((Urgh.  Multitudes of apologies for my unacceptable delay.  I return, though - fresh and kicking!))<br/><br/>The Cad could do nothing but run, run like his mind was a fog of motion.  The eight-legged horrors chasing them had awakened such a fear and anger within him that he dared not question it.  If he'd been in a better position, perhaps better armed, he would have turned and fought the creatures alongside his friends.  But now, he had no choice but to run.  It made him furious, and terribly frightened.<br/><br/>Seeing the three girls suspended invisibly between the trees filled his heart with cold, hard lead.  The spiders hanging over them seemed to almost be grinning, the way the light played off their chitinous faces.  He wanted to leap upon them and rend their guts, but he knew he didn't have a chance.  It wouldn't save them if he tried.<br/><br/>Janessa was becoming a weight on his arms as the adrenaline started to bleed out of them.  He threw his head over to look at her... she was limping, one leg dragging behind her other.  His eyes flared into a manic stare.  She was going to leave him, let him go while she stayed... he knew it.  He hated it.<br/><br/>"Don't you DARE say it..." he thought.<br/><br/>She did.<br/><br/>He grit his teeth with the pain of hearing it.  He'd lost all the others not moments before.  He wasn't about to return to the camp with no one else.  But she was adamant; she showed him the punctures on her leg and was begging, pleading him to go...<br/><br/>She threw herself away from him, toward the crowd of oncoming hell.  The Cad found his voice in a scream of rage and sorrow.  Janessa slashed, and was bitten.  She staggered and fell.<br/><br/>Zeref Cadester ran.  Tears flowed in rivers down his sweaty, agonized face.  His legs carried him away from the noblest death he'd ever witnessed.  Soon he found himself in the tall grass, back in the direction from whence they'd come, and he fell onto his hands and knees, panting and weeping uncontrollably.<br/><br/>Death.  It was a bitch.