Chapter 14- The hunt continues
The faint howl of a wolf could just about be heard in the distance. Its shrill cries partially veiled by the soft coo of an owl that took up residence on a wildered branch on one of the misshapen trees in the woods.
But these loud shrieks and calls were only heard by their own kind since the heavily cloaked man with his two henchmen were far too occupied with discovering their whereabouts to notice these cries of nature. The curtain fall of dusk made their efforts vain.
The innate rage that had been kept caged and tamed throughout this trip was threatening to escape as, slowly, Marcuse began to realise the directions given to them by the young boy were nothing other than a lie. He, like so many times before on the hunt, never took his eyes away from the road in front of him as though just one sight could make his goal that easier to reach. Fury was beginning to claw its way up his tree-like build as a single, simple sign of some kind of route was growing more unlikely to be found.
The hollow man's eyes could no longer be likened to a pebble or a plain, black button but to the mere cinders fallen from a piece of used coal; drained and utterly lifeless. His eyes had been damaged. The constant anger dwelling inside of him had begun swallowing the last minuscule pieces of his soul. Tearing at it right to the very core- his eyes being the last victim.
The three continued trekking across the forest floor with nothing but the glowing eyes of the owls as their source of light. It looked like there would be no way out for the three hunters. No opening or gap of any kind delighted their sight. Marcuse was growing more and more furious with the thought that he had been tricked by no more than a dirty little child. They were nowhere near Paris for all that surrounded them was rural territory. No spire from a Cathedral or misplaced tile on top of a roof greeted their view. And, as said before, there was not a single sign.
Marcuse did not wait for his soldiers to catch up before suddenly deciding to sprint the length of a temporary clearing in the forest. Thorns and nettles threatened to scrape his stone-like skin as the trees either side of the three men leaned closer towards their bodies as they dashed. They were outnumbered.
Though the minister had no clue as to his whereabouts, something inside him suddenly told him that he was close. The eagerness that had never ceased to take control of him was the very same thing that told him his reward was close. It was an innate, unexplainable sense but a sense that Marcuse did not doubt once. He trusted himself completely. If this thing had told him he would have his reward very soon then that was certainly good enough for him.