Tsunami of Darkness (1)

Fire pours from the wound torn through Mozgus's chest. Aware his end has come, he breathes a final prayer and swears to drag the Black Swordsman down with him, seizing the Dragon Slayer still lodged in his body and folding his wings around Guts to pin him.

Guts refuses to go so cheaply. He crouches, turns his back to the priest, and with one mighty pull swings the blade over his shoulder so that Mozgus rides up and across his back. Lifting himself at the peak of the motion, he flips the inquisitor clear over his body and hurls him down among the refugees. Farnese and the crowd stare in shock as Mozgus lands flat on his back, and the instant he strikes the earth his scales fade and his swollen muscles shrink away. Death has returned him to the man he was, with only a drift of settling feathers to mark what he had become.

The stunned silence breaks into screaming as the towering spirits press in, swallowing the nearest people whole. Watching from above, Jerome and Isidro are begged by the refugees crushed against the wall to kill Casca, whose death, they believe, will drive the spirits off. The two turn to find her gripping her own arms, drenched in sweat and gasping. Puck darts over to check on her and is batted aside. Guts comes next, dragging her into a sheltering embrace as she reaches limply past him toward something unseen and moans. High atop the Tower, the Egg of the Perfect World settles into place before the shadowed forms of the God Hand.

The dying Mozgus binds Guts in his wings, but Guts flips him off the wall to the refugees below, where his corpse reverts to human form. The advancing spirits begin absorbing people, and the crowd begs Jerome and Isidro to sacrifice Casca. Guts pulls the distressed Casca into a protective hold as the Egg of the Perfect World takes position before the God Hand at the Tower's summit.

Opening the two-part Tsunami of Darkness, this twenty-page chapter ran in Young Animal issue 21 on October 27, 2000. It ends the Mozgus battle and pivots the arc toward its supernatural climax, placing the Egg of the Perfect World before the God Hand as the incarnation event nears.