Winter Journey (1)

A blizzard rolls in and the spirits of the dark ride it, shaping the falling snow into figures that lunge at travelers. Guts pushes through the deep drifts with Casca cradled in one arm and the Dragon Slayer swinging in the other, cutting down the snow-figures as they form. Casca twists loose and nearly gets herself killed before he snatches her back, and only the arrival of dawn scatters the spirits. He makes camp, rinses their clothes, and shrugs off the fact that she has eaten his portion of the food, even as Puck frets that he is wearing himself down.

Guts wraps his cloak snugly around Casca and wipes her mouth clean, tenderness that surprises the watching elf. Guarding someone while fighting is proving harder than he expected, and the swarms of spirits and incubi keep growing thicker each night. Being close to a diminished Casca also stirs memories of the woman who once led the Band of the Falcon. He asks Puck about the elf's home, Elfhelm, described as a warm western paradise, and doubts the elf's claim that mere boredom drove him away.

With Puck standing watch, Guts falls asleep and dreams. From the campfire steps the small dog-shaped creature with lightning-slit eyes, the Beast of Darkness that troubled him before he ever met the Holy Iron Chain Knights. It demands to know why he has stopped hunting Griffith and points to Casca as the reason, dismissing her as a hollow remnant of who she was. Swelling to monstrous size, it fixes its teeth over her throat and taunts that a mere reminder of the Eclipse might as well serve as a sacrifice, one more step toward his revenge. Guts begs it away and finally roars in fury as its jaws take her life and blood spills from her lips.

He jolts awake and drives his knife into an incubus perched on his shoulder, the true source of the nightmare, flinging it into the fire. Two more feed Casca her own bad dreams, and he kills them with thrown blades, then spots Puck asleep on duty with a tiny incubus of his own. Still shaking, Guts leans over the sleeping Casca and strokes her face, refusing the idea that he could ever treat her as a sacrifice.

Chapter 187 opens the two-part Winter Journey within the Millennium Falcon Arc across eighteen pages, first printed in Young Animal issue 18 on September 14, 2001. Pippin appears only in a flashback to the old Band of the Falcon, and the Beast of Darkness returns as the voice pushing Guts toward abandoning Casca.