The inside of the snakes' den is not at all what I imagined. For one thing, there's actually light. Torches line the rocky cave walls, giving off a warm, inviting glow. I watch Shun snatch one as he passes by, and then shove it into a snake's open mouth. The snake looks surprised for a split second then begins to struggle, sending fire flying every which where. We all dodge.

"Oops, bad idea," Shun laments, while shooting some more snakes like the professional he is.

I, on the other hand, am about to go on playing my elega when I realize that it won't do. The sound echoes off the cave walls, causing unexpected confusion on both sides. I decide that this isn't the right time for me to play anything, so I let my elega vaporize into thin air. I've become quite good at this, I think to myself. Conjuring the elega and making it disappear, I mean. If only I had been this skilled just days ago, Jin wouldn't have—

But no time to think of that now. The snakes are still everywhere, and to make it worse there are paths. Too many paths that branch off in multiple directions, and my allies are already scattering off into different tunnels. I'm not sure why; shouldn't we stick together? Wouldn't we have a better chance that way?

"It's so that we can find Hiroki faster," Stephanie explains, as if she could read my mind. "There's no way we can kill them all, so this is a grab-Hiroki-and-go rescue mission."

"But—but we'll be severely outnumbered! Not that we aren't already outnumbered, but now that everyone's splitting up... what if someone dies on the way?"

"Someone's bound to die," Stephanie responds darkly. "This isn't exactly a suicide mission, but it's not like we plan to all leave alive either."

"You don't have to," I whimper.

"We do," Stephanie says simply. "Hiroki is our friend."

I nod dumbly. Fiercely loyal, these spiders.

We are darting down a dimly-lit passageway now, just me, Shun, and a couple of other smaller spiders. There isn't enough space for us to all spread out, so we have to go in single-file formation, with two sprightly small spider in the front, followed by Shun and his spider, and I am stuck in the rear on top of Stephanie. And trust me, Stephanie doesn't like being in the rear.

"Let me lead, bro," she complains, " just because I'm preggers it doesn't mean I can't fight."

"Think of your babies!" the sprightly small spider in the forefront exclaims, as he dodges a lunging snake and then turns and spews spider silk all around it. We nearly run into him.

"My babies will understand," Stephanie assures, "they'll be proud of their momma."

"They can't be proud of their momma if they're dead—" the same sprightly small spider says, and suddenly disappears.

"There's a cliff! A cliff! Ahhhhh!" the spider following him warns, and disappears too, unable to brake in time. Shun and his spider and Stephanie and I crowd around the edge of the cliff, searching for our comrades. We know that they should be fine, for they are able to swing around by their silk strings and are unlikely to just free-fall to their death. We just have to make sure—

I hear Shun stifle a gasp, and I look down to see the most gut-twistingly horrifying scene I've even had the misfortune to come across in my life.

Under the cliff is a pit. A snake pit. Where tens of hundreds of snakes are curled up together, slithering over each other's bodies, their scales glittering in the torch light.

And smack in the middle, surrounded by the snake horde, is Hiroki.

Hiroki is the kind of person who gets scared easily and cries a lot. He likes being coddled, and being told that everything is going to be all right. But everything is not all right. He looks scared to death, shaking and hyperventilating and curled up in a ball, refusing to open his eyes.

My heart goes straight out to him. Hiroki's a sweet guy who wants nothing but to be loved. He doesn't deserve this.

"Ya know," Stephanie comments to me, "you looked exactly like that when we found you. Are we that scary?"

"It's called a phobia, Stephanie," I tell her, feeling ridiculous as I'm explaining arachnophobia to a spider. I also feel increasingly bad for Hiroki. I can imagine what he's going through, and it sure isn't that great.

"How could they?" I hear Shun say. Something in his voice sets off alarm bells in my head and I turn to him. He looks more enraged than I've ever seen in the ten years that I've known him.

Shun has never been one to get angry. He's the one who would settle fights between classmates easily and diplomatically, the one who would always apologize first even when it wasn't his fault, the one whom the teachers loved, because he would never annoy them like some classmates tended to and would even bring them apples after classes, not to suck up to them, but just because. A typical Libra to the core.

But he is mad now. Fuming.

"How could they do this to him?" he seethes, and I see the heartbreak in his eyes.

"Come on," he tells the young spider he is riding, and they swing down into the tangled mess of snakes.

Well, not exactly tangled; that would imply that they're all knotted up together, which they are not.

Actually, I don't see why they can't be.

"Do you think we can tie those snakes into knots?" I ask Stephanie. She shrugs—at least I think she does, considering that she doesn't exactly have shoulders.

"Sure, we can try," she affirms.

And then everything becomes total chaos. We are soaring through the air, snakes hot in pursuit.

"Right!" I scream, and Stephanie makes a sharp turn, dangling from a string of silk. I turn back to look, hands clutching Stephanie's fur, knuckles white because of how tightly I am holding on. "Left! Now!"

Right on cue, Stephanie swings to the left, and two snakes that had been after us find themselves tied together in a tight knot. They look confusedly at each other and begin to hiss.

"Dude, let's do that again," Stephanie says, all pumped up.

We do just that. Stephanie has no idea how to tie knots (I don't suppose spiders need those in their daily lives or anything) but luckily I have been tying knots since I was three because I had a huge thing for ribbons when I was a little girl, so in no time we're tying snakes of all shapes and sizes together.

It would have been kind of fun, had I not been on a spider, holding its fur, and had it not been for the fact that poor Hiroki is suffering so badly.

I see him now, as we swing closer. Still in fetal position, sobbing his heart out. We make eye contact for a brief moment, but he doesn't seem to register me at all. After being surrounded so closely by his worst fear for so long, it's quite possible that he has lost his sanity.

That's what they want, isn't it? To weaken my friends with their worst fears, until they are easily brainwashable, until they've become exactly like the upperclassmen, the mindless sleepwalker group that follows all orders with blank faces. Until it's too late for us to do anything to help them.

I fear that it is indeed too late.

I'm so sorry, we should have come sooner, I whisper, and I reach out to Hiroki, hoping that somehow I can get him to come back, to understand that not all hope is lost. But my hand has barely touched his before an enormous snake comes crashing in out of nowhere, wrapping itself around Hiroki, who has begun to scream. I can't really blame him; I would be screaming too if a huge boa constrictor is squeezing me to death, worst fear or not.

"Stephanie! What do we do?" I shout in despair.

"Dunno, bro," Stephanie explains, "I'm giving birth by the way."

"By the way?" I shriek, as I watch tons of small spiders spill out from under us.

So many small spiders. So many legs. Multiply every spider by eight, and you'll get—

I don't think I need to know the number of spider legs I have around me. Just because I like Stephanie it doesn't mean that I have gotten over my phobia. I try not to look at Stephanie's tiny offspring, and concentrate on Hiroki. I hate how there's nothing I can do, even though I'm so close, right in front of him. I hate that I don't actually have a real weapon that's not an instrument. But surely Shun does, doesn't he?

I look around for him. I'm useless, Stephanie's still in labor, the baby spiders can't help because they were literally just born. We need Shun. Hiroki needs Shun.

I spot him somewhere behind us. Rather close, actually. His ride, the excited small spider that isn't quite so good at English, is but a flat shell on the ground. Dead.

A good thing is that Shun isn't dead. He's perfectly fine and unscathed, in fact. But if that's the case—

Why isn't he doing anything?