The freezing mud didn't just feel cold. It felt heavy, soaking into the thick wool of his oversized trousers until they threatened to slide right off his hips. Krai stared up from the muck, his breath hitching in a throat that felt far too narrow.
"Where did this kid come from?"
A girl with short, messy pink hair tilted her head. She looked up at the grey, oppressive sky for a second before turning those sharp, restless eyes back toward him. "Did he fall from the clouds?"
Beside her, another girl with long, silken pink hair shook her head slowly. She didn't look nearly as frantic, but there was a strange, haunting stillness in her gaze. "I didn't see him fall. He was just... there like the mud."
"He's a swordsman!" a red-haired boy barked. He lunged forward, pointing a dirty finger at Krai's chest. The kid looked like he was ready to start a fight with the air itself. "A swordsman who fell from the sky. I bet he's got a secret technique."
A much larger boy stood behind them. He was a wall of muscle even at this age, his presence grounded and silent. He simply crossed his arms. "Umu."
Krai tried to swallow, but his mouth was dry.
This had to be a hallucination.
The ring must have released some kind of neurotoxin. The faces, the hair, even the specific way they carried themselves—they were almost perfect, miniature copies of his childhood friends. Liz, Sitri, Luke, and Ansem. It was a nightmare carved out of his own memories.
"He's not a sky-man," a sharp voice cut through the chatter.
A black-haired girl with twintails stepped forward. She looked annoyed, her brow furrowed in a way that screamed of a headache in the making. She walked right up to the shivering Krai, ignoring the muck ruined her boots.
She looked like she was from a bad neighborhood and had already decided Krai was a problem.
She planted her fists on her hips. Leaning down, she brought her face so close that Krai could see the faint smudge of dirt on the bridge of her nose. "Who are you? And where did you actually come from?"
Krai's brain felt like it was treading water.
What is going on? Why am I a child? Why is Lucia interrogating me in a garbage dump?
"I... I don't know," he managed to whisper. His voice was high-pitched and weak. It was the voice of a boy who had not hit puberty yet.
The short-haired pink girl suddenly dropped to her knees. She did not care about the mud. She shoved her face even closer than the black-haired girl had, her hands snapping out to grab Krai's cheeks. Her palms were calloused and freezing. She squeezed Krai's face and tilted it left and right with a terrifying intensity.
For a second, Krai froze
Her face kept coming closer. Her eyes were wide, unblinking, and filled with a frantic sort of curiosity.
Krai thought she was going to kiss him, or maybe bite him.
"I like your eyes," she whispered. Her voice carried a faint, jagged edge. "They're black. Like the bottom of a deep well. Can I have them? I can offer you mine in return. One for one?"
A shiver raced down Krai's spine that had nothing to do with the wind. It was the "Sitri" look. That absolute, terrifying.
Her left hand let go of his cheek, her fingers curling into a claw as they moved toward Krai's right eyeball. This indicated she was not joking. She really wanted to swap.
THWACK.
The black-haired girl brought her hand down in a sharp chop and slammed it right onto the pink-haired girl's head.
"Ouch!" the pink-haired girl yelped, clutching her skull and finally letting go of Krai.
"Stop being weird," the black-haired girl snapped. She stood up straight and looked at the others. "We're losing daylight. We should go."
"Right," the group said in unison. The synchronization was perfect.
They turned as one and started walking away. Krai watched them go, his hands clutching the collar of his adult-sized jacket to keep it from falling off his shoulders.
As the circle of children broke, he finally saw what lay beyond them.
It was not the Imperial Capital. There were no white stone buildings or soaring towers.
Instead, lopsided shacks made of rotted wood and rusted metal stretched out as far as the eye could see. Smoke rose from trash fires, and the smell of stagnant water and decay hung heavy in the air.
It was a massive, endless slum.
The black-haired girl stopped. She turned her head and looked back at Krai over her shoulder. "Hey, newbie. Aren't you coming?"
Krai blinked, his mind still trying to find a logical exit. "To... where?"
"To find food, obviously," she said, as if he were the stupidest person on the planet.
The girl with long pink hair gave him a small, eerie smile. "Come on. You'll get hungry if you stay there."
The red-haired boy laughed, and the big one just grunted another "Umu."
Except for the black-haired leader, they all seemed strangely welcoming for a group of street urchins.
Krai stared at the mud, then at the retreating backs of the only people he recognized in this farthest part of the world.
He reached down, grabbed his oversized hems, and forced his small, weak legs to stand up.