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They walked for days or maybe hours through the Fearscape. Dazai didn’t look back once, seemingly entirely aware that he was going just a little too fast for Odasaku to keep up and entirely uncaring of this fact. Finally, though, they came to a stop in front of a well-kept, nice-looking house.
Dazai smiled and turned back to Odasaku, eyes dancing. “Welcome,” he called, “to Upton House!”
“Upton House?”
“It’s our base of operations,” Dazai explained, opening the door and holding it for him. “Totally shielded from the Eye, so that the Pupil can’t focus on us and, hopefully, is totally unaware that we exist. After you.”
Lacking any better options, Odasaku went through.
A young woman was standing in the room, smiling, tiny fangs poking out over her lips. The side of her head was knitted together with spiderwebs, and on the other side, curls bounced out and over her beautiful gothic dress.
“Welcome to my parlor, Oda Sakunosuke,” she said. “I am Annabelle Cane. Dazai said you would be helping us send the Fears away?”
“Yes,” he said.
“Well,” Annabelle smirked, “that’s one down and two to go, then. I don’t suppose you know the location of Nakajima Atsushi or Izumi Kyouka?”
“They were in the Buried before...whatever happened.”
“We call it the Change,” said Annabelle.
“I call it the Eyepocalypse,” Dazai said, “because of the Eye in the sky, so I’m not sure who she means be ‘we’.”
Annabelle just laughed. “You would have made a good Spider, Dazai,” she told him. “It’s a real pity the Spiral got to you first. Now: Buried domains, Buried domains...if they were in the actual Buried before the Change, they might just be in a generic Domain, or they might be presiding over a Domain of their own. It’s a real pity we don’t have an Eye avatar here…”
Dazai shrugged. “I’ll be able to find them. You said it was dream logic, and I haven’t seen anything to disprove that yet.” He looked over at Odasaku and smiled. “We’ll get some rest and food and we can find them.”
Odasaku nodded. “We’ll get Kousuke and the others as well,” he said, ignoring the niggling feeling that they might be legitimately dead.
“Of course you well,” Annabelle said. “The more the merrier, after all, and the Archivist is a formidable opponent. We’ll want to have as many allies as possible if we want to destroy Jonathan Sims and keep him from starving the world to death.”
Dazai frowned over at her. “Starving? I wasn’t aware there was any sort of End to contend with.”
“Everything Ends eventually,” she said. “But we can stop that eventually from being now. Are you two with me?”
“Of course,” Dazai said.
Odasaku nodded. “We won’t let the world die.”
Annabelle smiled, her fangs curling over her lips. “Excellent.”