Episode 93: Armament

A month after the Eclipse, two haymakers on a cart curse a small, misshapen man crawling across the road, then unnerve themselves by noticing that the sun has gone dark, an omen they read as ill. The crawling figure, for his part, senses a Brand of Sacrifice somewhere near. At Godot's home, Erica sneaks the armory keys while the smith works and shows Rickert the racks of blades, armor, masks, and artificial arms Godot once forged for the local nobility. One weapon dwarfs the rest, and Erica names it the Dragon Slayer.

Godot's own voice supplies the tale: a king once demanded a sword capable of felling a dragon, and Godot, weary of dainty rapiers, hammered out a slab of iron so crude the king drove him into exile. The blade could indeed kill a dragon, the smith concedes, yet it stays useless for its impossible weight and the simple fact that no dragons exist.

Training beneath the falls to compensate for the right eye he lost, Guts halves a leaping salmon by sound alone and judges his skill intact despite his missing eye and arm. He tells Rickert he means to leave the next morning, then carries food into the cave, which Rickert locks behind him to keep Casca from slipping out in the dark. Inside, Casca eats ravenously, and when Guts grabs at her spilled clothing to spare her from hot soup, she panics at his grip. The struggle tears her shirt, and Guts, pinning her to the bed, tries to kiss her before she shoves him off and flees to the gate screaming for help, leaving him wracked with self-disgust.

At dawn Rickert helps Guts into a full suit of black and arms him with throwing knives learned long ago from Judeau, then presents a magnetized prosthetic arm built from armory scrap, its side switch hiding a purpose Erica helped craft. Godot arrives to add a freshly forged sword, waving off the debt by claiming Rickert as his payment. Testing the blade, Guts cleaves both another sword and the anvil's horn, but before Godot hears his verdict, the pain in his neck signals the deformed man now standing in the doorway, drawn to the survivors by the scent of evil.

Running twenty-four pages in Young Animal issue 24 on December 13, 1996, this Golden Age Arc chapter outfits Guts with the black armor, throwing knives, forged blade, and cannon-loaded prosthetic that begin to define him, and it unveils the Dragon Slayer he will soon claim.