“I will stand by your side and give my best to find all the dwarves who are still alive!” Replied the little boy, red-faced, fueled by his master’s words and hatred.

  "You're still too young and too weak! Hahaha! Any fully grown orc would simply rip you open and let you bleed to death! Orcs are cruel and only take prisoners to torture or use as toys! Remember that!" Retorted the master blacksmith, placing his calloused hand so firmly on Kilian's head that his gaze fell to the ground so that he didn't notice the small tear in the old dwarf's eyes, "First, it's my job to protect you until you can stand on your own two feet!"

  A few moments later, the tunnel widened and opened up into a vast hall containing several houses carved directly from the stone.

  Like a second, small artificial sun, a huge, glowing red ruby hovered in the center of the cave, illuminating everything around it with a bright glow.

  "Kilian!" Boomed his big brother's deep voice from a shadowy entrance to a small hut.

  The stone door burst open with a crash, and giant arms lifted the boy to hug him tightly, "I was really worried because you didn't show up, and master Arto rarely lets me out to clean! He tortur… Ah, I mean, he trains me to finally become a Qi-Gatherer... It's pretty lonely here."

  “Thrym, good to see you!” Laughed the little warrior and patted the half-giant on the back who was rocking him up and down in the air, “From today onwards, we can train together, and now let me down!”

  “Have you finally understood something, you blockhead?” Asked the dwarf, looking at the two-meter-tall giant, who, under his stern gaze, felt more like only half a meter tall.

  "It takes forever to decipher the ancient writing of the giants, but thanks to the books you brought me last time, I'm at least making progress. Only most of the time when I read these ramblings, I wonder if giants can truly be considered intelligent beings..." Thrym replied with a dejected shake of his head.

  "Hahaha, your people have a very unique culture, but now you know where you got your blockhead from!" Master Arto snorted, finally turning to Kilian with a grin, "Without the part of human blood in his veins, he would be completely lost! Hahaha! Now, to you! Do you have the tourmaline fruit and the monkey wine with you?"

  The blacksmith's apprentice quickly dusted off his robe and took out the small berry and the flask.

  "Good, follow me, and you, Thrym, continue translating your script! I want both of you to be Qi-Gatherers by the beginning of next month!" The master blacksmith said to the unlikely brothers and led the little one to another part of the village, whereupon the big one disappeared back into his hut, whispering grumpily.

  A curse echoed through the cave as the giant forgot to duck his head and slammed it against the doorframe of the small dwarf hut.

  Kilian and his master entered a large, unadorned hall containing several meditation mats.

  "So many memories…Here, together with the brothers and sisters of my race, I have started on my path as a Qi-Master, and now it's your turn!" Master Arto explained in a nostalgic voice.

  He paused briefly, lost in thought, and finally added, in a voice that was initially slightly shaky but quickly regained its usual firmness, "What is your plan? How will you train?"

  "First, I need to learn to compress the Qi around me with a quick rotation, and then I need to direct it through my channels to my dantian!" The boy began to think aloud, raising the berry he had won, "This should make it easier for me to get started! I'm not missing much more! I can already sense the energies around me for most of the day, but now and then, when I'm distracted or asleep, the feeling still slips away."

  Nodding in satisfaction, the experienced Qi-Master added, "You seem to have already mapped out your path, good! Drink the monkey wine once you have become a Qi-Gatherer. You can eat the berry when you have completely focused your thoughts and start your training."

  With a flick of his thick, calloused fingers, a bulging sack full of supplies and several water hoses appeared in the training hall: “I’ll be back next week!”

  Before Kilian could answer, the master blacksmith had already disappeared, and the boy sat alone in a huge, silent hall.

  “Finally! I made it!” He thought eagerly, sat cross-legged on a meditation mat, and began to feel the surrounding energy with all his might, only to be torn from his concentration a few moments later by an all-shaking growl from his belly, “Perhaps I should eat a bite first?”

  One bite turned into a gigantic but solitary feast, followed by a deep digestive nap, and his body rejoiced, because after all, the boy hadn't eaten anything solid for a little over a week.

  The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  The deep wounds from his fight against the stone golem slowly healed, step by step, the tension from his hard work fell away, and with a loud, contented yawn, he awoke early the next morning, full of energy.

  He poured some water from one of the hoses, washed the last traces of sleep from his face, and ate a quick breakfast before sitting down to meditate again.

  Completely satisfied with himself, he began to feel the energies around him and sensed the rushing Qi more intensely than ever before.

  With its eyes closed and gentle movements of his little fingers, it began to dance around him, following his commands and sometimes even showing the first signs of rotating in a circle.

  After savoring this magical feeling for a few minutes, a small magical berry disappeared into his stomach in one big gulp.

  Nothing happened for several seconds, but then the area in which Kilian could feel Qi grew larger and larger, and the energy began to spin faster and faster.

  With one deep breath after another, more and more Qi disappeared into his small lungs and slowly traveled through his channels.

  With each rotation, it became more and more compressed and wandered through his body until finally a small drop of concentrated energy slowly reached his dantian.

  As if he had fallen on a hot stone, he immediately evaporated and filled his insides with smoke-like, gaseous Qi.

  No pain shot through his body, no blockage hindered the energy that traveled through his fragile Qi-paths, and slowly but surely, the fog in his Dantian became thicker and thicker.

  "I did it! I'm a Qi-Gatherer!" The boy cheered, as his body exuded a thick, foul fluid over his skin, sticking to his clothes, "What is this? So many toxins are lurking in my body? I urgently need a bath!"

  His mind wandered, but no matter what he thought about, he never lost focus on the Qi around him, and feeling the energy had become as easy as breathing.

  It took a few minutes for Kilian to understand this change, and he cheered even more, “My next goal is how to subconsciously rotate the Qi every second of the day and direct it through my channels!”

  His thoughts were interrupted by the sound of quick footsteps and the opening of a thick stone door.

  "You've already done it??" Thrym cried in amazement when he saw his little brother's dirty body and muttered dejectedly, "Translating the giants' script is far too difficult! Many things in it simply don't make sense!"

  “Should I take a look at it?” Kilian asked, amused as he tried to scrape the sticky black mass off his body.

  "You're welcome to try it, but first, take a bath! You stink! Come, I'll lead you to a small lake." Replied the half-giant, and the two dissimilar brothers wandered through the ghostly dwarven city.

  Standing in front of a clear blue mountain lake, they quickly undressed and jumped into the ice-cold water.

  “Mother, father, how are you?” Thought the young Qi-Gatherer, remembering the beautiful days on his foster parents’ farm and vowing, “As soon as I am strong enough and allowed to leave the clan, I will visit you together with Edana!”

  A quiet splashing behind him tore him from his thoughts, and he felt Thrym slowly creeping towards him, already raising his arms to playfully push Kilian under the water.

  With a cheeky grin on his face, a flick of his finger created a raging whirlpool that immediately made the wannabe sneaky halfgiant cry out in shock and pulled him under the surface of the water.

  Amidst a roar of childish laughter, the giant struggled back up and cursed, "That's unfair! Just wait until I'm able to manipulate Qi as well! Then I'll show you who's the big brother and who's the little one!"

  Playing childishly in the water, they briefly forgot the long, stony path that lay ahead of them.

  Half an hour later, they lay both on the ground of the shore next to the small lake, completely out of breath, and were completely satisfied with just the clear mountain air in their lungs.

  After a short break, Kilian stood up, put on his dripping but now clean clothes, and used the little bit of Qi in his Dantian to conjure a stream of warm air that dried the wet robes of the two brothers.

  “What can't you do?” Thrym asked, astonished, rummaging through his robe lying on the floor and pressing a few yellowed pages of paper into the hands of the freshly baked Qi-Gatherer: “Let's see if you can understand any of this.”

  The young warrior looked at the large runes of the script.

  He could not read them, but felt something was off.

  It was as if something was hiding, as if the true meaning was behind the lines.

  Following an impulse, he directed some Qi through the channels into his eyes and examined the writing in his hand closely.

  Slowly, as if they were dancing, the runes swapped places and revealed a completely new image, which Kilian still could not understand, as he did not speak the language of the giants.

  “Do you have parchment, quill, and ink?” He asked the halfgiant, without taking his eyes off the writing, trying to memorize the complex patterns.

  Thrym handed him a writing tool, and the little boy closed his eyes to write down rune after rune, just as he saw them in his mind's eye.

  "For you!" He finally murmured, completely exhausted, and opened his now dark, underlined eyes again, "I don't know what it means, but at least the runes are arranged differently now. Maybe they make more sense that way!"

  With a trembling hand, the older brother picked up the parchment and tried to translate it, “It is an instruction manual on how to absorb Qi through the skin and thereby strengthen the body…”

  “Then let’s train and surprise Master Arto when he comes back next week! Maybe training the dantian was just not the right thing for you, after all, you possess the blood of the giants!” Kilian finally laughed, and the two went back to the dwarf village and lost themselves completely in their training.

  “Where are you two?” A grumbling voice echoed through the ghostly dwarven city, breaking the tranquility, “You can come out now, even if you haven't accomplished your task yet! I'll give you one more week, and all you have to do is clean the forge properly!”

  “Master!” Said a childlike voice, and a child about ten years old appeared before the little dwarf, accompanied by a surge of Qi.

  “So you've already done it!” He began to answer contentedly and was interrupted by a rumbling of the earth.

  “Master!” Echoed the voice of Thrym, now two and a half meters tall, who shook the earth with every step and had a slightly grayish, shimmering skin.

  “What the hell?” Asked Master Arto in surprise, looking at the two dissimilar brothers with a questioning look as he unconsciously took out his flask and took a deep sip of his well-aged monkey wine.