Glad for the years she had spent hiking through the local woods, Esmay felt almost at home in the forest. 
	As the trees and plants grew thicker, she spied a good-sized dead branch nearby. Without straying too far from the others, she picked it up. Letting herself fall back into the group a bit, she began whittling one end of the stick into a point, careful to keep an eye on the path growing ever more treacherous as well as the sharp blade in her hand. Satisfied that the tip would at least do [i]something,[/i] she sped up to walk alongside Sydney at the front, using the make-shift weapon as a walking stick.
	Esmay shouted when a figure in an elegant cloak stepped in front of the group, its face hidden in the shadows of its hood. Gripping her spear in both hands, the knife carefully held against the wood, she pointed the carved end at the figure.
	“So who’re [i]you[/i] now?” she asked, trying but failing to sound threatening, her heart pounding ferociously in her chest. [i]And where the freak did you come from?[/i]
	When the figure only turned, silently beckoning them to follow, Esmay’s brows furrowed and she cocked her head.
	“Alrighty then,” she muttered. With a quick glance around the forest, then at the others, she, too, hurried after strange figure.
	When they finally stopped and he revealed the clearing and suspiciously placed chest, excitement flooded through her. A hundred things that could be inside ran through her mind. 
	With a quick double-take, her attention snapped to Sydney as she all but charged to the chest. Partially not wanting to let her go head-first alone and mostly not wanting to be left out of the surprise of what the chest held, Esmay jugged quickly after her.
	She reached Sydney as the red-head opened the chest and declared its contents.
	“Yes!” Esmay happily dropped her knife and poor excuse of a spear near the chest and reached for the first hilt she saw. She pulled the weapon free from the others with the slight [i]shing[/i] of the blades sliding together.
	It took her a moment to adjust to the weight. She examined the sword, a grin spreading over her face as the sunlight glinted promisingly off the long, kriss-style blade.  She eagerly stepped away from Sydney and swung the sword experimentally, the weight satisfying.
	She looked back to the way they had come, Strauss’ questions floating through the clearing.
	In a motion not quite as fluid as she wanted it to be, Esmay carefully rested the flat of the blade of her new weapon against her shoulder and stepped back toward the figure.
	“That [i]would[/i] be nice to know, wouldn’t it?” She stopped just to the side of the opening so the others could pass through, the figure in her line of sight. With a decent weapon, she felt a sense of empowerment. “As grateful as I am, what’s the catch here?”