“Maybe,” Esmay called to Simon with a taunting grin, drawing out the word. She quickly turned her attention back to the forest looming ahead, every shadow cast by the trees or lurking beneath the bushes housing a possible threat.
	Even so, the beauty of the world was still captivating. She hurried toward the forest a little ahead of the others, reached up with her free hand, and gripped one of the leaves on a low-hanging tree limb, pulling it off. 
	[i]For a game, this feels incredibly real,[/i] she thought, rubbing her thumb over the leaf. If this world was created by pixels, then there was no other game that could match this place. Not that she had known that games were made to be capable of doing this outside of science fiction films.
	Before she could think too much on it, the trees looked as if they turned to darkness as they grew and stretched into living, twisting shadows.
	Esmay’s pace slowed to a near stop, when something dark flitted between the path in front of them.
	“What the…?” Esmay stepped back with Sydney. She spared Alexander a quick glance at his response, and smirked. “I know, right?”
	She shouted and jumped aside as one of the shadows lashed out at Strauss, but she had scarcely flinched before a second black mass sent Sydney to the ground.
	“Sydney!” Esmay brandished her knife, scowling once more at its size. Making a quick mental note to try and find a good-sized stick, she stood with her body angled sideways and knife held in front of her, ready to try fighting or defending. She searched the shadows for any further movement, lashing out at any mass that so much as twitched.
	Esmay staggered back when a white wolf with an odd tail jumped from the tall grass, nearly tripping over Sydney. She held the knife higher, her eyes wide.
	[i]How do you fight a wolf?[/i] she wondered, but then, the creature began snapping and growling at the living shadows. [i]Is it… [u]helping[/u] us?[/i]
	As soon as the wolf had chased the shadows away, allowing the thin spears of sunlight to pass through the thick foliage above once more, it darted back into the woods.
	“Hey!” Esmay called, stepping after it, but it was long gone. “Thanks,” she muttered, then turned back to the group, casting a quick glance the way the wolf had gone in case it was not actually friendly. Perhaps a trick of the game’s host.
	She turned back to the others and offered Sydney a hand up, her gaze straying to Strauss.  “You two okay? Did that whatever-it-was actually hurt you guys, or do you think we all have like hit points or something?”