Xanum

Chapter Six

I walked back to Fayne's shack as the sky began to lighten, and I could see my tracks in the snow. I slipped inside the shack through the door as quietly as I could, and covered myself in the furs once again. One thought stuck in my mind the rest of the night, keeping me up no matter how hard I tried to sleep: what was the shadow? I thought about it again and again until I thought I would go insane, but eventually I was able to achieve sleep.

I woke a few hours later, and it was still barely bright outside the shack. How long were the nights here? I pushed the furs off me and returned outside to the tree I'd peed on earlier in the night. As I was relieving myself again, I heard the door creak open, and Fayne's voice calling to me. "I watched you last night, as you left. Where did you go?" he asked. I covered myself and turned to him.

"Why don't you follow my tracks and find out?" I said, challenging him.

"Fine, we'll go. Come," he said, turning and following my tracks through the forest. I jogged back into the shack and saw that Tony was still sleeping. I thought that while Fayne was gone, we could try using the sphere to escape and go home. I pulled the strange fur off his body and shook him awake.

"What do you want, dude?" he asked groggily. He rubbed his eyes and sat up.

"Come on, Fayne is gone. Let's use the ball and go home," I said, excited.

"Oh, shit. He's gone? Let's go," he said. He pushed himself to his feet, pulling the sphere from within the fur's grasp. He looked at the sphere, and a look of helplessness came over his face. "I don't know the combination."

"What?" I asked.

"I do not know the combination," he said.

"Neither do I, fuck. We've got to figure out the correct combination, how many tiles are there?" I asked. We needed to figure out the correct combination before Fayne came back. I knew he didn't want us leaving, and I didn't know if he would take the sphere from us.

"I've got no clue how many, we're going to have to figure out how many there are, and then we've got to mark which combinations we've tried. Do you remember how many fingers that guy in his basement used to press the keys?" Tony replied. I thought back to the night we'd been in Jon's basement. He had taken the sphere... had he used his whole hand? No, he only pressed four keys.

"No, he pressed four of the keys, that means we need to find out which ones there are. Do you still have that piece of paper?" Tony asked. I reached down to my pocket and pulled the neatly folded paper from my pocket.

"Yeah, what are you thinking?" I asked, confused.

"I'm not sure there's any paper or parchment here, so if we can't find any, we're going to have to use that piece of paper in order to keep track of the combinations we've tried," Tony explained.

"But what about the stupid spell to watch over his daughter?" I asked.

"Dude, I don't care about that guy, or his stupid kid. It's his own fault for having a kid. He seemed to know what was coming, he shouldn't have had her," he replied curtly. Jeez, he was being abnormally cruel.

"Hey man, you doing alright?" I asked, concerned. I put my hand on his shoulder.

"I'm fine, Jax. Let's just get this done," he snapped as he pushed my hand away. I watched as he pressed several buttons at once, then waited. My heart swelled with hope, but nothing happened, leaving me with an empty feeling sitting in my chest. He rotated the sphere and frantically pressed four more. Nothing happened. He repeated this two more times, then I decided that it was time to give up. We had to go find Fayne and take care of going home later.