Roaring Heavens

Life aboard the Seahorse has grown comfortable for Guts and those traveling with him. Isidro trades practice blows with the helmeted Azan, Serpico lounges in the crow's nest, and Schierke drills Farnese in sorcery, pleased enough with her pupil to suggest a harder lesson before a sudden wrongness prickles at her senses.

Near the stern, Puck dangles a scrap of cheese as fishing bait while Ivalera and Casca look on. Getting no bites, the elf digs through Guts' pack for something bigger and pulls out the Beherit. Guts hauls himself upright and orders it handed back, but Puck will not let go, and their attention snaps to the talisman as its face rearranges itself. In the same instant Casca doubles over, gripping her Brand of Sacrifice, and Guts feels his own mark stir. Schierke tells Farnese it is as though the world itself is being cleaved apart.

At Wyndham the transformed Ganishka has swelled to a height that reduces the city's grandest towers to specks beneath his columnar feet. The Kushan drop to their knees in worship, but to their emperor they register as mere vermin. He begins to move, flattening his own troops and clearing the city walls in a single stride, his head lost above the clouds as he advances on the Band of the Falcon.

Safely off to one side, Silat and the Tapasa watch the giant bear straight down on Griffith and wonder whether the Falcon means to stand and fight. Anxious Midlanders turn to the Pontiff, who assures them that this incarnation of darkness will be scattered by the Falcon of Light and tells them to witness the coming miracle.

While the whole band stiffens at the approaching colossus, Griffith stays untroubled, seated calmly on his horse at the front of the column.