Days passed
Nothing happened
Days turned to weeks
Still, nothing happened
Information was slow coming from the prisoners taken from the caravan, and entirely unforthcoming from the woman leading them, they eventually figured out from one of the menials they were able to break that they were worshippers of Tzeentch, god of change. Other than that they got little to nothing from their prisoners, this kept Denali in a perpetually bad mood, he became prone to yelling at the men and even those under his command became apathetic with their jobs as no matter what they did they got yelled at. Linad was left as damage control amongst the men, a job he neither wanted or liked, fights between them became more frequent and their entire operation was coming apart because of some uncooperative prisoners. Linad knew he needed to settle everyone down so he decided to go to Denali in order to get access to the prisoners to see if he might try getting them to talk, or so Linad told himself.
He walked through the winding halls of their base in Jenkali as astartes and men pass by him and eventually he reaches the central command room of their operation filled with menials continuing to desperately look for signs of the cult, now with Denali lording over them and constantly hounding them about their work, Linad went up to Denali and spoke.
"Denali-"
"What." Denali snapped back, obviously annoyed.
"I would like access to our prisoners so I may attempt to get them to speak." At this Denali stayed quiet for a second then said.
"And why should I give you access when you are not of the 11th?" At this Linad's already poor patience and general mounting dislike of Denali boiled over and Linad said in a raised voice.
"Bullshit, when you say I'm not part of the 11th you mean I don't like kissing the Inquisitions ass!" This made Denali look a bit taken aback and all he said after a long sigh of annoyance was.
"Fine, it not like any of these idiots are getting any meaningful information out of them, maybe Emperor allow it you might be able to actually do something, now leave me alone." Linad nodded with satisfaction and left the room without saying anything more. He went back through the base until he came upon an elevator and went down to the bottom floor, an underground prison and information gathering facility, now filling up with cultists, and in one cell held under intense protection, there was a woman bearing the Star of chaos on her clothing, chanting prayers to the Lord of Change under her breath.
Linad emerged from the elevator and started to walk through the prison, rows of cells, some occupied by prisoners in various states of despair, one was shaking the bats of his cage and yelling at his guards, another one was obviously attempting to secretly pray out of the guards sight, and yet another was crying in the corner of his cell and still bore the wounds of his last interrogation. While walking through Linad couldn't help but feel some level of pride, his chapter was doing this, they were fighting heretics and keeping the Emperors kingdom safe. Soon enough he arrived at a cell guarded by 6 regular soldiers, 2 marines, and a fire blade, one of the chapters librarians, to some this might seem like overkill but one can never be too safe when dealing with a psyker. Upon seeing him the soldiers stepped aside and opened the cell door and Linad stepped through into the cell.
The woman was chained up too the back wall, clothes torn and dirtied, and bleeding from multiple wounds suffered during the interrogations, Linad didn't know what the 11th did to get prisoners to talk, and despite him being a marine he still didn't want to know. The woman then coughed and looked up at Linad and said.
"Now what do we have here I wonder, what do you want?"
"I'm here to question you heretic." Linad responded, the woman then said.
"Ah, so you are a seeker of knowledge like me." Linad scoffed at that and said.
"We are nothing alike, you gave up any connection to the imperium and its people when you turned on the Emperor."
"It matters not what kind of knowledge it is that you seek, it is the fact you desire to know something that currently eludes you that makes you and me similar, even if what knowledge we pursue is vastly different, although thanks to my lord very little can elude me." Linad didn't know what she meant by that but still said.
"You're lord can't help you here, so you better give me the answers I seek or you'll face the Emperors judgement earlier than anticipated!" The woman just chuckled at this and said.
"I know you won't kill me, you already had the chance and you didn't take it, just as my lords gift has told me, want to know what else it's told me?"
"I doubt there anything I want to know that you could tell me." The woman just shook her head at this and sighed.
"Very well, it seems that you don't want my generous gift. I shall give you something else instead, Veroni Deg is my name, hopefully this shows you can trust me a little." This confused Linad, why is she trying to get him to trust her, it can't be for anything good, Linad thinks before saying.
"I'll never trust one of your kind. I'll be back tomorrow and maybe you'll be more agreeable then." The woman just chuckled again and said as Linad left the room.
"Come back anytime, the conversation was nice."
Chapter three endThis took a while I know,and it didn't really have any good reason to take this long, I'm just losing steam, that's no ones fault I'm not just gonna up and leave this dead in the water in the middle of a story though, I'll make sure to finish this story at the very least, anyway I appreciate any comments about anything, it's nice to see what my readers think of this story