Gedfring

Time has left Gedfring stooped and slow, so he gets about riding an old markhor, joking that his own legs can no longer match those of the young. Rather than any commanding physique, he presents the unhurried air of an aged master of the arcane.

Mild and gracious by nature, Gedfring holds his composure even in the company of temperamental sorts; Puck, whom he affectionately dubs a maker of mischief, and the hot-blooded Molda test that calm without breaking it. Within him rests a deep reservoir of lore about the Astral World and the workings of magic, knowledge he offers openly to any who arrive seeking answers.

Gedfring rules the mage hamlet that borders the realm of Elfhelm and was acquainted with both Puck and Flora, the late mistress of Schierke. In a dream before Guts ever reached Elfhelm, Flora came to him with a plea to look after her pupil. After Guts topples a burning wicker giant, Gedfring calls down a rain to keep the flames from spreading into the witches' pumpkin patches, then guides the travelers toward the mages' village, speaking along the way of the Great Wave and the meeting of the worlds.

Around a shared table, the old archmage and his fellow elders lay out how the separate planes have begun to bleed into one another. The colossal tree looming over Falconia, they explain, is the World Spiral Tree, one great fracture running through the world's layers that opens passage between them by way of routes like the Elfin Path and the deeper Dragon Path that descends to the Abyss, a gate Guts' beherit has the power to unlock. Gedfring recounts how parasitic growths drain the World Tree and how Griffith's torching of the spirit trees has let it spread unchecked into the physical world, stirring memories of a primordial age when both realms lay hopelessly entangled. Finally he presses Guts to say what manner of man Griffith really is and what he hopes to win by fusing the astral realm with the physical one.