Editing Grimdark Tarzan (section)

== Chapter 4 ==

The Illuminator had received the urgent request for Sister Brigitte and was acting in all due haste, but there was still the matter at hand. They did not want to harm their only connection to the human population of Tublat, but at the same time, they could not risk him escaping or harming any of them.

Before Inquisitor Callen could give an order to restrain the man, Sister Janna stepped forward without bringing her weapons to bear. Keeping her arms raised in the air to show that she meant no harm, she slowly walked towards Tarzan.

She did not bother speaking, she had no soothing tone and he would not be able to understand her words. Instead, she deliberately approached the feral human. His eyes were wide and panicked, but soon narrowed to a calmer state once he recognized the woman as the one he had helped before. Gradually, he loosened his grip on his spear, and let it hang loosely at this side, and straightened up into a more relaxed position.
Giving a sigh of relief upon realizing that would not have to watch as a potential ally was killed, Janna took his hand and led him deeper into the camp. The other sisters kept their weapons trained on him, but many of them returned to their duties as sentries. A small guard followed Sister Janna in case the man tried anything, but otherwise did not do anything else.

With a small shrug the Inquisitor returned to his temporary dwelling. There was nothing that he could do that the sisters could not, so he might as well wait for the Dialogous to arrive.The Magos, on the other hand, followed the procession with no small amount of excitement, ''here'' was a research subject worth experimenting on.

As he was led through the camp, Tarzan could not shake the thought of how soft the person's hand was, and how his fit into it so easily. It was ''nice'', and there was something comforting about not being the smallest one in the vicinity aside from the infants, as had often been the case throughout his upbringing.

He was eventually led into (what seemed to him) an unusual cave by the familiar one. The walls seemed unnatural, and the cave was very small, but the one leading him sat down on a very rigid formation, and motioned for him to follow suit. He acquiesced; he was here to learn more about them, and this seemed like the best way to avoid any more of the unpleasantness that he had experienced beforehand. Resting his spear along a wall to show he meant no harm, he put his mind to work on how to get over the language barrier. He was no stranger to learning the languages of the other races of the forest, but it was a time consuming process, and generally there was at least one other being that had already mastered it. Now, however, he had neither of those luxuries. This was going to be a problem indeed...

While Tarzan was deep in thought, and (unknown to him) guarded by the Adeptas Sororitas (both from escaping and from Magos Archimede, who it was quietly decided should not meet the young man until the Dialogous arrived), the shuttle containing Sister Brigitte was able to land without any major difficulties, and the inquisitor was there to meet her. The doors opened, and out stepped a demure woman clad in flowing Imperial garb with a servo skull trailing behind her.

"Sister Brigitte!" Callen said as he walked towards her, a warm (and very fake) smile plastered on his face, "you are the answer to my-"

The sister held up a hand to interrupt him, "Hwhere is the feral?" she trilled, "If your summons are truly as urgent, as you made them out to be, then hwe have no time to waste".

Now he remembered why they left her in orbit.

"Of course sister, right this way, you uppity whore... " the last bit was said under his breath as he led her towards where they were keeping the deathworlder. Sister Brigitte made no motion of having heard what he said, or if she did, she made no remark about it.

They stopped in front of a small hab that had two armed Sisters of Battle standing in front of the entrance, "He's right inside. I trust that you know what you are doing?"
"Of course!" Brigitte snapped back, "I'll have him singing the Emperor's praises in a few days!"

----

It, in fact, took several months to reach the point where Tarzan was able to recite even the smallest of verses of the Imperial cant, and that was with many whispered hints. Even then, it was only after they convinced him that the "Father of the Forest" was merely a facet of the God-Emperor. During that time, he was allowed to come and go to the camp as he wished, with some restrictions of course. While he was generally allowed to leave whenever he wanted to, to be allowed back into the camp he had to make himself known to one of the sentries, who would then escort him to his daily sessions with the Dialogous. Sister Janna, who seemed to be the one who had the greatest connection to him, was often asked to sit in on the lessons as well, in order to put him at more ease.

Eventually, Magos Archimede was allowed to sit in during the sessions as well, however, his requests for blood and saliva samples were politely declined

The other humans of the camp gradually got used to the wild man, and in some ways were slightly fond of him. In an attempt to curry favor with them, he often brought gifts of food to the camp. The magi had decided that the food was probably not poisonous, and it added variety to their meals. Over the months, no one died, so they seemed to have the right of it.

That is not to say that everything had gone swimmingly, of course. There were several attacks by the beasts that had swarmed the camp that first day. Tarzan had told them that they were known as the "Lepris", a warlike feline race that ruled a large swath of the jungle. The attacks had faded in their occurrence as the Imperials proved their more than ample might, but they still kept on their guard.

They had also made little to no progress in finding the Greystoke, and Inquisitor Callen was losing what little patience he had. Every day, he pressured Brigitte more and more to have Tarzan reveal everything he knew about the area and anything remotely resembling the ship. Thus far, however, she had steadfastly refused, not willing to allow her hard work to go down the drain due to impatience.

"Emprah want help all human. Human should help Emprah Tarzan human. Sisters, people of Emprah. Tarzan should help Sisters." Tarzan enunciated to Brigitte.

"Yes, very good," the Sister smiled, "it seems hwe are finally getting to hwhere hwe need to be. There will be many ways for you to help us, I hope hwe can come to count on you"

The savage smiled. Sister Janna, seated on a nearby bench looked up from maintaining her weapons. Tarzan had come a long way in the past few months. Apparently he was a polyglot, having learnt many jungle languages, and that had helped immensely when it came to picking up the basics of low gothic. He had attempted to teach them as well, and while she had picked up a few words of the grunting language, Sister Brigitte had carefully recorded everything he said, and was rapidly becoming fluent in many of the languages.

Janna had a small feeling of warmth in her chest, having been the first to meet the man, and although she was careful to avoid the sin of pride, she felt that without her own actions, his interactions with the Imperials would have gone much worse.

There had been some awkward moments of course. Such as when he saw a pict of typical imperial dress and thought that it was proper to him to wear a dress because all the women he knew were warriors, so it was obviously for the more militant humans.

However, the peaceful atmosphere was interrupted by Inquisitor Callen barging into the area.

"Hwhat are you doing!" shouted Brigitte in high Gothic, leaving Tarzan unaware of what was said, but on alert due to her panic.

"I've had enough of this monkeying around! Feral! You will answer me! Do you know where the ''Greystoke'' is?!"

Instead of giving a proper answer, Tarzan simply drew himself to his full height and repeated, "Gar-Ay-Stow-Kuh!" into the man's face, causing his eye to twitch with rage.

"By the God-Emperor..." Callen swore under his breath; snatching a piece of parchment and charcoal that Brigitte had been using to illustrate some more difficult to word concepts, he sketched out a blocky image of what the magi had been able to theorize the ''Greystoke'' looked like.

"THIS!" he shouted, "Have you seen THIS?!"

Tarzan took the parchment from him, and twisted it this way and that, and when he turned the paper nearly ninety degrees, a feeling of recognition sparked in his mind. Luckily, he was able to stop his face from expressing any emotion, instead he simply shook his head.

"Useless among uselessness" The inquisitor murmured, "We have no more resources to waste on this, Brigitte, consider your duties here at an end."

"You can't simply-!"

"I can and I will. He's obviously of no use to us." He turned to Tarzan, "You heard me wild man! Get out, or I will have you evicted by force!"

Tarzan scowled at the way that the inquisitor was treating his friends. He was barely stopping himself from striking the man, when he felt a restraining hand on his shoulder.

"Tarzan, it might be better for you to leave for a while," Janna told him gently. For a second, it looked like he was going to argue with her, but he caught the look in her eye, and with a great deal of regret, he fled.
"Now that that's been dealt with, perhaps we can return to the actual mission? Since the feral is gone, you can join your sisters with surveying the land, Sister Janna, and you, sister Brigitte can have as many conversations with the magos."

With barely contained fury, the sisters moved to do as he commanded. As they should, Callen thought to himself.