Your misgivings make you reluctant to take the path forward, but upon pondering your options you realize that you have more or less the same misgiving about any of the other paths you're faced with, so figuring that if you're going to make a mistake it may as well be a fairly consistent one, you decide to continue walking forward. Your fear that the path may lead nowhere begins to become more and more likely as the path gets narrower and narrower and the trees of the forest get denser and denser, the canopy overhead blocking out what little sunlight there is left. Still you press on, driven by a sense of faith that the path will lead somewhere and that it won't just end abruptly.
It's about the time that you finish those words in your mind that the path ends abruptly. You hadn't wanted to turn back for fear that it would take you until roughly 10:00 pm to get back. The good news is that you've assured that won't happen. The bad news of course being that it'll probably be somewhere between 11:00 pm and 6:00 am tomorrow morning. The even worse news is that you work at 6:30 am and now will probably end up doing so with so many blisters on your feet you'll end up looking about two inches taller. You sigh. You decide you may as well start developing those additional blisters now and turn around.
"Come closer." you hear from behind you. The voice is so faint that you're not even sure it wasn't your imagination. You strain to hear if it repeats itself.
"Come closeeeeer..." the voice says again, smooth silky and inviting.
"Hello? Can you tell me how to get back to the city from here?" you call out. For answer the voice simply lets out a giggle.
"Maybe...if you come closer." she says. You weigh your options again. Whoever this is, it has to be an actual person or else she wouldn't have been able to answer you. On the other hand you've no idea what kind of person she is. She could be a mugger or worse.
"Come on...don't be shy...just follow the sound of my voice." she says. Well she does seem trustworthy enough...but then you're certain you've read those words in a comic book somewhere.
After pondering awhile you decide to...