Monstrous Priest (2)

Down on the ground, Azan and the Holy Iron Chain Knights hold off more possessed refugees, and Azan sees that the flames Mozgus raised to keep the larger spirits at bay are guttering out, which will leave his men exposed. Above, Mozgus batters Guts with his wing-fists from every angle; the Dragon Slayer turns some aside, but most curl past the blade to hit his head, sides, and back. Then the inquisitor gapes his mouth and begins gathering his fire.

The twins bear down on Casca with their paired saws, and Guts catches them just before Mozgus lets the flame loose. He takes the worst of the blast himself, and the fire that streams past him crosses straight into the twins' flight path, searing them as they fail to pull up. Cursing Guts for shielding them on purpose, Mozgus feels his fire stutter, for Guts has thrust the Dragon Slayer into his open mouth, one of the few spots his scales do not cover, and deflected the stream.

Bare though it is, the mouth grips with enhanced force, and Mozgus clamps down on the blade so Guts cannot wrench it loose. He lifts his two great wing-fists and locks them, meaning to smash the sword apart, but Guts hurls a knife into his left eye an instant before impact. Half-blinded and in agony, Mozgus lets go and flails at the ground, hoping to pulp his foe.

Awed by the ferocity of the duel, Jerome hesitates while Isidro seizes the opening, urging Jerome, Nina, Casca, and Puck to finish the twins. Nina, feeling she belongs nowhere among them, turns to flee and freezes at the sight of Farnese and Serpico. Caught between the heretic hunters and the monster, she is paralyzed until the twins' saws suddenly ring her throat, and she steps off the wall's edge, dropping into a deserted merchant's stall. Puck senses she has lived. The elf then resolves to take the twins alone, stunning Isidro and Jerome, and flies into their faces to burst into blinding radiance. Isidro pelts the dazzled pair with two stones, sending them crashing headlong into the wall on either side of the group, where Jerome lops off both their heads. His last disciples gone, Mozgus rages and demands whether they will defy God to the end, and Guts retorts that if the priest wants a sacrifice, he should offer himself, vowing again to keep Casca from harm. Below, the dead flames leave the spirits free to roll toward the knights and refugees.

Mozgus's fire kills his own twin disciples after Guts redirects the blast, and Guts jams the Dragon Slayer into the priest's unscaled mouth before blinding his left eye. Nina falls off the wall to safety in a shack. Puck flares a blinding light and Isidro's thrown rocks stun the twins so Jerome can decapitate them. Guts defies Mozgus and swears to protect Casca as the ground flames die and the spirits advance.

The second half of Monstrous Priest appeared in Young Animal issue 19 on September 22, 2000, running twenty-two pages. It closes out the twin disciples through a combined effort from Puck, Isidro, and Jerome, and exposes Mozgus's mouth as the flaw in his armor, setting up the final phase of the duel.