SS Chapter 18 Ephraim: Face of a King

Time for Ephraim to engage in the same hunt.

And time to see the other side of the coin.

Ephraim, in sharp contrast to Eirika, is making no effort to try and help Lyon.

He knows the Demon King's got to go down, no matter what.

L'Arachel knows he hasn't entirely worked his way through his grief about Lyon. He may be able to set that aside, but who knows how bad it'll get when he finally decides to check in on it.

Ephraim recognises where L'Arachel is coming from, and chooses to engage with her on the topic.

Only a little bit, though. He wants to know what the possible outcomes are of his fight with Lyon. What does "losing" look like for him?

L'Arachel even hedges her answer. She did also do this with Eirika, but this route takes a different approach that requires interrogating this response a little less intensively.

L'Arachel goes through the same exposition.

And Ephraim goes "sounds legit, enough talking."

L'Arachel stops him, because she knows a response as blunt and uninterested as that to such an impactful reveal means Ephraim has not paid enough attention.

From Ephraim, however, it means something entirely different.

Ephraim is fully aware that killing Lyon is the only option available to him. So that's what he's going to do. He can't be saved? Good, we don't need to waste time with that.

L'Arachel comes out and asks the question directly.

This concern has probably come up as a group discussion outside the twins, and L'Arachel's the one to confront both of them. Eirika understands where they're coming from, and her only objection is that they should try redemption.

Ephraim feels it is his duty to do the right thing for his friend's memory. I think we all knew Ephraim was a bundle of testosterone.

L'Arachel: "Well, no one can say I didn't try."

Don't apologise now.

I'm not sure whether L'Arachel would understand the twins most, because she's intimately engaged with the process of grief, or least, because she has few friends and family it would hurt to lose. The fact L'Arachel gets the opening scene with both twins reads as the former, but the way this one ended is definitely the latter.

So, into the EXP pit.

Rest assured this advice is even worse on Difficult mode, where all that EXP means something.

This formation is horrible and I hate figuring out where the least bad squares for each unit are.

Begin the smashing!

Knoll Summons, as is normal.

Phantom can smash eggs, too, since they're not that resilient. Don't do this, though, Phantom won't gain any of the EXP.

Gerik is a better beneficiary.

Much better.

It'll be some time before all four of these characters have fiddled their way through this tunnel.

A day in the life of Phantom. His replacement will be about the same.

Now that is Shadowshot doing damage.

Hold that thought about another Phantom, Knoll needs to take this.

L'Arachel gets the last Egg.

This guy is only barely one-rounded by Tana. The monsters have been beefing up.

Look at this garbage.

Shadowshot continuing to be scary.

Although the Gorgon is now on fire.

Artur can handle this one.

Knoll wants an egg to smash too!

He made excellent use of it.

Right, I've had just about enough of you.

L'Arachel plunges towards these enemies.

Eirika backs her up.

Gerik and Cormag are doing double-duty on the south this time.

Innes wants the egg stash in the north.

Ephraim, too, I guess. Support partners up here.

L'Arachel didn't counter, but considering the Gorgons have WTA, she might not have killed anyway.

SPIDERS! The Bael reinforcements are only in Difficult mode, and spawn based on triggers. They'll guard the eggs, despite not having laid them, and they'll make it tough to seize them unmolested.

High HP, but honestly, not that much better in terms of biting. No poison either, thankfully.

Smash Eggs whenever you get the chance, the spiders attack on their turn.

And Cormag gets a level in not being such a liability.

Gerik just couldn't get any further. And may also be in range of the Mogall.

Wow, Tana has options.

I'll take that one.

Innes and Knoll cover these eggs.

Joshua's reinforcing this side, too. Innes Support, mainly.

Right, time to go.

And L'Arachel takes the hatching egg.

Now the other two are hatching.

Ow, that's a lot of damage on Cormag. Aren't you supposed to be bulky?

Another tough hit.

And there's that counter-Mogall kill.

Not that this guy was persuaded.

Fire traps! Knoll lucked out.

Now there are baels up here, too. This Egg situation is going to suck. At least nobody's hatching.

Innes starts.

Good time to go for Def.

Now that Innes has moved, Artur can take his square and save Knoll.

Right, this side has Innes and the eggs are a bit far away, let's solve the bael problem.

It's a point in Luck.

Joshua breaking out the Killing Edge to ensure a kill.

And Ephraim getting the egg.

Never tolerate fliers on your six. ...Would this guy be on my "ten"?

Hammer and anvil starts, except I'm not sure which side is which.

These eggs are taking their time, so might as well deal with the gargoyle first.

Apparently Gerik didn't apppreciate him either.

...Who's dealing with these ones!?

That is a dark shot.

The mogalls are less scary.

More baels have appeared behind the Player Phase banner.

Right, you two need to kindly stop hatching.

Artur can't do anything!

Smash that...

Ephraim breaks out Siegmund, since things are getting that intense.

Before using a Sacred Twin, the screen will flash white, but the animation is otherwise unremarkable, even for Eirika and Ephraim's Prfs. This is unusual for the GBA trilogy (where Roy, Eliwood, Hector and Lyn all got unique animations for their Prfs), but not unusual for the series.

That was an excellent boss kill.

...Wow, that's a frame.

Right, another Egg needs to go, although I have a hole in my wall.

I'll take it for that level, though.

Ouch.

Let's forget that level up happened.

Knoll takes Siegmund out of Ephraim's hands and Fluxes a mogall. The baels have less movement potential. Although I wonder if a Phantom in the hole would've done a better job.

Tana takes the other mogall, leaving just the spiders. And I think only one has the Move to reach Knoll.

Take out this Egg.

And L'Arachel hangs back. Plunging forward would get her hit by all the baels.

The enemy phase conducts itself with a general lack of accuracy, although that gargoyle has a super-effective weapon on Eirika.

More baels! The trigger for these guys is a line that you have no reason to cross, and Cormag just kinda did.

Right, this egg really needs smashing- it'll hatch next turn.

...Same, Ross.

I can take out a bael, at least. The other one is probably a goner too.

Technically better than Ross.

Wow, Innes is needing his second hit.

That Strength needs catching up.

The west wing charges towards the eggs!

Ephraim is rounding out his Defence.

Right, this is for hurting Eirika!

...Did I have to smash this egg? It was probably close to hatching.

You go, girl.

Artur gets this last one.

And I summon a Phantom on a lava tile.

This guy was dead anyway.

That's him covered.

So long, poor sap.

I am out of here.

Hi, Lyon.

Of course Ephraim charges him alone. Doesn't even seem to have elicited any reactions. This is just Thursday.

We are not bothering with the niceties of Eirika route. Ephraim knows Lyon is gone, the Demon King knows Ephraim isn't going to try and get him back, we're not pretending otherwise.

Ephraim does take some time to ask the Demon King the question L'Arachel did not convincingly answer.

Although the answer will not change his plans in any way.

The Demon King is happy to brag about how Lyon is dead to the world, same as Eirika route.

And while it breaks Eirika's heart, it only enrages Ephraim.

The Demon King continues his taunting, although I'm thinking it's more deliberate goading than genuine cluelessness from him.

Ephraim is having none of it.

Ephraim, for all his stoic bravado, is just as badly battered as Eirika is, and he's had enough of pretending otherwise. At least when he and the Demon King are alone.

Ephraim looked up to Lyon a great deal, and to see the Demon King make a mockery of everything Ephraim ever valued in the boy who would make a great King... well, Ephraim has one response to such actions.

Charging in recklessly. The Demon King retaliates with a hitherto unseen and never-seen-again paralysis trap.

There's relatively little effort to explain the mechanics here.

The job of this scene is to fulfill a narrative function, and even from the narrative lens, this scene is kinda tacked on to this otherwise strong conversation. The mechanics of the trap weren't important- it was just a way to show the Demon King cannot be beat with just Ephraim's brute strength.

The point of the trap was to equalise Eirika and Ephraim routes and make sure both of them lost the Stone of Renais here. There's no real reason Ephraim route has to lose the Stone in the context of itself, but it would encourage the perception that Ephraim route is more correct than Eirika route when the writers want them to be perceived as equal.

This often produces the assumption that the Demon King's temptation to Eirika was intended to parallel this very sloppy paralysis trap, which is a bit of a terrible comparison for both sides here. This is not the case at all: Ephraim route does have a strong parallel to Eirika route in this conversation, but it has nothing to do with smashing the Stone.

Ephraim tells the Demon King to get all the taunting over with.

He must destroy the Demon King.

No matter what.

The Demon King hesitates.

Oh no, Ephraim.

The Demon King: "I've just thought of the most wonderful little amusement..."

The Demon King looks at Ephraim, beaten to the dirt, but still prepared to fight on. And reckons he ought to do something about that.

Ephraim is not daunted by the Demon King using Lyon's body. Ephraim knows Lyon is lost to him.

Ephraim knows Lyon would've wanted it this way.

...

...Right?

Lyon is back. No evil sprite. No black textboxes.

I guess the Demon King was lying about eating his soul after all.

...

Which means...

Ephraim is flabbergasted. There's no good reason for this to be happening. What even is happening?

Could it really have been so easy?

Lyon's back.

And it's vaguely implied this is a lie on Eirika route too, both because of this and because of some later Lyon scenes. Still, though, this detail is a fascinating intersection of both routes for what it does for Eirika route.

But we're here for what this reveal does for Ephraim route.

Lyon is going to talk about his feelings with Ephraim, for the first and last time in his life.

Lyon wants to be Ephraim- strong, beloved by all, and told he'd be a good King.

And all Lyon is is... some stringy nerd.

Lyon has the two best people in all of Magvel as his friends. He has a crush on one of them (possibly both, but we're not going to be exploring Ephraim/Lyon in-universe).

How could he not feel like he doesn't measure up? You'd think the power over life and death would help.

Jealousy hammers away at Lyon's heart.

And Ephraim slowly starts realising where this conversation is going.

Lyon's still monologuing.

Can never go wrong with a "two roads" speech.

Lyon knew, going in, that he could either become a pawn in the Demon King's scheme, or he could grab Fomortiis by the horns and tip the balance.

...You don't seem to have taken to the "fight the Demon King" path too well, buddy.

I can't help but think the Demon King was going "get to the point, nerd" there.

Lyon opened the Dark Stone, and because he is a puny mortal touching things he probably shouldn't be, was swiftly overpowered.

And with his last ounce of strength, he rallied his willpower and fought against it.

And it... seems to have worked?

Lyon points out that, as strong as the Demon King is, he has a key advantage:

The Demon King kinda has a one-track mind. Lyon may not necessarily win in a contest of iron wills, but he can play the long game.

Lyon has taken the power to fight the Demon King.

...So about that war you declared...

Lyon gets to the heart of the matter.

The two faces of evil have become apparent.

Lyon was a willing accomplice to, if not the mastermind behind, everything the Demon King has ever done.

That seems to have shaken Ephraim's foolhardy bravado.

The last thing Ephraim said before we got onto this tangent was "I will not allow Lyon's memory to be defiled!"

So what does the Demon King do?

Defile Lyon's memory.

Mostly here for the blink frame.

Ephraim has spent this whole chapter asserting that Lyon is Gone, that there is no saving him, that defeating the Demon King will set things right.

It was just as much to make him feel better as it was about Lyon.

Ephraim has been using Lyon's death of personality as a coping mechanism as much as a motivation.

And now it doesn't work.

Too late.

This bit is actually something missing from Eirika route's conversation that kinda clears things up somewhat.

This is a short explanation of where Lyon is going, and it also does something rather nice within the worldbuilding- it gives us time pressure, but it also gives a reason for the villain to be sitting around cooling his heels waiting for us to catch up. The obvious question is "why doesn't the villain use his superweapon first?" The answer here in Magvel seems to be "it only works at the right time" (depending on whether this is a new moon or a lunar eclipse), and Lyon is shown to be proactively doing things to make his life easier while he waits. Contrast this to a villian like Ashnard, who actively chooses not to just fly over and kill Ike while he's still a Ranger.

This is relevant to Ephraim route, specifically, because Lyon also needs an incentive to try and seize this power. Lyon wants the power of the Demon King to do all the things he wanted the power of the Sacred Stones for back when those were the same thing. And the way things are going, he might actually be the one in control of this power once the ritual is complete.

...Although when even Lyon doesn't seem sure of his odds, put that as a longshot.

Lyon tells Ephraim what he needs to do.

If only he hadn't just made it a million times harder to do.

Everyone catches up now.

Ephraim is a less emotional character than Eirika, and because of his stoic nature, he doesn't look as emotionally beaten up as Eirika did in her route. Although the fact it's showing at all says volumes about how bad it is on the inside.

Yeah, Ephraim, you are convincing nobody.

Eirika asks what happened.

...

If this was enough to emotionally break Ephraim, how's Eirika going to take it?

Ephraim keeps silent, protecting his sister from the truth.

I wonder how much she suspects there's more to this story. I don't actually recall if Eirika ever gets to learn the Ephraim route version of Lyon's story- most of the nuggets I recall about Lyon are things he talks about while neither twin is present.

Eirika phrases this in a different way to Ephraim, and that still manages to make it sound like Eirika is the one L'Arachel is closer to. Tana is permakillable and if Ephraim looks this bad, I don't want to remind him of Myrrh.

This conversation matches Eirika route. It makes more sense Eirika is contributing, but Ephraim was actively paying attention when Lyon got away and explained where he was going. It's weird there's hiccups on both routes in this conversation.

We were going to check there anyway.

Maybe, if the Stone of Renais wasn't smashed, one or more characters might've suggested forgoing this detour? It was a sensible one regardless, especially since we have a timeframe on how long we have before we lose.

Ephraim route's version of this scene is far less interesting to most players- a combination of Eirika's "Bad Decision" being so overwhelmingly recognised and the scene having a bunch of weird contrivances. The paralysis trap was definitely a result of "the writers ran out of time, they just stitched something vaguely convincing here", but I feel the emotional impact of Lyon's reveal goes overlooked as a result. This also says a lot, intentionally or otherwise, about the way men handle their feelings- although next chapter's got a scene unpacking the trauma from this moment for both twins that I feel is probably part of that puzzle. For now, though, Ephraim bottling up his feelings seems to be thing the conversation is critiquing about Ephraim as a person, not his recklessness.

I also feel this scene is part of Sacred Stones' addition to Three Houses, especially where the Ephraim = Dimitri parallels are concerned. Dimitri's story is the most personally focused of the four routes, with a childhood friend of Dimitri's serving as the major antagonist. The game has a non-zero amount to say about Edelgard = Lyon, but only on Azure Moon: Edelgard borrows from other characters when opposing the church. And this scene is the crux of how the two connect: Dimitri wants to think of Edelgard exclusively as he remembers her- kind, helpful, and his friend- while Edelgard is no longer that person and does not treat him as such, further driving a wedge into Dimitri's psyche. Edelgard's amnesia prevents the game from calling back to Lyon more directly, but the prevalence of flashbacks in AM and elements of Hegemon Edelgard's design definitely signal this was an intentional dynamic.

Next time: I mentioned something about Tana being perma-killable?