Elves of Misty Valley

At a glance the valley elves pass for genuine fairies, though telling signs give them away: pitch-black eyes set with three insect ocelli, faintly glowing humanoid bodies, membranous wings, forehead antennae, and bee-like abdomens riding low on their backs. Each is a pseudo-apostle grown inside a cocoon from a captured child, and when killed the creature reverts to the human youngster it once was. That reversion once framed Guts as a mass murderer in the eyes of the townsfolk and the Holy Iron Chain Knights hunting him. Guts confirms their true nature when the brand on his neck weeps blood in their presence, marking them as something far darker than fairies.

The elves answer to Rosine without question, echoing whatever she declares and sparing the girl Jill only because their mistress favors her. Away from their cruelty toward adults they behave like playful children, but their idea of fun turns monstrous. Imitating human warfare they maim and violate one another in glee, and they treat massacring people and cattle as harmless amusement since fresh 'friends' can always be made. On its own each is weak, able merely to gnaw through wood, yet a swarm can strip a person or animal to a red ruin within seconds, and they mutate into stinger-bearing insect forms when roused. Guts burns through their ranks, torches the cocoon grounds where children are remade, and the fire that spreads across the valley finishes off the survivors.

Every member of the swarm serves Rosine, the apostle whose transformation birthed them and whose whims they obey. They rank as the third variety of pseudo-apostle to appear in the story, following the Count's servants and Rosine's own guardians from before the Eclipse. None are individually named; they exist as a collective extension of their creator's warped notion of play.