Fin woke up to a pounding headache and a notification.

* Precarious Blessing Quest Complete: Heal an ally at the expense of your own life force. +1 Active Ability.

* Active Ability: Bestow Ability

He sat up and squinted against the horizontal sunlight.

"You're awake!" He heard Brando exclaim.

"How long have I been out?" He asked, pressing his hand against his beating head and adding, "Did Heidle make it?"

"It's been four days now," Brando said bitterly. "And no, Heidle didn't make it."

"Ah, don't mess with the lad," Heidle's voice pierced the sorrow in Fin's heart. "You passed out five minutes ago, and I'm fine. Or I will be fine after a while. Now, have a taste of this soup before we lose you again. You look like an undead draugr."

"A what?" Fin asked, receiving a bowl of soup in shaky hands.

"Just eat," Brando admonished.

"After you finish, you should unpack the supplies so everyone else doesn't have to eat Sophie's stew. She hasn't gotten better at cooking since we've been gone."

"That reminds me!" Fin exclaimed, feeling dizzy from over-exertion. "I brought you something."

Fin reached forward and produced an apple pie from thin air. "We are farther East than you originally thought; the village with the apple pie is directly North of us. I did some shopping there before coming here and bought you this. It's cut into individual slices so we can all have a piece."

A feeling of overwhelming joy brought tears to Heidle's eyes, and he took the pie. He thanked Fin sincerely and, without regard for his dirt-covered hands, removed a slice and began savoring each bite. Brando reiterated how they could all share, but Heidle ignored him. He kept him away with his elbows as he took one wonderful bite after another.

Fin unstowed and gave many of his supplies to Sophia and Rasengold, who cooked. At the same time, everyone else took turns sleeping or standing watch. That evening, everyone ate and drank to their hearts' content and greedily slept under the stars under the watchful eye of dwarves and freed slaves alike.

The next morning, everyone set out to do one chore or another. Enemy corpses were taken out of the camp and tossed into one of the many ravines; the others were buried with ceremony. Exploration parties formed to investigate the camp found supplies, a well, and the last surviving goblin.

Peggy, an older woman verified among the slaves, vouched for the goblin. "This is Hobby, and he was made a slave like the rest of us. You can't kill him! He didn't do anything wrong!"

No one liked the idea of having a rogue goblin roaming around freely, but Peggy cried and begged them to spare his life. So, reluctantly, they did and were forced to endure a goblin's company for a time. That was until Grant returned, greeted everyone with a wave, and stepped on poor Hobby. Fin, who was sleeping in the late Lady Marsha's bed, woke to an unexpected notification. As he was still not feeling well, he ignored everything except the gold stat points. He allocated one and went back to sleep.

* Blood Quest Complete: Defeat all your enemies. +2 levels, +8 gold stat points, +1 Passive Ability.

* Passive Ability: Blood Halo

Days turned into weeks before Fin's youthful color returned to his face, but even then, he still didn't feel like his normal self. He helped with the chores the best he could, which mostly meant looking around for more secret stashes of gems. Lady Marsha had one in her room behind a loose brick, and some of the goblins had hiding places around camp. So, he decided to split the gems among the miners who had stayed, which was most of them. After all, they were the ones to dig them up.

First, he sorted the gems in his inventory and kept all the quartz for himself. They were virtually worthless to anyone else but proved excellent bargaining chips to a Sprite who didn't know better or care. He had a fortune in quarts, which he used whenever he needed something from Void. Unfortunately, he forgot to ask for the smaller elemental's contract before he made good on his promise to drop it down a well. The little thing fought the whole way down.

He then divided the gems between all the "residents," or people who dug up the gems in the first place. They created a kind of economy in the mining camp. They were used as an exchange or gifted to Rasengold for cooking. The old dwarf gave some of the gems to Fin, but the rest he sent to town to be used for supplies. Brando drafted a letter to be delivered to Eugal. He would pay him a visit with his appetite for apple pie if they weren't given a fair deal for supplies. He also asked Eugal to send some plants and trees. The massive, overgrown weeds around the camp started to wear on his nerves.

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As Fin explored his new abilities, he could only figure out what one of them did. Bestow Ability was self-explanatory, for the most part. He tried it out on Brando, gifting him an ability he couldn't use anyway. If he lost it forever, it wouldn't matter.

"I think I feel something," Brando admitted. "I'm not sure, though."

Fin looked at his abilities; sure enough, he no longer had Stone Simulacrum Wings. This is what he was afraid of, losing access to an ability once given away. The real test would be to see if the ability ever became available again. While Fin was musing over his abilities, Sprout saw something that made her lose interest in her latest weed. She drifted over to Brando, who had something trying to grow from his back. She loved making things grow, so she helped.

Brando was in the middle of mentioning how something didn't feel right when massive wings sprung from his back. He immediately fell backward.

"I thought you were giving me the ability to see gems," Brando struggled on the ground. "Why do I have wings?"

"I said," Fin took Brando's arm and helped him to his feet. "If everything works out, I will let you borrow Sense Treasure. I just don't want to lose it forever, so we are testing giving you something less valuable."

Brando dusted himself off and tried to get a better look at his wings. They were massive things that appeared to be sculpted with black marble so thin as to break off at any moment. They were smooth in some places and rough in others. Fin touched one of the wings, and it didn't feel like it looked. It felt like leather and bone.

Brando's first instinct was to try flying, but he couldn't seem to flap his wings hard enough. He ran around and tried jumping off the wall. At most, the wings slowed his fall. He would have to do something truly dangerous to test them further, which he looked forward to. He then tried to test how sturdy they were. Fin tried punching and scratching them, but they held up to a decent amount of damage.

The final test was to see how well they could be folded. Even with the wings folded up as far as they could, they were still very noticeable.

Three black spires rose from behind each shoulder and draped like a sinister cape to the ground.

"Do you think they would let me visit the princess looking like this?" Brando asked, posing with his wings.

"Probably not," Fin admitted. "You look like a storybook villain designed to scare children."

"You have no idea how happy that makes me," Brando admitted. "I think I'll keep them."

"Hang on," Fin said, pulling up his ability page. He had an ability point for a long time, waiting for something useful to spend it on. He purchased Wing Attack and used the Bestow Ability again to see if he could give someone more than one. It went through, which meant he could. It also meant that trying to boot another ability out might not work.

At Fin's prompting, Brando tried a Wing Attack. His wings slashed forward one after the other, causing him to briefly lose balance. It was a powerful attack that would be perfect for a melee fight. It had reach, speed, and power. He then asked him to try deactivating the wings.

"What do you mean, deactivate it?" Brando asked incredulously. "I still want to play around with them."

"Just will the wings to go away," Fin suggested. "Picture a lever that activates your wings, and then pull that lever backward."

Brando pulled every imaginary lever he could think of, and nothing happened. He wished they would go away so Fin would stop using lever analogies, and it worked. The wings seemed to evaporate like smoke. Through the back of his torn shirt, Fin could see two grey scars that ran down the length of his back. Brando willed the wings to return, and they shimmered into existence. He couldn't have been happier.

Eventually, Fin discovered how to take the ability back, but it required the other person to give it back while he activated Bestow Ability. He also tried experimenting with Blood Halo but couldn't figure out what that did other than to decorate his shroud ability. Below the circular status, ability, inventory, and quest menus that floated above his head now sat a red circular halo. As far as he could tell, it was just for decoration, but he kept it up in case something revealed itself.

Marriam, the owner of the Dunkle mine, made good on her unofficial agreement to profit from the mine. Caravans arrived, bringing food, supplies, and building materials. Shops popped up overnight and sold wares in the morning. Marriam came herself a week later and was disappointed to find she had competition from the Kel family restaurant and general store. Fin and Brando made it abundantly clear that all residents and all those who helped fight the goblins had equal ownership. And so started the Equal Ownership Mine, though most people still referred to it as 'the goblin mine,' 'the mine,' or 'camp.'

Eventually, the plants and trees arrived in a caravan, and Sprout gladly went to work growing them. She also still grew giant weeds, which Brando made go away under the cover of darkness. She didn't seem to notice when the weeds disappeared but floated around, growing things as usual. Soon, the mine was a veritable oasis of greenery in the desert.

New faces arrived to dig up gems, and new shops opened, bringing new ways to make and spend money. Fin and Brando had long since become wealthy on gems, taxes, and fees, but they knew they weren't going to stay forever. Heidle was the first to go. After Fin and Brando drew him a more accurate map from rocks, he made them promise to visit. They did, and after tears, hugs, and promises, Heidle left the mine he had been imprisoned in for years.

The place wasn't the same without Heidle, so Fin and Brando decided to go too. They had already stayed longer than they intended to. They traded their gems for gold, spent as much of it as they could, and said their goodbyes. They left the mine under the glow of the rising sun. The journey home should have been the easiest part of their travels, and it was. The difficult part was going home with the feeling that they would have to explain the two orbs and rock giant following them.