Tristan didn’t even register Emile move. But at incredible speed, the Inner Guard rushed past him and plunged his sword through three of the protestors at once. There were screams of panic and those of rage as the mob fought amongst itself, unable to decide whether to fight or flee. And Emile didn’t waste any time, charging through the ground, dodging every jab of a pitchfork and swing of a shovel, weaving his sword through the crowd, felling tens every second.

“No no no no no!” Tristan screamed and aimed his palms at the crowd. From the middle, a massive explosion of wind erupted into the sky, flinging the whole mob outwards like a firework. Tristan saw Emile in the middle of them all and raised four walls of earth around him before yanking the cube of earth out of the mass of people.

Emile burst out of the prison and, with the same momentum, drove a knee into Tristan’s gut. His arm clasped the boy’s throat and pinned him to the ground, and he raised his sword, poised to bring it down into Tristan’s face.

“End this!” Emile yelled. “Do as I say and bring the palace down, boy! Or do you want to see everyone you know and love killed again?”

Flashes of corpses strewn across the streets of Eausuterrain flitted through Tristan’s mind. A single column of earth shot out of the ground, this time hitting Emile square across the jaw, knocking him to the side.

Tristan got to his feet and danced around the man, driving punches into his body, weaving out of every swing of his blade and coming in again for more attacks. Emile, still dazed by Tristan’s earth column attack, struggled to bring a counter attack as he was pounded with strike after strike from the boy.

“Enough!” Emile shouted before slamming both palms on the ground. Around them, the floor of the garden burst outwards, spurred by Emile’s Solid Encastry. Pointed pillars of earth fired out of the ground and the explosion ripped outwards for about twenty metres, catching the edge of the mob of protesters in it.

The dust swirled around Emile. The shards of rock and soil leaving the earth had torn his robes. His face was bruised from having taken a column of earth to the jaw. The dust around him blotted out the sun briefly and he searched frantically in the haze for his quarry.

A few metres away under a pile of rocks crouched Aeon. She had only just been in time to narrowly save Tristan from being skewered by the rock formations Emile had summoned. “You alright?” she asked.

Rubbing his head, Tristan sat up. He’d given himself a concussion somehow and the back of his head felt like someone was trying to squeeze it down. “Yeah,” he groaned. “I didn’t expect him to use actual Encastry. He’d always fought with the Eight-Limbs.”

“Guess even confidence has a limit,” Aeon said. “So how do we beat him? This,” she gestured at the stone outcrop around them that the once flat garden floor had turned into, “is a little above my skill grade.”

“We can’t win in a head-to-head fight,” Tristan said. “I was lucky enough to land a hit on his jaw that dazed him for a while. But he’ll be careful now, and in any case, I don’t know what other tricks he has up his sleeve besides this.”

In spite of the pessimism in his words, Aeon didn’t see defeat in Tristan’s eyes. “You have a plan, don’t you?” she asked.

“Yes,” Tristan looked at her. “And I need your help.”

She smiled and bumped a fist against his chest. “Always with you, brother.”

***

“TRISTAN!” Emile screamed. The dust still hadn’t settled. “Get out of this dust and fight me right now you insolent child! I thought you said you were gonna kill me! Did you chicken out already?”

There was no response. What was the boy doing? He had to lure him out.

“Your father would be ashamed of you!” Emile called as he began walking through the sharp-ended pillars of rock. “Even as I pounded his pathetic face into the street, he still kept fighting. But I threw some dirt at you and you run away? You’re even lower than he is!”

A whoosh of movement caught his attention. Emile clenched his sword, coiled up like a spring and rushed towards where he saw the movement.

“We first need to get to the palace wall,” Tristan said. “But he’ll catch up to us in no time. So, on my signal, I want you to carry me and start running. I’ll slow him down.”

A short ledge of stone shot out of the ground and Emile tripped over it, crashing to the earthen floor below. In the distance, he saw the brown-haired girl from the parapet running back towards it.

“You’re not getting away from me, boy,” he snarled and rushed after them. But the head-start they’d taken was more than enough as Aeon was already ducking under the gate that sat at the base of the wall.

The mob of protestors had recovered from the burst of air, and while most of them panicked over the dead, a good majority of them, including Tristan’s mother, watched Emile chase his targets down towards the white walls of the Royal Palace.

The wall had two layers. An outer wall and an inner wall, roofed by the parapet. Both walls weren’t made of bricks, but of multiple levels of concrete layered on grids of metal rods that acted as a skeleton holding the wall together. The double-wall design was made to stop Encasters from ripping it apart. Had it been a regular brick wall, someone with ill intention would only have to pull out the individual bricks and the whole thing would come crashing down. But since the double-wall was effectively a single structure and not a layering of bricks on cement, that became much harder to do.

Between the two walls was a pair of railway tracks. When the palace came under attack, a minecart driven by a single Encaster would make it easier to transport weapons and resources along the length of the wall. At regular intervals, stairways rose up along the inner wall to the parapet above.

“I want you to run back up to the parapet of the wall. Judging by how desperate his stone pillar attack was, his first instinct will be to run in after us without thinking.”

Having entered the double-wall, Aeon took one of the staircases up to the parapet.

As Tristan had predicted, Emile rushed in behind them and now stood inside the tunnel formed by the two walls, bathed in yellow electric light with the railtrack running down its length.

“What then?” Aeon asked.

“He’s fast. Which means we have to accomplish two things at once.”

As Emile ran around the inside of the wall searching for the two of them, Aeon, having left Tristan on the parapet above, now rushed down the stairs and back out of the double-wall into the garden, shutting the door behind her.

“The first thing we have to do is distract him. And I’m trusting you with this.”

“I have an idea,” she nodded.

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“Get back here!” Emile shouted and tried to open the door. But the metal structure held firm. He attempted to punch through it but it didn’t even dent. From the outside, Aeon was Encasting the door. Every time she felt Emile attempt to punch through, she’d focus herself there to reinforce the metal back into place.

When punching didn’t work, Emile tried to rip the door off its hinges. Aeon felt the pull from the other end and fought back. But Emile, having the larger body, was able to exert a greater force onto the door.

“But why do we need to distract him?”

“So he won’t notice the second thing we need to accomplish. But leave that to me. As long as you keep him distracted, we will win.”

Aeon strained, feeling as if her arms were being pulled out of their sockets. “Come on Aeon!” someone from Eausterrain shouted. “you can do it!”

“Hold it together! Don’t let him out!” another piped in.

“Don’t let up!” a third screamed.

The roar of support reached her ears and she gritted her teeth, clenched her gut, and pulled harder. Tristan’s mother watched on, worry in her eyes. If Emile and Aeon were fighting for the door, what had happened to her son? Was he safe? Or was he . . . ?

She couldn’t bring herself to think the word. “Where’s Tristan?” she asked no-one in particular.

“There!” someone replied, pointing. “On the wall!”

Her eyes followed his finger and saw the thirteen-year-old boy standing atop the wall.

Tristan calmed his mind and focused his Encastry on the wall below him. He measured 6 metres in front of him and 6 metres behind him. In Camp, they’d been taught the composition of the double-wall and the purpose of its design. He envisioned the iron bars inside the wall snapping 6 metres ahead and behind him.

He then shifted his attention to the ground beneath Emile. Beneath the wall itself. For a while he stood there, hearing the roaring cheer of the crowd and the groan of the metal door below.

Tristan recalled a specific sentence Emile had told him from their discussion in the garden.

“A feat of that magnitude can only be achieved by someone who has a strong command of the world.”

Meaning that Tristan could actually overpower Emile if he had a big enough structure to do it with. And indeed he had exactly what he needed.

This was the second thing that had to be done. And Aeon’s distraction had worked like a charm. Emile had not even realised that Tristan had detached a section of the wall from its skeleton. Emile also hadn’t realised that Tristan had hollowed the earth underneath that same section.

Tristan sprung the final stage of his plan into action and Encasted the floor below Emile. The earth under Emile’s feet gave out without warning and Emile found himself plunging into a 6-foot hole below, landing on his ankle and breaking it.

On the other side of the door, Aeon felt Emile’s grip on the door release and, under her exertion, the door exploded from its hinges and flew towards her. She only just managed to fall to the ground to dodge it as it hurled itself into the stone pillars behind her.

All around Emile, the wall creaked and groaned. A singular crack shot up its height, travelling up the inner wall, across the roof and down the outer wall. The same thing happened 12 metres behind the first crack.

On top of the wall, Tristan stood outside the boundaries marked by the cracks and, with a breath, commanded the section of the wall he had detached to plunge downwards.

Within the space of three seconds, the mob outside watched as a 12-metre long section of the wall was pushed into the ground below with a thunderous clap that sent a shockwave booming through the capital. But only they had the pleasure of spectacle.

Beneath the plunging wall, Emile attempted to counteract the force of the structure crashing down into him. But since Tristan had hollowed the earth that had been underneath it, Emile wasn’t just fighting Tristan’s Encastry, but gravity itself.

Under the insurmountable force he felt his very being almost explode from the amount of Shiji he was throwing against it. The ground rumbled like an earthquake and the crowd gathered in the garden, along with Aeon, ran to clear away from of it.

But from the top of wall, in the aftermath, Tristan watched in cold indifference as the massive block of concrete he had just stabbed into the earth sputtered a cloud of dust.

The world fell silent. Tristan’s breaths were heavy. Had he won? He didn’t want to believe it.

That disbelief was justified since, only a second after he had had that thought, a fist burst out of the wreckage below and a bloody and broken Emile rose from the concrete and earth.

Murmurs of horror swept the crowd and even Aeon’s face had twisted in terror. How had he even survived that?

Emile clenched a fist by his face and the parapet under Tristan’s feet gave away. But unlike Emile, Tristan Encasted the earth below to soften and took little harm from the fall.

“How?” Tristan asked. His entire body had frozen in fear and his jaw shuddered.

In spite of the obvious pain he was in, Emile forced that same gloating grin, now missing a few teeth. One of his eyes had shrunk and bruised. Whether it was just closed or the eye itself was missing was impossible to tell. His clothes looked as if he’d been mauled by wolves and he held an arm at an unnatural angle. But he still moved it without issue.

“That was a good move you pulled, boy,” Emile said. “Very smart. You even proved to me that tearing the castle down will be no challenge for you. That’s good.”

“Keep it together, Tristan!” Aeon screamed. “He’s weaker than before!”

He even looked weaker than before. Tristan just had to put him out his misery. The boy once again assumed a fighting stance and the blue Shiji aura glowed around his fists.

Emile chuckled. “You would look at a broken man and consider killing him?”

There was hesitation in Tristan’s mind. The wounded man standing before him reminded him too much of his father on that day.

“Killing me won’t bring him back, Tristan,” Emile continued. “It won’t bring any of them back.”

It was an irrefutable fact and Tristan found his rage wavering. His townspeople. His father. All of them were gone. And the void left by that loss, especially that of his father, would never be filled.

“You’ll be a killer just like me,” Emile concluded. “No better than the very person you hate.”

Tristan stared dead-straight at Emile’s one good eye and lowered his arms. Emile wheezed a smile. “There’s a good lad,” he said.

And whipped one of his own arms towards the crowd behind him, intending to kill them all.

From near his feet, two spears of earth shot out of the ground and tore straight through his gut. And for a moment, Emile stood there, impaled and dumbfounded. He had sensed it coming, but hadn’t been able to stop it.

His vision darkening, he looked once again at Tristan. “You,” he tried to speak, but it hurt too much to continue. Tristan’s Encastry was the only thing he couldn’t override. But . . . had he not broken the boy’s desire for revenge? Had the child not given up? It had seemed that way for a moment.

Tristan walked up to Emile. The Inner Guard could no longer feel his legs. He wasn’t even standing, but was held up in a standing position by the two spears plunging through his body. Tristan stopped at a metre’s distance.

“All my life, I respected my father’s wishes,” the boy said. “When he asked me to use Encastry to help my village, I obeyed that as well, and we gained a lot from it. But his last wish. His wish to see me before he died . . .” Tears were streaming down his eyes and his voice shook. “You took that away from me.”

Emile’s face betrayed no emotion.

“I’m not killing you out of revenge,” Tristan continued. “I know my people won’t come back. I know my father won’t come back. And I know I will never be able to fulfil his dying wish. But that’s something I’ll have to accept.”

He stepped as close as he could to the taller man’s face. And through the tears, Emile saw the rage in his eyes.

“I’m killing you to save others from having to live with the same regret that you forced onto me. And through my choice, I hope that the world will never have to suffer because of scum like you.”

From inside Emile’s body, one of the spears branched off into a second spear. And this spear shot straight through his heart, bursting from his chest. Emile’s eye flashed with something, but within seconds, the life had drained from it.

And Tristan stood still, his head downcast.