Guardian Angels of Desire (2)

Hoisting the bandaged man by the throat, Guts demands the origin of the Beherit, and the stranger, Vargas, explains that he took it from the Count. Seven years earlier the ruler was still human and Vargas served as his castle physician, until the Count began seizing prisoners to be tortured and devoured. Vargas fled with his family, was captured, and lost half his face and both legs while being forced to watch his loved ones eaten alive. He faked his own death, escaped, and carried the Beherit away. Guts describes the relic as a key that opens a gateway to the God Hand, a quintet of demons, though he admits he cannot work it himself.

Within the castle, the Count forces a slug-like creature down the throat of the raving Zondark, hollowing him into a vessel to hunt the Black Swordsman. The monster bursts into Vargas' lab, and the duel that follows shows Zondark to be more than human, sprouting tentacles to replace a severed arm and lashing his hammer like a whip. Guts confuses him with his cloak and splits his skull, whereupon the slug that is the Count emerges to praise the swordsman and threaten Vargas anew. The collapsing ceiling crushes Zondark's body, and the three flee through a floor passage as flames consume the workshop, surfacing from a sewer grate beneath a bridge. Guts explains that only a fragment of the Count's power died with Zondark, then seizes the Beherit from Vargas and leaves him alone, where a tentacle finds the crippled man in the dark.

Word spreads of an execution staged as a warning to the Black Swordsman, and Guts recognizes the condemned as Vargas. He watches from an alley, claiming he only wishes to see the man die, and points out the regiment lying in wait for a rescue attempt. Puck accuses him of fearing the sight of Vargas failing against a foe beyond human reach, a mirror of Guts' own war, then flies off to save the prisoner and knocks himself out against the headsman's axe. Vargas is beheaded after a last cry for the Count's death. Later, finding the physician's remains at a mass grave, Guts swears not to be beaten as Vargas was. His Brand flares as the buried dead rise, and when one spirit tries to seize his body to kill the Count through him, he expels it by force of will. He turns toward the castle, resolved to face the Count as a living man rather than a dead person's puppet.

Vargas recounts his mutilation at the Count's hands and the theft of the Beherit, and Guts reveals the relic's link to the God Hand. Zondark, remade into a monster by the Count, is destroyed in a collapsing laboratory. Vargas is executed as bait, and Guts, rejecting spirit possession, commits to killing the Count on his own terms.

The double-length chapter names the God Hand members Void, Femto, Slan, Ubik, and Conrad in passing and introduces Theresia. It deepens the Count's history as a man turned Apostle and frames Guts' recurring theme of refusing to become an instrument of the vengeful dead. Puck's reading of Guts' hidden fear draws the parallel between the swordsman and Vargas.