<span style="font-style: italic">"To your destiny, young Cadester. To your destiny."</span><br/><br/>The Cad stopped in mid-stride for a split second.  The figure ahead receded into the foliage, but he had to think about just what she - yes, definitely a she - had meant.  And she knew his name.  His surname.  It gave her a sort of power... an air of strange potency.<br/><br/><span style="font-style: italic">"Come. Come to me, young one, hee hee..."</span><br/><br/>He blinked, his strained emotions unable to process the laugh.  He hastened to catch up.  Was this some sort of trap?  What was he falling into, that the one leading him would be so light-hearted?<br/><br/>The greenery began to thin out around him.  He could see the evergreens drawing in and chewed his lip, now beginning to feel like he had been well and truly hoodwinked.  Whoever-it-was was leading him back towards the site of his friends' doom.  He felt sick to his stomach and was about to turn and run back for the camp... at least there would be people he could understand there... but then she spoke again, her voice a gentle coo on the air.<br/><br/><span style="font-style: italic">"All right, young Cadester. It's time.  Don't be afraid, young Cadester. Nothing will disturb us. Soon we will attempt a rescue of your friends... both of us."</span><br/><br/>There were the last remnants of the tall grass in his way.  He brushed them hastily aside and found himself in a clearing of low grasses and lichens.  The trees stood in sporadic groups nearby.  Sunlight trickled through the canopy... and he saw her.<br/><br/>Those golden eyes bore into him, framed in a face the likes of which he'd never dreamed of.  Long red hair cascaded over delicate shoulders and a full bosom.  Muscles announced themselves as sculpted ripples and rises in her dark flesh... no, not a tan.  She was furred.  Fox-like ears rose timidly from her flowing mane.  Her teeth, housed in a slightly protrusive mouth, were thin and delicate, but the canines were sharp and pointed like arrowheads.  Something moved behind her - a tail, short and fully furred.<br/><br/>He somehow became aware that his heart was still beating and that he was indeed seeing a true image, not a hallucination.  It had been for the briefest of moments that he supposed one of the spiders, in the confusion of the escape, had managed to nick him somewhere he had not felt, and not he was going through a venom-induced fantasy.  But no.  She was truly there, facing him.  Part foxer, part woman.  Or something along those lines.  The hand holding his stiletto sweated so much he switched the instrument to the other, only to find it even more moist.<br/><br/><span style="font-style: italic">"I'm not going to eat you."</span><br/><br/>He blinked.  Strangely enough, the thought had not even crossed his mind.  She didn't appear in the least bit threatening, and perhaps the assurances she'd given him earlier had softened his natural wariness.  But she wasn't making any moves against him, nor could he hear or... feel anything waiting in ambush in the vegetation around them.  She wasn't a lure, either.<br/><br/>And she didn't carry herself like a predator.  Zeref knew the stride of the hunter; he'd studied it in the women around him, in the creatures he'd been unfortunate enough to meet in the past, and in his own gait.  This woman glided through the forest like prey.<br/><br/><span style="font-style: italic">"Quite the opposite, young Cadester. I'm certain that you are the one that is hungry."</span><br/><br/>He swallowed hard, and his stomach awoke with a gurgle.  It had been her, watching him since his group had started through the woods.  All the time, she'd been following him, studying him.  Now she had chosen him for something.  Saving his friends wasn't her immediate priority.<br/><br/>The moment that realization crept into his mind, she would see it in his eyes.  Angrily, he held the stiletto up, but his voice emerged smooth and low.  "What do you want from me?"