Waru Kingsfield stood in the jaws of Antarctica’s subzero wind, naked but for his boxers. Only the qi that he drew from the ice and rock and air and light kept him from freezing to death, its warmth flowing through his flesh. He had a dark rugged face and curly black hair. He was thickly muscled. In his veins flowed English, Japanese, and Wiradjuri blood.


    His father Yarran, also naked down to his boxers, held a Mossberg 590 tactical shotgun at his side as casually as a golf club. Yarran was jacked as a bull kangaroo—and utterly relaxed in this freezing hell.


    Yarran’s voice was deep. “Your breathing is good. Your posture is excellent. But I sense your qi flowing weaker than usual.”


    The cold pressed against Waru’s shell of warmth, trying to crush it. Waru’s chattering teeth muffled the sounds of the dig-site a quarter-mile away: the clang of picks, the burble of voices, the shrieks of drills. World-changing things were happening at the dig-site. It was a big day for Waru and Yarran’s clan—a big day for the Dragons—but he couldn’t think about that right now.


    “There’s no life here,” said Waru through clacking teeth. “If there were trees, grass, something, my qi would be stronger.”


    Yarran gave a sad shake of the head. “Almost twenty years old and still making excuses? Qi lives in everything, my son. Anyone can draw from this land if they have the will.”


    Waru’s patience was fraying. “Just do it.”


    Yarran grinned. “Very well.”


    He pumped his shotgun, aimed.


    Waru tightened his stomach, focusing qi where he expected the buckshot to land.


    When the impact came, a split-second before the thunderclap, Waru left the ground as if plucked by a giant hand.


    He didn’t feel the buckshot until he was finished tumbling across the ice. The impact stung—but it stung less than the twenty-four other times his father had shot him that day.


    Yarran helped him up, brushing the ice and lead spall off his body. “How was the pain that time?”


    “Six.”


    “Better! See? Practice. Practice is everything.” Yarran flipped the shotgun so the muzzle faced his chin—and fired.


    The explosion snapped Yarran’s head back. Instead of obliterating his skull, the blast just powdered his face with soot. He ruffled tiny fragments of lead from his graying hair.


    “Holy shit!” Waru blurted.


    “Didn’t even sting.”


    “Qi doesn’t make us invincible, Dad. Why take stupid risks?”


    Yarran lifted a finger. “Calculated risks always look stupid to a novice. Now, let’s get back to practicing. Take your battle stance.”


    “What? Fighting? I’m tired. We’ve been training out here all day!”


    “I’ve been testing your resilience.” Yarran tossed the shotgun aside. “Now we test your technique.”


    “Fuck that!”


    “You know I hate it when you curse, Waru.”


    Yarran swung his foot at Waru’s face. Waru’s reflexes kicked in too late, the cold slowing him down. The foot cracked his jaw like a mace. Waru went ragdolling. When he got up, his head was a furnace of pain. He wiped blood off his lips.


    Anger flashburned away his fatigue. He went into his fighting stance, shifting his body sideways, then lifting one hand above his head and lowering the other to his waist, concentrating qi in his arms.


    A rumble of exclamations rose from the dig-site, cracking his focus.


    “Uh, Dad, did you hear that? I think they found something!”


    Yarran’s tone of fatherly kindness grew stern. “It can wait, boy. Dragons never lose focus in battle. Never. If the world is ever threatened, we must be ready to protect it with our full concentration. Do you hear me, boy? We’re Dragons.”


    “We’re Dragons,” echoed Waru. We’re the shadowed guardians of humankind, his memory recited. He’d studied the words over and over for his swearing-in ceremony. We’re the unsung protectors of the Earth. We’re the silent defenders of civilization.


    But if the Dragons were truly humanity’s guardians, Waru had always wondered, why did they keep qi a secret from everyone else?”


    His father always said it was because evildoers would misuse qi, would wreak havoc across the planet. But Waru felt differently. He believed that if everyone on Earth knew qi, humanity could survive any threat.


    The truth, he thought, was the Dragons didn’t want to share power. The secret order of five hundred and twelve qi warriors liked hoarding their knowledge in the shadows. They didn’t want rivals.


    Sure, there were the Manticores, the qi warriors who opposed the Dragons and wanted to conquer the world outright, but their numbers had fallen to fewer than a hundred ever since the two groups had warred in the 1980s. Waru’s own grandfather Yarri had killed the Manticores’ leader in single combat, sending a Qi Beam through his heart outside the Moon Shrine in the Southern Outback.


    With the Manticores in tatters, the Dragons were the last of the nine leagues of qi warriors to hold sway. And the Dragons had no interest in losing their power, whatever excuses Waru’s father, the Head Dragon, gave him.


    What technique will he start with this time? Whenever Waru thought he’d seen them all, Yarran busted out something new. Despite being the strongest of the Dragons, Yarran was always learning.


    Yarran moved both hands above his head and down to his waist, and repeated the motion, again and again, moving faster, his clever eyes watching Waru, the rest of his body as still as stone. Up and down, up and down, faster and faster, until the arms blurred together. They cracked the sound barrier and went ever faster, until the speed was such that each arm seemed to split into two separate ones.


    The Vengeful Squid! Waru had never seen the technique in person, only in the dusty training VHS tapes his mother Suzume had borrowed from the Dragon Archives for his practice.


    Setting his jaw, Waru crouched into a Cannon Fist stance and launched at Yarran. He dashed so fast, his steps blurred into a single roar. Waru cocked a fist and put most of his qi into it.


    Yarran’s four hands caught Waru with ease: three caught his punching arm at different points, as if catching an asteroid mid-flight, while the fourth clamped around his throat. Riding Waru’s momentum, Yarran swung him, arm still outstretched, into a tango-twirl, rotating once-twice-thrice before launching Waru back into the air. Waru sailed forty, fifty, sixty feet above ground—high enough to glimpse the deep trench fringed with excavators that was the dig-site, the only flaw in that perfect white expanse—before plunging earthward.


    As Waru fell, a leaping Yarran met him halfway down with a kick.


    All went black.


    Waru woke to find himself in a smoking crater three feet deep, Yarran standing over him with an outstretched hand and a look of regret. Yarran had two arms again.


    “That was too much, son. I’m sorry.”


    Yarran hoisted Waru upright. Waru wobbled, groaning. He felt as if a bomb had gone off inside him.


    “Son? You okay?” Yarran steadied Waru. When Yarran’s eyes went to Waru’s stomach, they widened.


    Waru looked down to find a red bruise the size of a frying pan on his abs. The sight made the pain even worse. He grimaced.


    “I expected your qi to buffer the hit,” said Yarran, scratching his head. “What happened?”


    “I put most of it into the punch,” said Waru sheepishly.


    “Are you crazy? When you face a stronger opponent, no more than thirty percent of your qi should be offensive. You know that.”


    “I thought if I could just land the hit—”


    “Foolishness!” Yarran raised a finger. “You’re not a child anymore. You must strategize. How many times…? Ah, but you already know what I’m going to say.”


    “A fight is two-thirds mind, one-third body. I know.”


    “Not in your bones, you don’t.” Yarran sighed. “You must rein in your emotions. Your impulses. Battles of qi are more like chess games than street brawls. There are so many techniques, so many possible surprises, tactics, turns, counters. When your grandfather fought the Black Manticore, who do you think was stronger? But Yarri Kingsfield had his wits.”


    This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.


    Not enough wits to stop smoking, Waru thought bleakly, but he didn’t say it. “I know.”


    “Yarri knew the great game of qi like no one in history. You’re his grandson. Act like it.”


    Yarran rubbed Waru’s hair.


    “Yeah. Okay. I’ll try to use my head more,” said Waru.


    Strategize. I’ve got to strategize.


    In the distance behind Yarran, from a spot near the dig-site, a tiny figure rose high, high into the air; it was a speck, then an ant, then a doll, hurtling toward Waru and Yarran at a mad speed. But when it landed several feet nearby, with a spume of snow, it was just Waru’s mother, Suzume.


    She was dressed in the Dragon’s formal wear, a black gi with a green dragon on the back, broad-winged, spouting red flames up both sleeves. Her black hair was cinched into a bun. Her fingers were caked in colorful flakes from hours of painting; the greatest artist in the Dragons’ ranks, she’d spent the week illustrating the Dragons’ excavation for posterity.


    She tossed a pair of identical gis at Waru and Yarran, who dutifully put them on.


    Smiling, she put her hands on her hips. “How’d my sweetbaby handle Dad’s torture today?”


    “He’s learning plenty,” said Yarran, matching her smile. “I give him a hard time, but once he learns to use his head, he’ll be the strongest Dragon in our ranks. His natural command of qi is unmatched. I can feel the Source flowing through him from forty feet away.”


    Suzume’s heart-shaped face glowed with pride. “Sounds like you at that age. Talented, but brainless.”


    Waru smiled. “Is that true, Dad?”


    Yarran frowned. “Not how I remember it.”


    “Anyway, the reason I came….” Suzume poked her thumb at the dig-site. “The excavation team’s found something.”


    Waru gasped. “Finally! What is it?”


    “Come see for yourself.”


    <hr>


    Dozens of excavators ringed the trench, pumping smoke into the crisp blue air. Hundreds of personnel swarmed the site, trudging between prefab houses and equipment shacks and snowtrucks, hauling picks and drills, flashlights and lunchboxes, phones and thermoses. A helicopter sat a hundred feet beyond the site, like a lazy black dragonfly.


    The trench was several hundred feet in diameter, descending into the cold earth in stepped terraces, like Waru had seen in Queensland’s open-pit mines as a kid. In the trench’s base was a black pit, about thirty feet wide and surrounded by excited crewmen.


    Suzume held a gray brick with a screen in the center: a qi reader. A bright blue circle blinked on the screen.


    “My god,” she whispered. “The signature’s so strong. What could possibly generate this much qi underground, Faisal?”


    The excavation leader, a portly man in bifocals and a white parka, answered in a thick Saudi accent. “I do not know, Mrs. Kingsfield, but it frightens me. I am thinking we should be having more security if there is something alive down there.”


    “That’s ridiculous,” said Yarran. “No creature could give off such energy. It’s a natural wellspring of some kind. The old legends spoke of the planet itself having chakras.” He rubbed his hands in anticipation. “If the Dragons could harness them….”


    Faisal’s eyes flitted nervously between Yarran, Suzume, and Waru. The Dragons vetted outsiders carefully—Waru’s aunt, Akita, ran the Dragons’ small team of mind-adepts responsible for the task—but sometimes outsiders blabbed. When they did, mind-adepts had to use their most hated technique, Memory Obliteration, on everyone involved.


    Faisal struck Waru as a scared man. Scared men tended to blab.


    “Before you continue that line of thinking,” said Faisal, nudging up his glasses, “I think you should be hearing what we have found inside the trench.”


    “Go on,” said Yarran.


    Faisal swallowed. His eyes went to Suzume, as if hoping she would speak on his behalf.


    She did. “They found a structure.”


    Yarran’s brow lofted. “Natural?”


    “No.”


    Yarran and Waru traded looks of confusion.


    “Manmade?” said Yarran. “But how—”


    “Not that either,” said Suzume with relish.


    Yarran’s mouth fell open.


    Waru’s heart pounded. “Maybe Faisal’s right, Dad. Maybe we need more security.”


    But before Waru could finish speaking, Yarran jumped to the bottom of the trench.


    “Honey, wait!” shouted Suzume, leaping after him. “Don’t do anything rash!”


    Waru faced Faisal. “You should alert the other Dragons, just in case.”


    Faisal swallowed, nodded. He cast an anxious glance to Yarran and Suzume, then trudged off to a prefab.


    Waru jumped into the trench, landing beside his parents. The three peered into the pitch-black pit.


    Beside the pit stood a gantry bore and a mounted laser-cutter. The crewmen were watching the Dragons closely, muttering to each other in Arabic and clutching their picks. One, a stocky young man with fearful eyes, offered Yarran a high-powered flashlight.


    Yarran declined. He glanced at Suzume.


    She clapped her hands and began to glow from head to foot with bright yellow light. Several of the crewmen gasped; they’d seen the Dragons wield qi for weeks, but every new technique brought surprise.


    Then Suzume levitated—that caused another stir—and descended slowly into the pit.


    “Dad,” murmured Waru, “you know I can’t levitate.”


    “You’ll be okay, son. Just descend the old-fashioned way.” Yarran clapped Waru’s back affectionately, then levitated down the hole after Suzume.


    The pit glowed with Suzume’s golden light. Gradually, the light dimmed.


    Waru felt the crewmen’s expectant eyes. He shot the men a cold look. They averted their faces.


    Waru hated pressure. His dad was right; he struggled to control his emotions. But he had a bad feeling about all this.


    Qi was power. And power was dangerous. Whatever was causing the massive qi signature the Dragons had detected with their satellites two months ago had to be more dangerous than a nuclear bomb.


    Control your emotions, idiot. You’re a Dragon.


    Biting down his fear, Waru jumped into the pit. As he fell, he kicked from wall to wall to control his descent, chasing Suzume’s retreating light. To his amazement, the walls were metal. Bulges of rock punctured the walls here and there, but the pit looked to have once been perfectly round; it was as if Faisal’s crew had punctured the top of a long-sealed silo.


    He went down, and down, and down into the black heart of the world. The pit seemed to go on forever. He felt like Gandalf plunging through the depths of Moria. Down, and down, and down.


    At last, he alighted on a concave metal floor, in a passage wide enough for a subway train. Yarran and Suzume were waiting for him in Suzume’s pool of light.


    Suzume’s qi reader was humming, its echoes strange in the corridor.


    “I don’t believe this,” she whispered, swallowing. “The signature’s even stronger than we thought. All those layers of rock were muffling it.”


    “Oh my God.” Yarran approached a pipe fixed to one wall. The pipe ran down the passage into darkness. “Look.”


    Waru studied the pipe. On one of the flanges bracing it was a string of symbols; they looked a bit like Mandarin, but with triangular characters instead of boxy ones.


    “Is that a language you recognize?” said Waru. “I sure as fuck don’t.”


    Apparently Yarran was too stunned to notice Waru’s cursing.


    “No,” Yarran muttered.


    Suzume shook her head. “Me neither.”


    Yarran led the way down the corridor, his wife and son close beside him.


    Waru said, “You know what this is, right? I mean, it has to be.”


    Suzume’s voice was breathless. “A remnant of some extinct civilization.”


    Waru nodded. “Antarctica had rainforests a long time ago. Like, a really long time ago. I’ll bet the continent was prime real estate when this place was built.”


    “They must have been pretty advanced,” said Yarran in reverence. “Makes you wonder what drove them extinct.”


    “And where the hell that qi’s coming from,” said Waru. “How close is the source?”


    “Deeper, if you can believe it,” said Suzume. “Only question is how we get there.”


    No sooner had she said this than the three reached a wall—or maybe, given the seams around it, a gate.


    In front of the gate, fitting snuggly into the concave floor, sat a dark blue sphere of shimmering crystal. The crystal had overlapping edges like an armadillo.


    Suzume’s brow furrowed. “That sphere—Yarran….”


    “It’s rich in qi,” said Yarran. “I can feel it. How strange. It feels like a living thing.”


    Yarran clenched his fist; a thin whorl of qi, glowing the same blue as the sphere, unfurled from the object to meet his hand.


    Waru was low on qi after his descent through the pit. He followed his father’s gesture, drawing the sphere’s qi into himself. The qi was cool, deep, scintillating, unlike any he’d Collected before.


    And it felt—responsive.


    Struck with boldness, he sent some of his own qi back to the sphere.


    An incredible thing happened. The sphere partly uncurled—again he thought of an armadillo—to reveal a chair, surrounded by a crystal instrument panel. The instruments hummed and blinked.


    Yarran gasped. “What…?”


    Then Waru understood. “The concave floor must be a road. And the sphere—a vehicle.”


    “What should we do?” said Suzume.


    As if in answer, the sphere spoke in a deep, rasping alien tongue, and the vehicle curled shut. The sphere rolled down the concave road toward the gate.


    With a shriek, the gate slid open. The sphere picked up speed, rolling on into the blackness.


    The three walked on through the gate, Yarran shaking his head in wonder.


    When no one else said it, Waru blurted, “Qi tech! Fucking qi tech!”


    “But how is that possible?” said Suzume. “How could a species with such incredible control of qi go extinct?”


    “Maybe they didn’t,” said Yarran. “Or maybe, I don’t know, they left the planet. Or they’re here. Right here. Underground.”


    That sent a chill down Waru’s spine. His fear and curiosity were at war inside him. As scared as he was, he had to know what was causing the massive signature on Suzume’s qi reader.


    “I bet there’s a whole city of qi tech down here,” said Waru. “That must be what’s causing the signature.”


    Yarran nodded. “It could be.”


    The corridor opened to a vast expanse of darkness. The ground began a gentle descent. Suzume strengthened her light. The concave road continued for several hundred feet before making a left turn into darkness.


    Yarran shut his eyes and began to glow as well. The combined light brought a chamber of staggering immensity into view. Waru couldn’t see any walls but the one behind him, from which the road had emerged.


    As the Dragons walked on, Yarran and Suzume’s light teased out other concave roads etching the floor—dozens. Two more of the sphere vehicles were visible, resting in the roads as if waiting for passengers to jump into them. But Waru guessed no one had driven the spheres in eons.


    The three came to a structure so astounding that all the Dragons gasped at once. Waru’s heart started thudding, hard and fast. He licked dry lips.


    It was a statue hundreds of feet tall, made of the same blue crystal as the spheres, the top barely encompassed in the Dragons’ light. The statue showed the most awesome and terrifying being Waru had ever seen.


    The being was humanoid—two arms, two legs, a head—but with long, razor-sharp talons instead of fingers and the head of a monstrous bird, with a hooked beak, hornlike tufts of feathers, and the cruelest eyes Waru had ever seen. The being wore a billowing robe on which a symbol was engraved: an eye sprouting four wings and encased in a crystal.


    “My God!” cried Yarran.


    Suzume’s voice cracked. “According to the qi reader, this statue is the source of the signature.”


    Stepping forward, Yarran raised a hand toward the structure.


    Waru grabbed Yarran’s arm. “You’re going to Collect? Are you crazy?”


    “Son, it’s a statue. Whoever made it, they’re long gone.”


    “Dad,” said Waru, glancing at his mother for help, “we don’t know what we’re dealing with. You’re the one who always tells me to use my head.”


    Suzume whispered, “Your son’s right.”


    Yarran frowned. “You’re siding with him?”


    “There are no sides. We’re family. I just think we should investigate this place before we interfere with anything.”


    Yarran frowned. “I suppose you’re right.”


    But his eyes were fixed on the statue.


    Waru hadn’t noticed before how the towering mass of blue crystal glowed with a subtle inner light.


    “Yarran?” Suzume held her husband’s arm imploringly. “Let’s go.”


    But the Head Dragon seemed spellbound.


    Ignoring Suzume, he reached out his hand.


    “No!” shouted Waru.


    But Yarran was already Collecting. A filament of qi, the very thinnest thread of light, spooled out from the statue and reached to join Yarran’s hand.


    Yarran closed his eyes. “Oh,” he whispered. “Oh, the power in here, the power….”


    Waru grabbed Yarran’s arm and tried to block his chakra with Defiant Touch, but Waru''s qi was too low. Luckily, Suzume had the same thought; she wrangled Yarran forcefully, seizing his arm and cutting off his qi.


    Yarran scowled; then his face settled back to normal. He blinked as if shaken from a trance.


    “It—called me,” he said hoarsely.


    “We should leave,” said Waru. “This place is wrong.”


    Yarran nodded, looking shaken.


    He led back the way they’d come, and smacked against something.


    Waru reached and felt an invisible barrier walling off their path. A cold, black terror covered his heart.