The primary reason the figure escaped Andrew's notice was that she'd unwisely turned her back to the woods, but it didn't help that she was breathing so heavily she probably wouldn't have heard a charging rhino. In any event, when she'd finally caught her breath, the tap on the shoulder and soft "hello" that followed were startling enough, and when she whirled around and caught a glimpse of writhing snakes and slavering fangs, Andrew shrieked and fainted dead away.
She awoke with a start some time later. She was in a shadowy room-no, wait, it was a cave; there were stalagmites scattered around the firepit on the other side of the room. Aside from the fire, there were a few other signs of habitation, most notably the mat she was laying on and a crude wooden table. Andrew was just getting up to have a look around when she heard a noise from the entrance of the cave. She turned to look; a figure was silhouetted against the sunlight from the entrance.
As Andrew watched, the figure slid into the circle of firelight, illuminated by the dancing flames. It was a girl about the same age as her, but even more clearly inhuman, dressed in only a ratty old shirt. Her skin was mostly a pale green, its surface made up of thousands of little scales, with a patch of milky white banded scales running from the base of her head down the front of her torso, and lines of black tracing delicate organic patterns down her arms. Her face was human in shape, but covered in the same scales as the rest of her; it was framed by what appeared, at first glance, to be dreadlocks, but as the girl approached Andrew realized that they were snakes' tail, sprouting from her head in place of hair. Andrew wondered how she was moving without apparently taking any steps, but a glance where the girl's legs should havebeen revealed that she had a long, snake-like tail for a lower body. Suddenly Andrew thought back to the character-select screen, and farther back to the old books of mythology she'd read as a kid,and she realized what she was looking at.
A Gorgon.
Andrew yelped and shrank back as the girl's face fell. "Look, I'm not going to hurt you, okay?" she said. "Please, I just want to talk. I haven't gotten to really talk to anybody in forever, and since you're another player I thought you might-"
Andrew's eyes went wide, and she managed to shove her fear aside. "Wait!" she said, turning to face the girl. "'Another player?'"
The gorgon nodded. "When you were outside, you had the same dazed expression as I did when I first got here. So I knew you must've gotten stuck in the game, too."
Andrew nodded, sitting up. "Yeah! I just picked my character, and kapow! the thing exploded in my face. And when I woke up I was here, and like this."
The gorgon grinned happily, revealing fangs as well as a full set of needle-sharp teeth, then realized what she was doing. "Oh, I'm sorry," she said, trying and failing to suppress her smile. "I just haven't had anyone to talk to in so long!" She launched herself at Andrew in a tackle-hug; the sensation of her raggedly-clothed breasts mashing against Andrew's naked ones was uncomfortable enough for Andrew without considering that she was being glomped by Medusa's little sister, but thankfully it seemed that mere physical contact wasn't enough to turn things to stone.