Warning: It is not recommended to read this page if you intend on playing Star Stealing Prince, as this page contains major, major spoilers for that game by its very nature.
Fleeting follows the game's bad ending. Snowe washes up on the shore of another land, with terrible scars and barely alive. While the people who find him are able to bring him back to health, he has no memory of what happened. Snowe tries to piece his life back together and remember what happened, but his new home isn't safe.
Permanence follows the game's good ending. Snowe and his people arrive in Aldcoast and settle into their new lives...however there's a feeling of dread Snowe can't shake, and he still has that demon trapped within him...
Ephemeral Prince can be read here
or here.
Ephemeral Prince: Fleeting provides examples of:
- Aerith and Bob: Continuing the grand tradition from the game. We have Rhea and Esmeralda, both of them sensible, everyday names...and then there's Snowe, Xiri...
- Amnesiac Hero: Snowe.
- The Atoner: Once Hiante shows up, Snowe realizes that he can't keep trying to ignore what happened on the ship and has to try to fix things somehow.
- Berserk Button: Iain finds out the hard way that lightning is a bit of a touchy subject for Snowe.
- Breather Episode: Chapter 9. Sandwiched between an attack by phantoms who used to be people Snowe knew on one side and a horrible Nightmare Sequence followed by the reappearance of a very, very angry Hiante on the other is a chapter that chiefly concerns Rhea coercing Snowe into making pancakes for Canan.
- Cold-Blooded Torture: In Fleeting's epilogue. Poor Beliaz.
- Curbstomp Battle: Xiri easily beat Norin's previous king, 'the lion' without even using magic.
- Cynicism Catalyst: Hiante is far less amiable here than in Star Stealing Prince. Seeing the two you raised murdered right in front of you by someone who was their friend will do that to you.
- Dark and Troubled Past:
- Snowe. His parents were awful and he was once tortured by his own father, he was in more fights with phantoms than anyone really cares to count, he was killed and didn't even realize it until Xiri told him, and he tried to protect his people only to have them all die. By his own hand.
- Hiante, who lost his family. Twice. First he was killed, leaving his wife and daughter to an uncertain, potentially bloody fate. Then he was revived years later and given charge of two children. Then his more or less adoptive son and daughter were murdered in front of him.
- Despair Gambit: In order to keep Xiri away from the land of demons, the lords threatened to invade it and kill everyone there. Xiri may be extremely powerful, but he couldn't possibly protect all the demons there.
- Dramatic Irony: Those who are reading this after having gotten the bad ending of the game know that Snowe killed everyone on that ship.
- Energy Being: All lords and demons are actually a ball of Instant Runes surrounded by a humanoid shell. Some of these runes can split off to form new lords and demons.
- Et Tu, Brute?: Xiri more or less welcomed Snowe with open arms and acted as friendly to him as he had back in the short story "A Spell of Fire & a Scarecrow." Snowe proceeded to devour him.
- Eye Scream: Among various other wounds he's suffered, Snowe got a gash across his right eye. While it did heal up to an extent, he is now practically blind in that eye.
- Fiery Redhead: She tends to be very blunt and speak her mind about things.
- Healing Magic Is the Hardest: Lampshaded by Snowe. Despite being a very powerful demon, and being able to turn dreams into reality, Xiri said he was incapable of healing the scar across Snowe's eye.
- Heterosexual Life-Partners: Rhea and Canan.
- Innocently Insensitive: Iain tends to be this; Canan thinks that he'll probably insist on making omelets for Rhea without realizing that Rhea really wanted to make the omelets for him, he makes a rude comment about lords right where it can be heard, and in one very unfortunate instance he brings out lightning magic during a sparring match with Snowe, not realizing that Snowe was tortured with lightning once. Snowe makes his feelings about this very clear.
- Jerkass: Zuan. He's the sort of person who will freeze your legs in place so you can't try to avoid talking to him.
- Late-Arrival Spoiler:
- Ain't no way around the fact that the very summary of the plot of "Fleeting" completely gives away the fact that everyone on the ship except Snowe dies in one of Star Stealing Prince's endings. Well, almost everyone at any rate.
- When Hiante made an appearance in the story, he got added to the cast page. Heaven help you if you look at the cast page before reading Chapter 12.
- Meaningful Echo: In Star Stealing Prince, Hiante's warning that he wouldn't hesitate to cut Snowe down if anything happened to Astra? He meant it.
- Missing Child: Poor Soria. First her little brother, who she was pretty much having to look after, wanders off because he got curious, ends up getting into all sorts of trouble, and can't come back home. He's gone for around ten years and during this time only tries to contact her once. Then he dies. Then the person who killed him comes to her home. Small wonder she's so hostile.
- Nightmare Sequence: The beginning of Chapter 11.
- "Not So Different" Remark: Beliaz tells Snowe that once demons and lords were more or less the same. This seems to be borne out by how they behave towards each other too; the lords threaten to kill all the demons if Xiri goes home and Xiri is planning to wipe all the lords out so that he can go home without that happening.
- Past Experience Nightmare: Snowe has a rather dreadful one at the start of Chapter 11, which combines what happened on the ship with the time he got tortured with lightning into one mess of a scary dream, and for good measure throws in Astra without a face.
- Playing Possum: Hiante does this for quite a while, and only reveals he's actually alive when Snowe gets close enough.
- Preemptive Apology: Snowe to Xiri, before devouring his core.
- Ripple-Effect-Proof Memory: Beliaz remembers the spell he did that turned back time.
- Xiri remembers what had happened as well.
- Set Right What Once Went Wrong: Ends up being Snowe's goal in Fleeting.
- Scary Scarecrows: Apparently the new king is fond of scarecrows and scarecrows have been cropping up all over the place and freaking people out.
- Sibling Yin-Yang: Iain is a bit more impulsive than his sister Canan.
- Sole Survivor: Snowe is apparently the only one who survived whatever disaster befell the ship. Subverted. Hiante survived too.
- Stealth Hi/Bye: Hiante is good at this. At one point he catches Canan off guard with it.
- Strong Family Resemblance: Snowe can tell just with a glance that Soria is Erio's sister because they look so similar and even have similar mannerisms.
- Supernatural Gold Eyes: Pretty much all lords have these.
- Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: Hiante ends up joining the group, after they manage to convince him to not kill Snowe. The relationship is...tense.
- Third-Option Adaptation: Both endings of Star Stealing Prince are canon to this story, despite being apparently irreconcilable (as the game's bad ending has everyone dying and the game's good ending doesn't.) It's going to be complicated.
- Tomboyish Ponytail: Rhea wears one.
- Tranquil Fury: Soria does this. She clearly blames Snowe for the death of her little brother, but while she makes her feelings of hostility towards Snowe quite clear she never attacks him and hardly even raises her voice.
- Trauma-Induced Amnesia: Snowe suffers from this at the start, only able to remember his own name. Gradually various events combined with his own nightmares cause him to remember.
- Reset Button: By the end of fleeting, Beliaz casts a spell that sends Snowe back in time to prevent his friends from dying.
- Wham Episode: From chapter 12 onward there's quite a few of these. Particularly chapter 19.
- Wham Line:
- In Chapter 15:
Beliaz:I'm sorry...I mean about Esmeralda. She was executed.- In Chapter 17:
Xiri: Forgot about that, huh? When that bird killed you on that snowy island? - You Killed My Father: Inverted. Hiante comes after Snowe because Snowe killed Erio and Astra, whom Hiante pretty much raised as his own children.
- You Should Have Died Instead: Soria, noticing the scar on Snowe's face, tells him that maybe her brother could be home by now if he'd cut Snowe just a bit deeper than that.
Ephemeral Prince: Intermission provides examples of:
- Dead All Along: Both Dorsey and Warren in "Phantoms Spread So Far".
- Foreshadowing: By the end of "Stealing in the night", Snowe had his usual dream where he saves Astra from the demon, but he noticed that the lights at the start of the area had disapeared. He then decided that It's Probably Nothing.
- Oh, Crap!: Erio when he and Snowe have a very close encounter with lords
Ephemeral Prince: Permanence provides examples of:
- Battle Amongst the Flames: Every fight in "A city overcome with flames", and the fight with Rizec are this.
- Big Bad Ensemble: Xiri, Rizec, and Beliaz.
- Big Damn Heroes:
- Ciran showing up and saving Canan and Astra from a demon possessed Snowe.
- Relenia showing up and freezing the giant phantom attacking Snowe, Erio and Rhea in chapter 27
- By the Hair: In "blood from his throat", while Astra was in Snowe's mind, Xiri grabbed her by the hair, pulled her down and tried to stab her, but he was stopped by Snowe.
- Chekhov's Skill: Inverted. At a certain point in the novel, Canan teaches Astra how to swim. She wanted to teach Snowe and Erio how to swim too, but Astra convinced her to leave them alone for the time being. Near the end of the novel, Snowe finds himself in water and nearly drowns because no one taught him how to swim.
- Curbstomp Battle: Happens quite frequently
- Zuan vs anyone who tried to fight him except Snowe when Xiri possessed him
- Snowe (possessed) vs Zuan
- Snowe (possessed) vs Hiante / Canan
- Ciran vs Snowe (possessed)
- Azria vs anyone who tried to fight her Except the last one where she was finally defeated, but it took Ciran, Lorin with the enchanted dagger, and a room full of water mages to beat her.
- Soan vs three unnamed crown lords
- Dream Zuan vs Snowe
- Zilia vs Beliaz (if you could call that a fight)
- Dark Is Not Evil: Played straight with demons.
- Deus ex Machina: The tower. It was never referenced in the story before the end, and it allowed Snowe And Xiri to achieve a perfect ending, and before they did that, Beliaz intended to use it to go back in time to fix the mistakes he made in his life, putting the whole world at risk.
- Earn Your Happy Ending: After several chapters of things going From Bad to Worse, Snowe and Xiri manage to properly control the Crown. As a result, the tears in the sky are fixed, Xiri is free to return home, the Lords and Demons make peace, and many people killed in the previous chapters (including Hiante) are revived.
- First-Episode Twist: Hiante gets a body in the first chapter, and Xiri seems to have gotten control over Snowe's dreams again.
- Foreshadowing: in the short story "Show me yours and I'l show you mine", Zuan teaches Beliaz how to control people using electricity. He declares that he will only use it in self-defense, but in the way that it is emphasized, it implies that Beliaz has, or will use it for other purposes, and he did.
- Heroic BSoD: Played in a way after Snowe lets Xiri take over and sets Morzin on fire, killing many people in the process
- Interrupted Suicide: Snowe attempts to commit Suicide with one of Erio's daggers after what happened in Morzin. Erio manages to jump on him and pin him before he stabs himself.
- Kissing Under the Influence: A one-sided case occurs in Chapter 18. While inebriated, Snowe gives Erio a kiss after briefly discussing how things are going on between the latter and Astra. Snowe falls asleep quickly after, leaving Erio to wonder whether or not the alcohol was solely to blame.
- Light Is Not Good: Played straight with lords, but averted with Siraz and Beliaz.
- Luke, I Am Your Father: Edgar wasn't Snowe's real father. The Original King was.
- My God, What Have I Done?: Snowe realizing that Xiri took over and burnt Morzin
- Survivor Guilt: Snowe feels like this before grabbing Erio's knife and trying to kill himself.
- Sanity Slippage: What with Xiri's shenanigans in Snowe's subconscious, Dream Astra isn't doing too well. She tries to kill the real Astra when she and Erio are trying to investigate.
- Tempting Fate: Snowe to Richard and Vera: “I know I’ll be fine this time though. No running off to get mortally wounded, I promise.”
- Your Magic's No Good Here: In the dream version of Morzin, any fire produced just freezes in place and does nothing. This rendered Snowe's fire magic useless, leaving him defenseless.
