time and space... twentyish minutes might be too long to remember little comments like "don’t look anyone in the eye".

Wall guy glares at her with his bionic eyes. Staring right back, but not in an interested way but a kinda spooked and disgusted way.

Alden will grab her sleeve to pull her along when he notices this. Once they get to the far edge of the platform he whispers angrily at her. “What did I say about that! Don’t get peoples attention! We need people to not figure out you aren’t… like the rest of us.”

"He's stuck to the wall, he's not following us!" she whispers back; and giggles. "Why is he like that. What's with his eyes, is that normal here?" She tries to get a better look at summoner's eyeballs.

Summoners eyeballs are also robotic! But much better at looking human, you can only tell because the iris looks like it has tiny circuitry lines. The light catches them differently too.

”Well it’s probably easier to use a menial than to use a cogitator to run the elevator. Menials are easier to replace than cogitators when they break down anyway. His eyes are probably replaced at the same time as they got hooked up, better to do all the required augments during installation than to wait for their eyes to fail with age and have to do it later.” Alden says, as if this was completely normal. To him, it is normal.

Nod nod. Eye replacements and humans ageing totally make sense, she is familiar with both these concepts. "How good are your eyes at seeing? What's a cogitator?"

“I have better low light vision than baseline, and have a slight zoom function. Mostly they just directly display text in my field of vision without needing a physical display for it.” Wow this demon sure seems curious, it’s better than slaughtering everyone in sight he supposes. “Cogitators can be programmed to do things, like operate lifts. But the parts are hard to make and fiddly and the rites of activation are relatively long. Better to save them for more important things.” It’s not like he’s telling the demon anything they couldn’t torture out of a menial.

The elevator is descending, pretty quickly even! Sometimes it stops at a floor to let people on or off, but mostly it just heads down quickly. Whatever this structure is, it’s very tall, or deep, it is vertically impressive.

ZOOM. FUNCTION. If she pops one eye out into her hand and burns it will that be too obvious—hnnn but if she doesn't get the hook-up right she'd have to dispose of another eyeball or go around monocular until they reach The Underhive. Maybe the slight zoom isn't even better than her current set. She can wait, it'll be fine.

"Why do you need cogitators to run lifts? Aren't they just... weights?" She's never actually made a lift. Maybe that's wrong. Hmm, if the eye connection is tricky she can figure it out and write the people trying to make general brain computers, then they'll think she's cool. (They're so cool.)

“To decide when to stop it, to open the doors automatically, to decide how fast to go, when to refuse more passengers. Pretty sure these elevators are just directly geared into the shaft rather than using counterweights.” Alden tended to work on wetware, not basic hive amenities, but he’s seen the elevators get repaired enough times that he’s pretty sure it’s not using counterweights. He doesn’t even think he could come up with a counterweight system that could pull an elevator up a whole hive without using something silly like adamantium cables. Not that inventing a new elevator design wouldn’t be all kinds of heresy, but he's already done heresy today so whats a little more in the safety of his own mind.

Down down down they go. This building is either at least partly underground or is ridiculously tall, even by hell construction standards.

...probably back home people just operate their lifts directly, and humans have weird work-arounds. Even cool cyborg humans.

...man, even people with elevators don't normally have and use this much building at once. But people keep getting on or off! This is so much building. You have to actually think about stresses and forces to have this much building at once.

"...is the Underhive underground?" she whispers after a while.

“Yes… it’s… under the hive.” Yep, Alden needs to remember demons wouldn't necessarily know super obvious stuff, demonland or wherever it is they come from probably isn’t a hive. Maybe they don’t even have real buildings. He’s heard of wild worlds where there’s people living outside. 

“This elevator doesn’t actually go all the way down there. Just to the bottom of the middle hive, we’ve been underground for a while though. We have to get off soon.” He’s never actually gone below the middle hive though except for a few expeditions to find archeotech. He spent most of his life in his workshop in the middle spires. And now if he happens to not have his entrails danced on, he will be stuck in the underhive for the rest of his life, best case scenario. Never to be in the spires again.

This bums Alden out. On top of being bummed out about probably having his soul eaten by a demon, of course.

If he wants his prospective entrail-dancer to notice he's sad he'll probably have to say something, she's not super attentive to other people's emotions even when they're not drowned in tentacles, hoods, masks, etc. (On the bright side if he wants to hide that, super easy!)

Flutter of fingers. Down down down. "So all the top bit is the hive. Why's it a 'hive', do you really like bees? I didn't notice any bee décor."

Alden is not obviously emoting, except for in the slightly sad sway of his mechadendrites, and that is very subtle even to someone who could pick up on those things. Except for the panic at almost dying earlier, Alden is not the best at emoting with his face.

“All the bit meant for people to live in is the hive. You can have totally underground hives if the surface is unsafe enough. I don’t know why it’s called that, that’s just what big self contained megacities are called? Whats a bee? Never mind, I probably don’t want to know about…. things from where you come from.” It’s probably unsafe to know too much about demon things anyway, even if he’s resigned to being a heretic.

”Okay we get off here, then its a long walk to the lower hive… then I guess I look for some smugglers to bring us to underhive…” When the elevator doors open, theres another wall guy, also wired into the wall with big glowy optics. This one seems more listless, and old. The indoor road on this floor has way less skulls (but still some), no gold, no banners, less machinery, looks a lot more brutalist and worn down and dirty. The lighting is worse, some of the ceiling bulbs flicker. The cement or concrete analogue the roadway is made of has potholes.

"You don't have bees—you must have bees, I'm not translating, this is your language's word for 'bees', it's not 'bees' or 'bees' or—they're definitely more human things than demon things, we don't have nearly as many bees." She stops there less out of respect for his vague preferences than from finding 'pollinating by conjuration is easier than keeping bees alive' mildly annoying to explain.

“Well I don’t know what a bee is. We don’t have them here at least. Or at least not anywhere I’ve had access too. If it’s a gothic word then maybe someone somewhere has them.” Is it weird the demon knows low gothic? She’s even speaking it with this hives accent. Though the demons he saw on the film knew how to scream ‘FLESH!’ and ‘Tasty tasty eyes!’ and ‘WOW THIS IS FUN!’ as they slaughtered their way through the inquisitors forces. Until massed fire brought them down at least. So maybe them knowing the language is normal.

More walking, this road you have to be a little careful with too, because of it’s state of disrepair. Alden is not able to go nearly as fast having to watch where he steps.

Everyone on the indoor road on this floor is a normal human, though looking very malnourished. No red robed robot tentacle people and no robo zombies down here. Alden actually stands out in this crowd.

She makes a dead bee in the palm of one hand... tosses it casually aside. She makes a dead bee except for the stinger and scoops it into his hand.

"Behold: the bee."

Aldens first reaction. “Ew! Bug!” And drops it.

Aldens second reaction. “Where in the Emperors grace did you pull that from? Do you just have bees ready?” He didn’t see her go for a pocket either.

"The bees are created at point of sale. Would you like another one?"

(This time it's sarcasm.)

“You can make bugs?” That sorta makes sense as a daemonic power… hordes of locusts feature in some stories. He doesn’t know what a locust is but it’s supposed to be a bug. He always imagined it as a kind of rust beetle.

Okay for real he probably should not be asking about ultra forbidden knowledge about demonland. Damn his curiosity.

”At least I can get some protein on the way down I suppose…” What the worst that could happen if he ate demon bugs, get poisoned? Mutated? She was already gonna eat his soul.

Has. Has he not noticed? That's hilarious—is it funnier to point that out now or keep stringing him along, given that she might give it away by accident?

"...you're expecting it to take how long to get down there?"

“Couple of days? If we get lucky and find a decent smuggler fast. And if all the elevators work and we don’t have to avoid the inquisition. If this was a regular expedition I’d plan for at least a week. But it should be faster with just us two.”

Alden is also planning on taking some rather risky shortcuts. If they kill him? Well… not much loss there. At least it will be out of his hands.

.......................Akʰa spends a solid twenty seconds contemplating just giving up, killing him, and going home. This is not a timeframe she was expecting for "going downstairs"!! Really, really is not. "Since when do humans build this tall?"

Alden has to think about this. He never got much explicit history teaching, but even the religious lessons of the Mechanicum gave him enough information to ballpark it. 
“20 thousand years? At least? Maybe longer? There are definitely Hives from well before the dark age.” It’s not like this was secret information a demon shouldn’t have. Any random cultist could tell them hives are an old thing.

He also doesn’t understand what she means by ‘this’ tall. This wasn’t even the biggest hive on this planet.

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.

...precision's not the dimension she meant but actually that is impressive! Probably. "What's a hab block?"

“A big chunk of building inside a floor that the menials live in.” Stacked way too close together in his opinion, having to sleep so many to a room… touching even? Disgusting. Well he supposes thats what makes them menials.

She crushes a chunk of ice in one hand. Yep, impressive precision to destroy that much inside a building and not collapse the whole thing, takes practice. And deeeeply unimpressive 'demons'.

"Hmm."

Eventually even Alden thinks walking is getting tiring. “You can make… anything? Right? I’ll look for a place to put a vehicle. Should make things faster for a few floors at least.”

He twigs! He comprehends!

"Goood plan. What are we looking for in vehicle places?"

“No people around? Seeing stuff just appear sure is a sign of at the very least witchcraft. Menials don’t know about teleportation. We would get reported to the Arbites.” It’s a big and olllld hive, surely there’s some empty storage or maintenance building somewhere on the main road.

"Just people, not cameras?" She's bored of ice and switching between spun-sugar and skin dust.

“Uhhhh there shouldn’t be many or any down here?” Wow camera sure was an archaic way of saying imager. He’s lucky he studied some of the more ancient tomes of activation. “but check for those too if you can?“.

"If I can, he says. Are they made out of atoms?" It's a rhetorical question.