“Just two more Earth quests, huh?” Brando pondered out loud, crunching rocks and dirt under his boots in rapid succession. “Lesser Sleep and Treasure Stow is interesting. Any idea what it does?”

“No idea, but you said it backward,” Fin admitted, seeing the group of miners and goblins come into view around the corner. He discontinued the conversation while he carefully observed the surrounding reactions. Walking through the crowd, he noticed that most of the attention was on Brando, no matter how much he manipulated his halo.

The two returned their tools without incident and withdrew to an inconspicuous spot in the back. Fin retrieved the two gems that he found and held them up. “Obviously, we’re not going to trade the, uh, you know, for a bowl of soup. We’ll just use these tonight.”

Brando waved off Fin’s offer and held up a small gem, “Hang on to it, for now, I have a backup.”

Instead of tucking the gem away, Fin wanted to try something. He held the gem in his hand and whispered, “Lesser stow.” He felt a brief cord of power through his arm, and the gem vanished. Excited, he pulled his rock out of his pocket and then caused it to disappear as well.

Curious about how to retrieve his items, he lowered his circular window and rotated it until he saw something interesting. The labeled representations of his two stowed items were displayed on the blank page he had never seen. One was labeled “Unrefined Quartz,” and the other, “Favorite Rock.” Ignoring how his dragon magic marked his rock, he focused on the “Unrefined Quartz” description. Were all the gems in the mine quartz?

Wanting to inspect the unrefined quartz, the box emptied, and the clear crystal materialized in his hand. Quickly holding up his other hand, the other gem he held moved to his box with the now recognizable thread of power. It was also labeled “Unrefined Quartz.”

“Brando, let me see your gem,” Fin said, holding out his hand. With a shrug, the large man placed his soup gem into an outstretched hand. Stowing the gem and booting his favorite rock from his inventory, causing the rock to appear once again in his hand.

Brando flinched. Feelings of anger at losing his meal ticket and the surprise from watching it turn into a rock made Brando sputter until he realized what was happening. “The treasure stow!” Immediately regretting his outburst, he lowered his head and attempted to appear nonchalant in the growing looks of attention. “Can you make it change back?”

Ignoring Brando, Fin quickly looked to see how Brando’s gem was labeled. Relieved at the words, “Unrefined Topaz,” Fin explained his new ability quietly. “I didn’t change it into a rock; I just stowed it away. I think I can only have two items at a time, though. When I tried to add a third, it unstowed whatever item was next in line. That’s why it looked like your gem turned into a rock. Let me try something.” Fin held up two hands, an empty hand and one holding the rock. With a little concentration, the rock disappeared, placing a quartz crystal in the other.

Before Brando could say anything, Fin handed him the quartz. “Use this instead. The ones I found were quartz, but I doubt the goblins will know the difference. If we’re going to throw them away for food, we might as well toss the worthless ones first.”

“How do you know it’s quartz?” Brando polished the clear crystal with his thumb and looked closely at it.

After Fin explained how his two storage spaces cataloged his items, Brando insisted that he identified his large gem. If it was quartz, he was going to be disappointed. Handing it to Fin, he held his breath for the verdict.

Fin withdrew his rock and held the large gem. When it disappeared, he read out loud, “Unrefined Topaz.”

The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

Brando let out his breath, clutched the quartz in his hands, and came to a decision, “I think it will be safer if you hold on to it for now. Let’s get some dinner.”

When they arrived at the front of the line, the fat goblin accepted the crystals without hesitation, causing them both to immediately relax. Some of the other miners gave them greetings which were returned with a smile and a curt nod.

When the two men had eaten and discussed their plans, they each retired for the night. Fin opted to sleep in his hovel.

Wanting to experiment with his Treasured Sleep ability, Fin brought out the two gems from his inventory and put them in the pocket with his rock. He assumed that since it was categorized as his favorite rock, it had to be a part of his treasure quest in a way. He wasn’t sure what would have happened if he had accidentally fallen asleep next to bones, but whatever a Bone Quest was, it sounded disgusting. If he ever met a dragon with bones in his cave, he would have to ask about it.

The next morning came with the routine of his predicament. Brando woke up, cursed the rock that found itself under him while he was sleeping and walked over to see if Fin was awake. To his surprise, he found a pleasant look on Fin’s face. This made him jealous enough to want to shake the boy out of his delightful little slumber. He hadn’t slept as well as Fin appeared to be doing since before he got here.

Opting to work the soreness out of his body, he moved his joints around and tried to work the soreness out of his muscles. Looking down at his body, he realized he was losing weight fast. He still had plenty of stored energy left, assuming their plan worked and was executed soon. He sat down and started up at the surrounding cliffs and walls, going over their plan over and over.

When Fin woke up, he felt like he hadn’t slept better in a long time. He found the two gems, and his rock snuggled next to him. He noticed that his status halo wasn’t still up, but he felt like he could recite his quest log from memory now, so it didn’t bother him. He brought it back up to experiment with it throughout the day.

Adding the gems to his inventory and the rock to his pocket, he crawled out of his cave. To his surprise, his body didn’t feel as sore as it did the day before. He moved around to test his body out, but he felt he was okay.

Watching intently, Brando asked him how he slept. He seemed overly happy about the answer. “You haven’t slept that well in years?! That’s incredible! I’m so happy for you!”

“I think it has something to do with this Treasured Sleep ability,” Fin added, unsure why Brando was so happy about how he rested.

“That makes so much sense!” Brando nodded like he was just given an obvious solution to a complex problem. “I’m going to want to hear more about how sore you don’t feel later on, just don’t let me forget to ask. I had an idea while you were resting, and I want to run it past you.”

Before Fin could voice his confusion, Brando continued. “You know how we wanted to lock the goblins out? I was thinking, what if we locked them in? The more goblins trapped here, the less will be able to track us down when we get out. I don’t know about you, but I don’t know how far I can run after eating the bare minimum and sleeping on rocks every night. I say we spring our trap, and if it works, we’ll sabotage the lock and trap them here.”

“I was thinking about it too,” Fin remembered. “When we do Heidle’s rocks-in-a-bag plan, we’re going to need a third person: two people to talk loudly, and when they walk away, we’ll need a third person to club the goblin.”

“Fair point,” Brando agreed. “Let’s catch up with the dwarf today and see what he thinks.”