Flames (1)

Frantic to find Flora, Schierke rushes into the burning mansion, and the injured Guts sends Isidro and Serpico after her. Alone before the blaze, the Black Swordsman squints through the smoke blanketing the clearing and picks out the shapes of apostles, the ones who lit the fire. He drives the Dragon Slayer deep into one before it notices him, but weakened from his clash with Slan, the blow fails to kill. The apostle wrenches the sword free, transforms, and hurls Guts away with a massive clawed swing, then advances again only to be cut down in a single stroke by the arriving Skull Knight.

Pressed for answers, the Skull Knight admits he has long known Flora, which explains how he knew to appear in Qliphoth. The surrounding apostles recognize the pair as the Eclipse's lone survivor and its intruder, and their words reveal that Griffith himself dispatched them to burn Flora's home. Zodd steps forward in human form to greet Guts, but Grunbeld interrupts, claiming the right to fight him; he calls the killing of a defenseless old woman a dishonorable errand redeemed only by the chance to face a true warrior. Guts, shaken to hear Grunbeld name himself a member of the Band of the Falcon, scarcely registers the challenge. Inside the mansion, walls of fire block Schierke's path and Serpico dares not use his Sylph Sword lest the wind feed the flames, until Flora telepathically calms the girl and asks her to carry a pure black suit of armor with a skull-shaped helmet to Guts.

A twenty-one-page chapter of the Millennium Falcon Arc, this piece ran in Young Animal issue thirteen on June 27, 2003. It confirms that Griffith's reborn Band of the Falcon now counts apostles like Grunbeld and Zodd among its ranks, and it plants Flora's decision to arm Guts with the Berserker Armor.