Red-Eyed Peekaf

The spirits of the dead children shuffle toward Guts, moaning as if in agony. He destroys one with the Dragon Slayer and immediately spits up blood, then hoists the great sword and slams it onto his fire to strike the Demon Child, which floats clear of the blow. Elsewhere, Jill has picked up Puck, who guides her through the dark toward Guts and promises that no beast will trouble her near an elf, though she doubts he is one. He questions whether she should be heading into the monster-ridden Misty Valley where her transformed friend may dwell, but Jill presses on, resigned to regret either way.

Reaching a hilltop, the two see only distant flickers of light, the burning children swarming Guts as he loses himself to rage and hews them apart. Their bodies dissolve at the Dragon Slayer's touch. One spirit cries out for its mother, and after a pause he cuts it down too. Closing the gap, Jill witnesses him gleefully carving through countless small spirits with a manic grin. His swings carry him toward her, and mistaking her for a spirit he brings the blade down over her head, halting it just short. In that frozen instant several spirits leap onto his back and pin him, and as the rest dive to finish him he grabs Jill and jumps clear, unaimed, sending them both rolling down a rocky slope.

At dawn Jill wakes lying atop Guts, who shielded her through the fall and now cannot move for the effort, coughing blood. He asks her to dust him with Puck's elf powder to speed his healing. As she works, he asks about the name the apostle mistook Puck for, Peekaf, and Jill tells the children's tale. Peekaf was a village boy scorned for his red eyes and pointed ears, who wandered into the forbidden forest seeking his true kin. There he found elves who shared his features but rejected him for lacking wings. One elf recognized him as an infant once carried in by desperate parents and healed with magic that left him half-elf, half-human. Fleeing home in grief, Peekaf discovered a century had passed in mere moments; unknown to all and barred from the elves, he lived out his days a lonely outcast. Guts is unmoved, but Jill notes her apostle friend Rosine had adored the story.

Guts slaughters the burning child spirits in a berserker rage and nearly strikes down Jill, who has followed with Puck. Saving her from the swarm, he leaps and the two fall down a cliff, with Guts shielding her body. At daybreak Jill heals him with elf dust and recounts the legend of Red-Eyed Peekaf, the half-elf outcast beloved by the young Rosine.

This 22-page Conviction Arc chapter appeared in Young Animal issue 13, dated June 1997. The Peekaf folk tale it relates foreshadows Rosine's own longing to escape a cruel home and belong among the elves. Peekaf and Rosine are cited within the chapter's cast alongside Guts, Jill, and Puck.