Recurring

Too frightened even to pray, Farnese forces herself up and runs from Guts' berserk fight with the possessed hounds, stumbling through the dark half-naked and still bound. She finds his fallen horse and orders it still so she can mount, but it turns a warped, human-like face toward her. Possessed like the dogs, it looms over her, lowers its head, and licks her face, and her screams pull Guts' attention.

He turns to see the horse rearing above her with an erection, and his mind snaps to Casca's violation by Femto during the Eclipse. Blank with fury, he swings once and takes the horse's head, the blade stopping mere inches from Farnese's neck without cutting her. Puck, sensing rage far past Guts' usual, reaches into his mind with his empath ability and glimpses a branded girl lifted high among Apostles, an image he cannot make sense of.

Guts tells Farnese she has stirred the deepest rage he has felt since the Eclipse and vows to keep killing spirits until sunrise. When dawn finally breaks and he stands panting in the warm light, Farnese is strangely moved: while he fought the horrors of the night, she only searched for escape and never once thought her God might save her. She folds over her kneeling legs in shame.

Farnese flees the fight and is cornered by a possessed horse. The horse's attempted assault triggers Guts' memory of the Eclipse. Guts beheads the horse in one swing without harming Farnese. Puck reads Guts' mind and briefly glimpses the Eclipse, including a branded Casca among Apostles. By dawn, Farnese is shamed by her own helplessness beside Guts' resolve.

This Conviction Arc chapter appeared in Young Animal issue 15 in 1998. Flashbacks to Casca and Femto tie Guts' explosive fury directly to the trauma of the Eclipse, and Puck's confused vision plants the first outside hint of the horror in Guts' past.