Misty Valley (1)

The combined recoil of his arm cannon and Dragon Slayer swing overwhelms Guts, who drops to his knees the moment the blow lands and coughs blood, gravely weakened by lost blood and barely able to stir. Reaching into his satchel for supplies, he pulls back at the feel of a powder and realizes that Puck, before being cast off, had lined the bag with healing dust. Slumped among the slain bug-men, he rubs what little remains over his wounds.

Puck, meanwhile, has passed through the valley's mist and found not the monsters he feared but a lid of fog over a bright, sunlit haven. Lounging on a lilypad in a calm lake, his keen ears catch a sound, and he hides in tall grass to watch a few of Rosine's elves batting a berry about like a ball. Eager to join, he shapes his face into their more insectlike look with his fingers, but when they hand him the berry he finds it is no berry at all: it is a human eyeball. Frozen in horror as the elves poke and wave at him, Puck is spared when the group is summoned back to their tree, told that Rosine has returned with a guest, and he drops the eye to follow.

Rosine's home is an immense flowering cedar ringed by her softly glowing elves. Puck marvels at it and at the flock of real elves streaming past him from within the leaves. Below, Rosine sits enthroned on a root while Jill rests on the grass. The apostle dotes on her old friend, having her elves bring food and a flower wreath, and describes the Misty Valley as paradise, warm all year with food never lacking, unlike the village they both knew. Taking her human face, she comes down to caress Jill and calls the valley a place no adult can enter, where children stay free to enjoy themselves. Jill laments not having left with her long ago, but Rosine seems unbothered, and together they gaze up at the elves frolicking overhead.

Guts survives the guardian battle and heals himself with the dust Puck had secretly left in his satchel. Puck crosses the mist into the valley's sunlit paradise and discovers the elves playing with a human eyeball. Reaching Rosine's towering cedar, he finds the apostle lavishing food and comfort on Jill while praising the Misty Valley as a childhood haven no adult may enter.

This 20-page Conviction Arc chapter appeared in Young Animal issue 20, dated October 1997. It reveals the deceptive beauty of the Misty Valley and the horror lurking beneath its idyllic surface. The chapter deepens Rosine's vision of an eternal childhood refuge that tempts Jill away from her bleak home.