Erica

Small and slight, Erica stands only around 139 centimeters and weighs roughly 43 kilograms, matching her age of eleven by the time of the Fantasia period. Her hair falls in a soft light brown, while the shade of her eyes shifted from panel to panel across Miura's illustrations, drifting between pale blue, gold, and light brown. The adaptations disagreed as well, some rendering her eyes green and others blue. She is usually pictured in the plain, practical clothes of a smith's household.

Curiosity and cheer define the girl, and she warms quickly to Guts despite his gruff edges. Tending to the childlike Casca after the Eclipse draws out a maturity beyond her years, and she becomes fiercely protective of the wounded woman. Erica reads the pain in those around her, whether it is Casca's confinement or Rickert's guilt, and she speaks plainly when she feels a wrong needs righting. Even so, she holds no lasting spite. After being charmed into chores by the elderly Kushan Daiba, she still fetches him a device of Rickert's making to ease his aching joints. Her stubborn pride in hard work traces back, in her own words, to being a blacksmith's daughter.

War left Erica an orphan while she was very young, and the weathered smith Godot, moved by the sight of her weeping, took her in as his own. The two shared his mountain hut from then on. During the Band of the Falcon's early days she crossed paths with Guts, cheerfully hindering his training by dropping logs on him and fretting when the exercise snapped his blade, all while announcing she would grow up to forge swords herself. After the horror of the Eclipse, the Skull Knight delivered a wounded Guts and a shattered Casca to the ore cave near the hut, where Erica nursed the swordsman and grew attached to the now childlike Casca.

Through the Conviction period she looked after Casca while Rickert apprenticed under Godot, and she blamed herself bitterly when Casca wandered off and vanished during a berry-picking outing. Her spirits lifted only when she stumbled on the elf Puck and learned Guts had returned. She guided him to the hillside cemetery of practice blades Rickert had forged, and soon Godot, sensing his own end, placed her in Rickert's care.

By the Millennium Falcon arc Godot had died, and Erica tended his grave while hoping the survivors might rebuild and live together. That wish unraveled as Griffith's rebirth drew near, the ore cave was lost, and Rickert resolved to travel with Guts, leaving her in tears before the two parted from the swordsman's group. In the Fantasia era she and Rickert worked a border mine until trolls and an ogre drove them out. A shared dream of a radiant falcon guiding everyone toward the capital set them on the road to Falconia, and during the perilous exodus she armed Rickert with arrows and scattered miniature bombs over the beasts. Settled in the city, she befriended the Kushan sorcerer Daiba and, later, handed Rickert a rocket-launcher weapon that bought him time against Rakshas.