They had had enough of shortcuts and left the scattered remains of Lost Pine at an angle, heading for a safe house instead of straight across the wilderness towards home. They reached it as dark was falling, a small but sturdy one-roomed affair with a fireplace. Herobrine was covered in splinters and bruises, which, although annoying, wouldn't kill him, but he was worried about Steve, who had stopped outside Lost Pine to cough up blood. He said he'd just been bruised by the force of the blast. Hopefully he was right, but regardless, they both needed a rest. Herobrine built a fire while Steve poked through their supplies.
"Guess what we don't have?" Steve asked.
"Decent food?"
"That too. We didn't bring tweezers."
"Oh joy."
"I can probably get some of the larger ones out."
"Please do." Herobrine sat near the fire and pulled his shirt off. Steve laughed.
"You look like a hedgehog."
"Only if hedgehogs are in constant discomfort from their skin. Start on my neck." Steve took two knives and carefully caught the end of a splinter between the blades. "How are you feeling?"
"Me? Alright."
"No more blood?"
"Nah. If it was something serious I couldn't have walked all the way here."
"I hope sAAA! What are you doing?!"
"Pulling out splinters."
"It feels like you're jamming them in deeper! Aah!"
"Stop being a child, Herobrine."
"It's not funny."
"No, no. Not at all."
"You're laughing." Steve said nothing, because he was trying very hard not to laugh. "Anyway, I've been thinking about that stick."
"The staff?"
"I'd still like to study it, but I think I'd better give it to you. It only makes sense." He pulled the staff towards him across the floor and offered it to Steve.
"No."
"No, what? It likes you."
"But…"
"Take it." Steve picked up the staff and looked at it.
"You mean it?"
"Yeah. It's yours now."
"Good," said Steve, and jammed it up the chimney. Herobrine leapt to his feet.
"AAAAAH WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!"
"You said it was mine. I can do what I want with it, right? Herobrine!"
Herobrine threw the door open and bolted into the night. Steve ran after him, and after a short distance Herobrine stopped, panting.
"You don't destroy magical objects right next to where you're going to sleep for the night! Especially ones like that! Who knows what it's going to do to us?!"
"Nothing that that creeper won't do if it finds us with the door still open. Come on." Steve dragged him back inside.
"This is why you're not a mage!"
"Thank goodness."
"You have short hair?" said a voice with an odd accent. "My God, what has Ithaka done to our family?" Steve and Herobrine froze. They looked at each other. Each, to the dismay of the other, looked equally confused. "No, I'm not going to kill you. Turn around."
The staff had disappeared and a silver-haired man in steel colored robes sat in the flames. The firewood didn't seem affected by his weight. Firelight flickered across colored feathers tied into his hair. Herobrine cursed at length.
"It was a soul jar. I should have known."
"Yes you should, especially as you've doubtless heard of me before."
"I wouldn't count on it. I certainly would have been more suspicious if I'd ever heard of a staff being used as a soul jar before."
"Really? Alas, my fame has faded. I blame your grandmother. You're Herobrine and you're Steve, correct? Tsk. You'd make a team fit for legend yourselves if only you knew how to dress yourselves."
"Wat," said Steve.
"Excuse you," said Herobrine, "But coming from a guy in an ugly dress with dead bird bits in his hair, that's a bit much."
"Excuse you," said the apparition, "You're not wearing a shirt."
"I'm covered in splinters!"
"Ah. Tragic, I'm sure." He chuckled.
"It's not funny!"
"I disagree. You're completely wrong about the rhyme, by the way."
"What?"
"Kieran was the first house. If you knew as much history as you liked to think, you'd know that the heir survived the collapse of the house and was overcome by the darkness in a battle years later."
"What."
"It took twelve mages to bring him down."
"What!"
"I know, I know. Doubtless some information has been lost over time. But really, after all that complaining about your grandmother, did it never occur to you that defeat from the sea could be figurative?" Herobrine swore at his lack of intelligence, and Steve shushed him. "The fact that I'm speaking to you should be a reminder of what our mission has been through the ages. To stop death. Or at least to avoid some of its effects. Oh, just a word of advice, in case you decide to follow in my footsteps: binding yourself to an inanimate object is a bad idea. I nearly faded out of existence from sheer boredom before you came along. Don't do it." He stopped speaking, and the brothers stared at him. He coughed quietly. "Manners must have died along with fashion. I realize I must be an amazing sight, but surely you know better than to stare at a guest without speaking."
"Sorry," said Steve. "What's your name?"
"Hallai." He closed his eyes. "I won't stay for long, now that you've destroyed my last anchor. If you have any questions think of them quickly."
"So you're dying now," said Steve. Hallai shrugged.
"I've died before, but without release. Now I'm being released without death. At my death I was very afraid. I wasn't ready to go. I stayed, as you see me."
"And you're ready now?" Hallai looked up at him with dread in his eyes.
"..No."
Steve came closer to the fire and knelt, bringing himself down to his eye level. "I'm so sorry."
"Don't be. You didn't know what you were doing, and burning is an excellent way to deal with unwanted enchanted objects, assuming they're flammable. Don't listen to your brother."
"Hey!" said Herobrine. Hallai smirked.
"Besides, it's much better than haunting the interior of an unused outbuilding for another hundred years. I had almost forgotten the feel of wind when you found me. You took me on a walk. I got to kill some more zombies. I won't go unhappy."
"Question," said Herobrine. "That's nice and all, but before you go, why did you like Steve better than me?"
"Oh. No important reason. Perhaps I'm growing narrow-minded and grumpy in my very old age, but I've always been a prankster, and it upset my sensibilities to see the dynamic reversed. But I've grown fond of you as well, arshenn." He bowed his head. "Now tell me something. Have we gotten any closer?"
"To what?" said Steve.
"To a better solution than sealing one's consciousness inside a dead and immobile object. Or have you given up?"
"Were you before Hericor's time?" asked Herobrine.
"Hericor? That's an old name, but as I recall, he was a warrior, not a mage. Was there another one?"
"Yes. Supposedly he discovered an elixir of immortality."
"Really. What did he do with it?"
"He burned his notes," said Steve, "Lived to be ninety and died peacefully in his bed, surrounded by his family."
"Good for him. For a mage, that's quite an accomplishment by itself." He chuckled as if at an inside joke. Perhaps there was one, though the brothers didn't catch it.
"You agree with him?" said Herobrine.
"Oh I would have liked to know what it did, of course. But I admire his restraint. What were his reasons?"
"He had guessed that it would cause sterility as a side effect, and wrote all this crap about how fathering children is a different kind of immortality and he didn't want to upset the balance of life and blah blah blah."
"Herobrine also wishes we'd had a chance to see whether it worked," said Steve. "I do too, of course, but I also think Hericor made some interesting points."
"You're more patient than me."
"Well. Stay alive and you'll learn something new every day. I wonder—" Hallai flinched, and seemed to be listening. Steve noticed that he could see the stones of the chimney through Hallai's neck. Hallai looked back at them. "Good luck," he said, faintly. Then there were only flames.

A/N: Lookit! Things being resolved and stuff! There will be one more chapter after this.
It must be extremely disorienting to be a stick for countless generations and then suddenly you're on fire and you can see again and shirtless Herobrine is screaming at you. Depending on how you feel about shirtless Herobrine, this might make you very happy or very dismayed to have regained normal methods of seeing at this point in time.