City of People

Unable to understand the thin black figure's words, Schierke trails it back through the alley, guided by a rope trailing from its neck, until she reaches its source: a gallows hung with dozens of Kushan corpses. Threading between the bodies in fear, she spots the figure floating near one of the dead and realizes it is the man's lingering astral form. On impulse she grips the hanging rope and glimpses fragments of his life, his poverty, his work as a farmer, the guards at his door, and the day he was taken as a slave.

Shaken, she lets go and drops to the ground, staring up at the astral shapes of the other dead men drifting overhead, all pleading to be released. Two guards, blind to the spirits, accost her for trespassing and for dressing as a witch, so she hypnotizes them and learns the truth: these Kushan were seized from their homes and sold in Vritannis, whose people felt no guilt keeping heathen slaves. When war with the Kushan Empire began, the city hanged them all rather than let their presence shame it as the Holy See's naval yard.

Sickened, Schierke has the guards cut the bodies down and cremate them, and as the flames rise the freed spirits soar into the sky. A woman named Sonia watches from a walkway, startled by what she sees. Elsewhere Isidro and Puck hunt fruitlessly for Schierke until Mule Wolflame, drawn by their mention of a witch, interrupts them. Alone again, Schierke reaches the harbor and its enormous ships, marveling that such vessels are built merely to cross water and admitting that she finds their world just as alien as they would find hers.

"City of People" runs twenty pages of the Millennium Falcon arc and first appeared in Young Animal issue 19 on September 24, 2004. It exposes the Holy See's brutal treatment of the Kushan and quietly links Schierke to Sonia, the watching stranger, while deepening the witch's sense of isolation among ordinary humans. Casca, Farnese, Guts, and Serpico appear only in flashback.