>Chapter 3<

"–id, David!" Phillip said in, what could only be described as a loud whisper.

David's eyelids slowly started to open when he heard a familiar voice calling out to him. He looked around and saw Phillip next to him shaking his shoulder a little. He then saw the others were slowly getting off from their spots and slowly walking towards the entrance of the carriage.

"Are you coming yet? We don't know how much time we have left to escape." Timothy said impatiently.

"Yeah yeah, we're coming." Phillip said while helping David stand up by pulling him by his hand.

The closest one to the entrance of the carriage, Jacob, carefully lifted up the flap of old cloth and looked outside.

Silence rang out inside of the carriage as the group of teenage boys silently sat there for a few minutes before Jacob said.

"The coast should be clear, we'd better hurry up."

Jacob was the first one to get out of the carriage. As he was getting out, he stepped on a twig which made snapping sound.

*Snap*

Thought the sound would not be considered loud under normal circumstances, but because of the nervousness and the silent forest surrounding them, they could even hear the echoes of twig that snapped just a moment ago.

Jacob stood still for a moment and looked around before continuing to walk to the side of the carriage and practically gluing himself to it. He then proceeded to signal the boys with a finger motion telling them to come over to him.

The boys started getting out starting with Patrick, Tim, Phillip and then finally David. Once they were finally outside the carriage for the first time, they could see a veil of darkness covering up the entire night sky. It seemed to stretch out endlessly. The only source of light right now was the moon shining in whitish, silver light as if cleansing the darkness that was stretching out endlessly.

The boys then looked around the forest that was surrounding them from all sides. There was a quiet breeze flowing throughout the whole forest, gently ruffling the tree leaves, occasionally guiding them to the ground without making even the tiniest sound leaving nothing but lonely tree branches.

Now that they were all outside the carriage, they started looking around and soon found a light source not so far into the distance. The light was flickering so they could deduce that the kidnapper in question set up a fire to spend the night here.

They then started walking towards the forest opposite to the camp. Soundlessly shuffling through the knee-high grass, the boys were slowly getting out of the little forest opening that they were staying in up until now.

When they got to the edge of the opening, their slow walking and the quiet ruffling sound turned into a full blown sprint over the course of a half a second.

Though the acceleration was very sudden, almost no noise was made during that time, so the boys started running as if it was for their life. Well it maybe actually was, but they didn't know that, or, better yet, they didn't need to know. The only thing on their minds was getting as far away as they could from their kidnapper.

As they were running through the somewhat misty surrounding and the quiet forest, they could hear the not so quiet howls of wolves echo throughout what seemed like the entire forest. This motivated the boys even further, so after slowing down they started gaining speed once again.

*Ruff*

Rough ruffling sounds could be heard now. If the previous sounds of walking were like a calm river, then this would be a rocky downstream with a waterfall at the end.

As they got further and further away, the boys slowly started slowing down. Nobody could blame them for getting tired. Even they themselves would be astonished to know at what speed they running and for how long. The athletes on the Earth would be covering their faces with their hands out of shame if they saw this superhuman effort to run, to save their lives, to get as far away as they could.

After a while of the running that slowly turned into a slow jog, the boys finally stopped and immediately fell to the ground, either on their back, on their knees or just straight up face down like they didn't care at all. Well that was probably the last thing on their mind that they had to worry about.

After trying to catch their breath for more than ten minutes, our group of friends finally started looking around them to try and see their surroundings. After letting their gazes focus for a while, they could see a heavy fog surrounding them. They could barely see ten meters away from themselves.

"Hey, when did the light mist turn into this thick fog?" Patrick asked, while supporting his whole body with his hands on his knees.

They were all so focused on getting away from that place that they didn't even notice the change in the forest surrounding them.

"Who cares? We're lucky we got away from that weird person." Answered Tim while he leaning against the side of a nearby tree while still breathing heavily.

After a few seconds of thinking Patrick got up and looked at his friends before speaking once again, but this time following up with a different question.

"Did we really have to run?"

The boys just looked at him weirdly before one of them spoke up, with their own question.

"Huh? What do you mean by that?" Said David with a "what the heck are you talking about" expression on his face.

"Well, what if we just talked to the guy? Did he really mean any harm to us? What if he was just a good guy trying to help?" A bunch of questions immediately poured themselves out of Patrick's mouth.

"Wait, wait, wait... You're trying to tell me that we should have talked to that guy? And how do you know it's a male anyway?" Phillip asked.

"Well... i may or may not have peeked a little..." Patrick answered with a guilty face.

"Y-you did what?" Tim and David asked as they raised their voice a little bit at the end of the question, while Jacob was looking at Patrick as if he was a crazy person.

After a little bit of silence, Tim decided to not to comment any further and instead ask a question.

"So? What did he look like?"

"Well... he was very tall and very muscular. If i had to guess, then I'd say he is a bodybuilder try-hard." Patrick answered.

"..." Silence permeated the surroundings as the boys thought for a while before Phillip got up from his laying position and spoke up. "If that's it then it's a good thing that we didn't try fight him, or at least it's a good thing we didn't need to fight him at all."

"You're right." Said Tim and then quickly turned to look at Patrick and asked. "If you knew then... why didn't you tell us?"

"I-i forgot..." Patrick answered, looking to the side in shame before muttering. "I-I'm sorry."

"Ah... Forget it, nothing we can do about this since it already happened and we're not there anymore, so it's not like it concerns us anymore." Jacob said trying light up the situation.

The rest looked at Jacob and then nodded before continuing to walk in an unknown direction.

Meanwhile, Tim was looking at Jacob and silently asking himself.

"Did he just raise a flag...?"