SS Chapter 18 Eirika: Face of a Demon

Next stop: Probably in Rausten, but not exactly territory every nation is champing at the bit to own.

Proof of concept: We get Killers (and Longbows), but not Reavers and Nosferatu.

I suspect we've found him.

Considering Lyon teleported away, this much is impressive, although this may just also be "we control everywhere else in Magvel and while Lyon can cause problems, it's not in his interest."

Welcome to the volcano. Because apparently, fighting in an active volcano is Fire Emblem tradition.

The narrative: "This place is horrible and no one wants to be there."

The mechanics: "EXP haven!"

This is such an awesome title for this chapter, but this works best if you consider both routes.

We start with an Eirika and L'Arachel conversation.

L'Arachel gets all warm and fuzzy. Eirika's question wasn't that formally phrased, although it's definitely a question I'd ask formally.

Lyon's turn weighs heavily on Eirika.

And yes, this is really Eirika's first chance to grapple with that fact as irreversible proof. There was always room to argue Ephraim was mistaken before. There's no arguing with him now.

But is Lyon so far gone that he cannot be saved?

The interesting thing about Eirika/L'Arachel in this exact moment is that, right now, Eirika's crush on Lyon is still there. Would L'Arachel be the kind of girl to talk badly about Lyon to persuade Eirika to take her side? I don't feel like the prominence of Eirika and L'Arachel's extends to this moment, although considering L'Arachel kept her identity as Princess Rausten secret, I feel like it's not unheard of for L'Arachel's crush on Eirika to be plot-relevant.

Of course, the Right Thing to do is to answer this question honestly.

This is an interesting argument- why would Rausten, in particular, have any extra information that's not available elsewhere? Especially since the Demon King himself was kept in Grado? It's certainly the truth that, of all the major characters in his party, L'Arachel is probably the most well-versed in the legends (even if her motivation was her desire to re-enact them). Counting the perma-killable party, the only alternatives I'd really entertain are Knoll, Myrrh and Lute. And Lute is a stretch.

L'Arachel's answer is that Lyon cannot be saved. This is the same even on Ephraim route, and I suspect this is the truth as L'Arachel understands it.

Eirika rejects the notion. Note the "no matter how slight".

This is the part where L'Arachel's story gets weakest.

L'Arachel's ancestor did it, once.

L'Arachel says this is because Latona was just that awesome. On the other hand, consider that this is L'Arachel and we're talking about her ancestors. Of course she's going to talk up how awesome they were, so much of her identity is based on that.

There doesn't seem to be any reason Lyon's case is all that different from Latona's, unless there's something in the fine print L'Arachel is skimming over here.

This is probably the most dangerous assertion L'Arachel makes, and it's probably the one that weakens her position most.

She's arguing that Lyon, by accepting the Demon King into himself, no longer exists as his own being. On both routes, there's still enough of the original Lyon shining through the Demon King's classic villainy that it's likely L'Arachel is at least somewhat mistaken on this point. Perhaps she's correct in that the Demon King wants to destroy Lyon's soul to assert his own dominance, but the problem is that he hasn't done it yet- perhaps that's why he was so weak last mission.

The Sacred Stones are canonically a great enigma, and Lyon himself has gone further than anybody on the path of grasping their power.

...Do you think it's possible he's figured this out?

L'Arachel's account of events supports this assertion: As far as she's concerned, Lyon is dead and we're taking out the puppet masquerading as him.

The action L'Arachel advises is certainly the most sound part of the whole speech. Eirika is still directly shocked by the reveal from last mission, and it won't do to come up with a plan until she has had time to properly process that grief.

Considering L'Arachel's already invited her to her private quarters, this may not be entirely altruistic, but L'Arachel can always crash on some other couch if Eirika needs space.

"...Wait, you thought I was asking you go to Rausten alone?" I guess we wouldn't have gone into an active volcano if we weren't planning on taking action on Lyon while we were here.

Eirika would be most greatly comforted if she is able to extend the same courtesy to Lyon that Lyon exterted to everyone around him.

No matter what, Eirika must at least try to save her friend.

Yes, I'm going somewhere with this. We have a map to go through first, though.

Oh wow, they actually bothered to have us led into this volcano by a generic green guy.

He must be the Frelian scout who figured out where Lyon went.

And look, there he disappears into the void of "not plot relevant people"!

In this volcano? Not bloody likely.

I suspect it's the sulphur. Brimstone is ubiquitous in ominous volcanoes.

Our battlefield is over there.

The most horrifying part of this is that gorgons lay eggs. Not that we've met gorgons yet, actually.

It's the miracle of life! Followed swiftly by certain death.

This is valid advice on a technicality, but what he really meant to say was "smash every egg you get within two tiles of."

The All Girls team is finally hitting the deployment cap! Don't get used to it.

Eggs. Housed inside each one lies a Gorgon, ready to torture us delightfully given half the chance. When we get "close enough" to an Egg, it will gain 5 HP a turn. When it reaches maximum HP, it hatches, at which point it becomes a regular Gorgon.

Lots of Eggs scattered around, and surprisingly few monsters guarding them. This is a Rout map, so we are required to smash them all.

Put it away, the map is ugly! The red spaces are no-fly zones, and the blue spaces are where we're allowed to walk. The green spaces can be flown over, but confine the ground units. Not pictured: the lava tiles.

We start with Amelia plunging fast ahead.

Tana, however, gets the first Egg smash.

...Did I forget to mention smashing an Egg grants a flat 50 to EXP? This is probably more than the Gorgon is worth, and turns this vaguely perilous "oh no, we're surrounded!" narrative map into a festive "grab all the EXP that isn't nailed down!" mechanical one. It gets worse.

I'll go over that in a bit. For now, note that the third Egg is actually in a chokepoint, so the non-fliers must smash some Eggs to proceed.

Prepare to see a lot of level ups.

An Egg that has begun the process of hatching turns white. There aren't any special colours to indicate how close it is to hatching, particularly because there are four different kinds of Egg- 10 HP, 15 HP, 20 HP and 25 HP.

Say hello to the Gorgons. They are masters of magical spells, like Mogalls, except they hurt a lot more. In the Japanese version, they could fly, but the English version felt they were scary enough on the ground.

Gorgons are the scariest monster enemies we'll face, but I'll freely admit this wasn't a great first impression. Shadowshot isn't quite as scary as Bolting and Purge, although it's much better than Eclipse.

This Gorgon has embarassed itself further by ending its turn on a lava tile, how foolish of it! Any unit caught on a lava tile at the end of Enemy Phase will be set on fire for 10 HP. This cannot be avoided (although for some reason, if a Thief stands on a lava tile, it will stop firing for the rest of the match), and it can kill- both blue and red units.

Now then, let's talk about Enemy Control. In all three GBA games, if an enemy ends its turn on what is known as an "Action Tile" (of which the fire traps here are prominent but not exclusive examples) and the player resets the console at the same time, the game gets a little confused about whose turn it is supposed to be and gives player control during Enemy Phase. The music will be the enemy phase theme, all the generic portraits are glitchy during inventory menus, but the game is perfectly "playable" in this state and will return your control to the blue units next Player Phase, as normal. The Enemy Control glitch sounds pretty powerful, but let's be honest: Nobody is using it to make battles easier. The AI does a good enough job killing its own units on your powerful juggernauts without your help.

Enemies have... more or less the same options the player has- Trading, Rescuing and Dropping inventory items being the most obviously powerful. They can't Trade with blue units, but "this unit drops an item" is a flag to the unit, not the item, so you can trade a powerful item to a unit that's supposed to drop something else. Sacred Stones makes it much easier: Enemies can also use the Supply command when adjacent to Eirika or Ephraim (the Elibe games have Merlinus, but it's somewhat harder to get an enemy over to Merlinus). Sacred Stones also has the potent ability to steal exclusive Monster weapons.

On a semi-related note, this Gorgon (not the poor sap who got burned) shows off a new Monster spell, Stone. This is a non-damaging attack, but if it lands, the target is petrified for 5 turns, and anyone attacking a petrified unit enjoys 100% accuracy and a +30 crit rate. You do not want to be Petrified.

If you "acquire" the Stone spell through Enemy Control, you'll find that of all the monster spells, this one actually gives WEXP in Dark magic. If a unit uses it a bunch- annoyingly, more than 5 times- they'll be able to get to D Rank Dark spells and use Flux, basically being a normal Dark magic user except being in a non-Shaman class. (If Tethys is playing with animations on, she will crash the game if she doubles.) The most popular use case is to give Dark magic to a Bishop- both for the sacrilegious value and because it allows Dark spells to enjoy the x3 Might from Slayer. No, this doesn't make Luna or Eclipse any better, but Flux and Nosferatu are amazing enough.

Eggs also have a use in Enemy Control! Through a complicated procedure I don't particularly want to enumerate in detail, the process of an Egg hatching allows it to repair any items it happens to have in its inventory, including the Dragonstone. At which point you've got to get the items back, but details. To make this process obscenely easier, something about the nature of Eggs means Eggs themselves are inherently Action Tiles. Playing with Enemy Control is so obscenely easy in this game it's practially encouraged. I won't be doing it for the same reasons I'm playing the original game and not Restoration Queen. Also I wasn't feeling confident in my ability to pull it off- it's not that hard, but it is a little finicky.

Now back to your regularly scheduled Egg smashing. Funny to think the only mechanical incentive to let these things hatch first is through Enemy Control.

Neimi kills a normal enemy. One last thing to mention, because it's going to be important going forward: all the Sacred Twins except Gleipnir have double Might on monsters. Normal effectiveness is triple, but the Twins make do with double. Although with their high Might...

The low HP values of Eggs means anything that can hit at 2 range should work.

Since all the fliers are teaming up in the north, Myrrh will be the flier of the south.

And Tethys is getting people moved forward where necessary.

Even when it has a hit chance, it's not as scary as advertised.

Syrene needs levels, but she's also still low-ish enough to do with natural ones. But most of the stuff here is Eggs, so Eggs she shall smash.

Unfortunately, the need for Support puts people on lava tiles, but Tana can live.

...I'm honestly not so sure on Vanessa. Her low-HP, high-Def build is weak to fixed damage like lava tiles.

Lute will be following to assist.

All that effort to deny Neimi the kill. Alternatively, Neimi was one space short.

Eirika's going south.

Kinda cool half-smear on the gargoyle.

Small, but servicable.

That guy has been Hatcheted.

Eventually I'll care.

This spell takes a while to dodge, and when you do dodge, you hold the dodge position for even longer. For many units, this is fine. For some, though, this can get funny. Looking at Ranger and Wyvern Knight.

Ow. Vanessa can't take two more of those, but Tana's fine with three.

Don't mind if she helps herself.

Treasure trove!

Vanessa's helping!

Tana takes the heal and takes out the threatening enemy.

Told you the Ranger dodge frame was impressive.

These two have a treasure trove of their own to claim.

Marisa steps in for this one.

When I said "Thieves can disable traps", that apparently counts Assassins this time. It won't change the graphics of the tile, but any unit may now safely stand on this particular lava tile for the rest of the map.

The other, connected lava tiles are still active, though. This is a funny trivia point and not a legitimate tactic.

These can be threatening if your Avoid isn't as high as these two girls have it.

Pew pew.

I'll get to you later.

I think this one's the boss Gorgon.

More Egg smashing.

Marisa's clearly not making the best use of it.

And another tile disabled.

Natasha heals and smashes.

L'Arachel goes to reinforce Eirika, although it's probably too late for that.

This is the bulkiest Vanessa I think I've ever had. Except for the HP thing.

Syrene just needs big numbers.

Speaking of, Support unlocked!

There's Vanessa's heal.

This one's easy. It's the three above that might actually hatch if I'm not careful.

That's a decent level, although might be a bit late to diversify into a Defence-having unit.

So long, Gorgon.

And that's the last Egg here. Those two-range enemies are going to be annoying for Eirika.

That is, if L'Arachel doesn't get the Mogall for Eirika. She was just in time!

This one's still throwing at Eirika, though.

His loss.

Last Eggs.

That was easy.

After the battle is completed, Lyon appears in front of the party. This appears to be the same map we just fought on.

And he warps away again.

Sensible advice.

...Oh dear.

Well then. Eirika's alone with Lyon again.

Cue mercy plea.

Much like Lyon, Eirika is eager to help people in need even at the expense of herself. I think Lyon's just been like that before the two met, I can't really say that Eirika inspired that trait of Lyon's- although she may have inspired him to not back down.

That's our Lyon talking.

"Devoured" as opposed to "shattered". Distinction without a difference, and probably not relevant, but interesting to consider as a possibility.

If faced with an individual in pain, you would act instinctively. Your body would not wait for the command.

Just because the body of Lyon is going around being evil doesn't mean Eirika's immune to helping the man she fell in love with.

And the penny drops.

For all the exaggerations of this scene, Eirika doesn't immediately hand it over. For good reason- the Sacred Stones are our last line of defence against the Demon King. Handing it directly to the Demon King strikes pretty much everybody as the least safe thing since she did a handstand with her horse between her legs and balancing over one of those lava cliffs.

Remember what L'Arachel said about the Demon King's control being permanent.

And more importantly, remember what she said about Latona having saved himself.

...

And, to add one last level of agony to the choice, Lyon lays it clear that his feelings for her are still true, and without the Demon King's influence, he intends to act on them.

Now remember what we saw in Chapter 17's flashback: Lyon has already saved a life without the Demon King doing the legwork, and Eirika knows this.

There are two arguments being presented here: L'Arachel is saying that Lyon's soul is too far gone, and Lyon is saying there's still time. Now then... do we believe the woman whose ego has its own centre of gravity and who left her castle because of the medieval equivalent of television, or do we believe the man who has gone further than anybody studying the power of the Sacred Stones to heal?

The risk is great, but even ignoring the factor that Lyon was one visit away from becoming her fiance, I think I'd trust Lyon's perspective too. After all, it's his soul that's being devoured here.

Eirika also has the Sacred Stone to steal. This one specific weakness aside, Eirika was probably the most sensible choice to carry the thing. Next time we'll go with Innes. Until Lyon challenges his ego.

So much for Lyon being saveable. Even if he was, Evil Lyon's able to take control before any success can be gained by Lyon. Who, by the way, is still the only person who can really cheat death with Sacred Stones. Knoll probably knows the theory, but he's not trusting himself with the practice.

It's still the white textboxes, though.

Oh, there are the black ones. That risk officially didn't pay off.

The Demon King vindicates L'Arachel's suggestion. Although I think the game still gives Lyon enough agency to suggest he hasn't quite finished yet. Regardless, we will not be doing anything about that revelation.

A downside of the lack of VA or portraits is that we have no idea what Eirika's feeling. I can only assume she's supposed to be crying. The dialogue isn't conveying that on its own.

The Demon King is busy having fun gloating.

And he'll gladly go as long as he pleases on that point.

And even if he's not using Lyon's understanding to back that up, he's using his own understanding from spending 800 years trapped in the bauble.

He is having way too much fun.

For once, the "smashing Sacred Stone" animation is at least somewhat dramatic. There's no real reason he had to do it in a volcano, he just felt like it.

Eirika had a huge head start.

The Demon King decides he's had enough fun, and wanders off with Eirika alive.

The Demon King already admitting Lyon's soul isn't entirely gone. Or at the very least, he just appreciates irony and will gladly continue to have Lyon bring such misery to Eirika until such time as he's finally completed that ritual to restore his final strength.

And even then, he may still find enjoyment after the fact.

Gotta appreciate L'Arachel standing on a fire tile. She'd look equally in formation on the safe tile on our right.

...

Is she curled up on the ground?

At this point, she definitely needs a sit down. For a few days, honestly.

Eirika always took the reveal Lyon is the Demon King hard. But even after believing it...

Of all the reasons to tell Eirika to move on from here and return to the main group... L'Arachel as the worried one? If L'Arachel were a man, there'd be no question that man would be the canon spouse (well, canon after she gets over Lyon's death).

Ephraim getting in touch with his inner emotions and telling Eirika crying is the right call.

And saying the quiet part out loud: Ephraim's going to have to be the strong one for a little bit, so he can't afford to cry about the same reveal. He's finding out Lyon's dead to the world too.

Once we shuffle over to the rest of the party, Eirika is still contributing relevant obversations. However Frelia's man tracked Lyon here, that tactic won't work on the way out.

We've got nothing for it.

L'Arachel sees no reason for Lyon to be going anywhere else other than the biggest landmark she knows in that general direction: The place the Demon King died the first time.

The Sacred Stone of Rausten and a good night's rest.

And even if Eirika was proven wrong about how Lyon couldn't be saved, there was a backup plan for our side. Or at least, the same plan we had all along: two Stones had no more guarantee of working than one, especially since we're not making any effort to figure out the magic of the Stones and how one goes about making "more" of them.

As alluded to, this is often considered Eirika's "Big Mistake" that comes with the territory of being a Female Fire Emblem Lord. While her decision was not the correct one, I am on her side when it comes to the premises she was working with to make that decision: It's certainly not a conclusion everyone would come to with the same premises, but it's a sound conclusion and was only stopped because Lyon didn't have a plan for evading the Demon King's control (whether by design or by desperation). Just because a decision led to a bad result does not mean it was wrong to make it in the first place. Although I'm sure how much bragging the Demon King does about his success helps cement the impression that it was a bad move.

And as one last note, let's bring up Restoration Queen. I mentioned, way back when it first came up, that I do not consider the patch perfect, and while I've addressed a few flaws in passing, this is The Big One worth coming back to. The writers of Restoration Queen clearly believed this scene to be a big, naive mistake on Eirika's part and put in a massive rewriting effort to make Eirika "better" while still accomplishing the same narrative goal of smashing Renais's Stone. What the patch fails to do is clearly establish a through-line through Eirika's thought process. She sees through Lyon's mercy plea immediately, and the Demon King responds with direct, classically evil extortion as a result. At which point Eirika somehow realises that Lyon may have the power to undo the Demon King's possession, and hands over the Stone anyway because she hopes Lyon can push through. He does not, and Lyon disparages her for believing the best in Ephraim and Lyon when neither deserve it. RQ Lyon takes several cues from Ephraim route, but in general, the scene suffers from trying to do too much at once and also doing too much to say "there was a problem here and we're fixing it" instead of just fixing it. While most of RQ is either a direct improvement over the base game or a sidegrade at worst, the Stone handover was a downgrade and the reason my recommendation is "play the base game first" instead of "direct improvement." That, and one of the endings they removed to add the gay endings was Ephraim/Tana.

Next time: L'Arachel earns her title of girlfriend.