Mansion of the Spirit Tree (1)

Walking back toward camp, Serpico and Guts thank Isidro for saving Casca and Farnese. Guts is especially grateful, admitting he fears what he might do if left alone with Casca, who still cringes away from him and hides at Farnese's back. He decides it is best she has someone safe to lean on. Turning Serpico's account over, Guts reasons that both the trolls and the witch signal an Apostle somewhere nearby.

The group finds an old man collapsed on the forest floor. Tended by Puck and Serpico, he names himself Morgan of Enoch Village and explains he was wandering with other men when trolls attacked, scattering them. Offered an escort home, he refuses; a duty in the forest must come first, so the party agrees to help. Carried on Serpico's back, Morgan recounts how his village long dismissed the woods as legend until a troll pack butchered its livestock and carried off women and children. Crushed besides by war taxes and unable to reach their lord in Vritannis, the villagers now pin their last hope on a witch said to live in a mansion no one has seen, save one child long ago.

Unnoticed, Casca brushes past a tree stripped of bark and carved with a symbol; the mark telepathically alerts the young witch that intruders have crossed into her domain, and she summons darting balls of light, Elementals, to deal with them. The travelers then emerge into a vast clearing dominated by one enormous tree, a wooden mansion apparently growing straight out of it. Trembling, Morgan confesses he was that long-ago child and is only now seeing the place a second time.

Certain the witch lives here, Isidro marches up to a looming statue at the tree's roots. Both Casca and Guts feel their Brands stir, and Guts shouts for the boy to back off just as the statue lurches alive. Puck identifies it as a golem, a guardian of mud that protects the witch's ground. Guts shears off both its arms with the Dragon Slayer, yet the thing simply draws fresh mud from the earth to rebuild them, and he cannot sense any spirit animating it. Casca's cry then warns the group of still more golems closing in.

Guts concludes the trolls and witch point to a nearby Apostle. The group rescues and agrees to help Morgan of Enoch Village, learning the village's plight and its hope in a hidden witch. Casca trips the witch's telepathic ward, drawing Elementals. The party reaches the mansion of the spirit tree, and Guts fights a regenerating mud golem as more surround them.

This twenty-page Millennium Falcon chapter ran in Young Animal issue eight on April 12, 2002. It ties the troll raids to Enoch Village's desperation, reveals Morgan's childhood glimpse of the mansion, and opens the confrontation with the witch's golem guardians that carries into the following installment.