Mother

Though no longer Schierke's pupil, Farnese refuses to abandon magic, sitting alone in the estate's back garden with an apple, straining without success to picture it in her mind. She remembers how, under Schierke's guidance, the practice felt like a path to becoming someone new, yet on her own it seems nothing but fantasy. As light snow begins to fall, Serpico brings her a coat, and she finally names her reason for trading her liberty for a vessel: she wanted to matter to Guts and his companions.

Among the group she had always felt purposeless, watching each member fill a clear role while she filled none, so she fled home to the isolation she knows best, calling herself a coward. Before Serpico can respond, Farnese's mother appears, having just returned from wintering in the south, and slips away from her noble companions for a private word with her daughter.

Farnese recounts surviving the ruin of the Holy Iron Chain Knights and her betrothal to Roderick, an arrangement Federico knows nothing about. On a small bridge, her mother asks what she makes of Roderick, and Farnese can only echo his word for her, interesting. Pressed on whether anyone interests her in turn, she stares into the water below, where an image of Guts surfaces.

Lady Vandimion then reveals that Federico is at heart a weak man who finds peace only when every plan runs to design, which is why he cannot warm to Farnese; as a girl she was unpredictable, and that frightened him. Startled, Farnese protests that she always obeyed, but her mother explains that Federico is rigid where Farnese, so often left alone in her youth, wears no armor around her heart and shows herself freely, something he simply cannot fathom.

Her mother tells Farnese she has it in her to become deeply kind, precisely because she knows the ache of a neglected childhood, a neglect for which Lady Vandimion holds herself to blame. A manservant interrupts to announce the coach that will carry Farnese to a grand ball at Magnifico's bidding, and her mother chooses to come along. Elsewhere, Guts, Isidro, Schierke, and Casca prowl the high walls of the estate, Guts intending simply to march in and speak with Farnese, ready to fight if it comes to that. Only a few feet from the gates, they watch her coach roll out under guard, and none of the riders notice the Black Swordsman and his companions. The twenty two page chapter ran in Young Animal issue 7 on 25 March 2005.