Late at night, Annan was about to rest, taking advantage of the Lord of Hell's inability to reach into Strange Tales City. Then he suddenly sat up.
The empty Church Dungeon had suddenly grown noisy. The Oddities were waking in their respective Cells.
Annan stared blankly at the bizarre scene before him... Had his shelter turned into an Oddities' Lair?
Or rather... he had chosen an Oddities' Lair as his shelter.
Click—
The Cell door Annan had just shut opened on its own. He and Burnt Girl moved to the bars and watched misshapen figures emerge from the other Cells.
They were undoubtedly Oddities, but unlike those outside... these creatures seemed less sinister, less uncanny...
"New here?"
An Oddity with a crocodile's head and swollen skin studied Annan. It spoke in flawless Common Tongue. "Two of you?"
"I'm her brother."
Annan pretended to be a new prisoner and stood beside Burnt Girl.
But Crocodile Head didn't care. It muttered something and headed out of the Dungeon.
"Let's go out too."
Annan tucked Burnt Girl's True Body close to his own, then kept both the World Tree Leaf and the Otherworld Tree Leaf on him as they left the Cell. The former could hurt Oddities; the latter made Oddities regard him as one of their own.
Dozens of Oddities filled the place with life, though no living human would have described it that way... Annan saw no other humans among them. Nor did they show much interest in him, apart from an occasional glance cast by hundreds of eyes covering a body, an eye that had replaced a head, or eyes protruding like tangled balls of thread.
It was as if Annan looked no different from them.
They gathered in twos and threes in the Dungeon hall, even conversing in Common