Astral World

Flora confirms she has awaited the branded Guts and Casca. Her knowledge of the Brand makes Guts suspect she is an Apostle, but the ache it gives him near her differs from an Apostle's, so he sets the thought aside. Flora declares Morgan's news the pressing matter. Told the trolls have been striking Enoch Village, she grows somber, explaining that trolls come from the Astral world and are almost never seen by people, and that she is now too old to fight them herself. When Isidro bluntly notes this means she is dying, she calmly agrees.

To help Morgan, Flora resolves to send Schierke in her place as a test of the girl's training, and asks Guts and his companions to go along as protection. Guts refuses, unwilling to pause his own journey, until Flora offers a talisman in return. She explains it shields the essence of his and Casca's Brands from calling out to evil beings, letting him sleep without dread of spirits or possession. The words seize Guts, whose mind leaps to the night the Beast of Darkness nearly drove him to violate Casca; the charm would guard against any repeat. Glancing at Casca as she shrinks behind Farnese, he accepts. Flora then bids Schierke prepare meals and baths and grants the group a safe night under her roof.

At dinner Guts asks what Flora meant about waiting for them, and she reveals a friend from the Astral world sent her an oracle foretelling their coming. Isidro cuts in demanding to know what Astral means, and Flora explains it is the realm where the dead dwell, and that nearness to Guts' Brand has let him, Serpico, and Farnese perceive and touch spirits as no ordinary person can. Schierke expands on it, describing three overlapping worlds: the mortal plane of humans, the Astral plane of elves, trolls, and the dead, and the world of Ideas from which all existence springs.

Schierke adds that people once widely perceived Astral beings until the spread of the Holy See's doctrine reshaped belief and pushed the two planes apart, which Puck realizes is why Farnese could not see him at first. When Isidro proposes simply convincing all humans the Astral world is false to sever the planes, Schierke rejects it, since every human knows of that world in their subconscious. Flora finishes by naming the thin overlap the Interstice, where the newly dead linger before drifting deeper into the Astral plane and finally toward the world of Ideas, beyond return, groundwork essential to learning magic.

Flora reveals the trolls' Astral origin and admits she is dying. She trades a Brand-shielding talisman for Guts' agreement to escort Schierke to Enoch Village, swaying him with the promise of protection from the Beast of Darkness. Over dinner, Flora and Schierke explain the three overlapping worlds, the Astral realm, the effect of the Holy See's doctrine, and the Interstice.

This nineteen-page Millennium Falcon chapter ran in Young Animal issue ten on May 10, 2002. It is heavily expository, formalizing the series' cosmology of overlapping planes and the Astral world, while binding Guts to the Enoch Village mission through his fear of the Beast of Darkness.