found

As it turned out, it wasn't too hard to survive in the jungle. He lived off of the pieces of fruit Kigul plucked for him from the high tree branches - in exchange for the nutts and acorns he spent the days scouring the jungle for - and the occasional predator that came after the squirrel family. He felt kind of bad burning and eating the beasts but they had tried to eat his friends and he didn't want to let their corpses go to waste.

Over all, Mongol thought he was doing pretty well for himself...until winter came, the food started to dwindle and the weather got colder. He wasn't an animal of nature. He didn't know to collect and store food for the winter, nor to make a warm shelter from the cold and still all he had was his nightshirt, which while it was long enough to cover his knees when he curled up, was really too thin to provide much warmth.

One morning it was snowing and he was curled up against the tree and rock, hugging his knees and shivering. He knew he should get up and start looking for food but he couldn't find the strength to move. Then Kigol came and jumped on his shoulder. Mongol thought he would be sheltering in his winter nest by now. "You're lucky you have - s-so much fur." He stammered. As if trying to help warm him up, the squirrel curled himself around the boy's neck, forming a kind of scarf. Mongol shivered a laugh.

I need to get up...I need to find food...I need to move.

But he couldn't. He's limbs seemed frozen in place.

I need...to keep...living...

But did he though? Maybe after every thing he'd endured to live this long, this was still what he deserved...

They had been investigating the jungle because they had heard rumours of demonic activity. It wasn't a large mission, only really required the two of them. But then they had seen the distraction of the the farmland and the human remains by the creak behind it.

What she hadn't expected to find was the unconscious boy curled up between a rock and a tree, a mop of long dark hair curtained his face and she guessed his skin had once been a handsome shade of brown but now was paled with cold. Not surprising since he was wearing nothing but a night shirt. Stranger still was the squirrel that was curled around his neck.

As gently as she could, Amila plucked up the baffled squirrel and placed it in a large inside pocket of her gear jacket.

She then reached out to check the boy's pulse, to see if he was still alive. Not two seconds after her fingers touched his skin, he jerked awake, opening his eyes and jumping up.

His cats eyes.

warlock.

Before she could say anything, the boy was running for the hills.

"Hay!" She called after him. "Hay, wait! Come back."

She ran after him and before long her partner joined her. "What happened!" He called to her. "Was it the demon?"

"It's not a demon!" She called back, still running. "It's a warlock child. A young one. Probably newly discovered."

"You're saying it's a little kid!" He looked both incredulous and a little concerned.

He was running with new found strength born of a survival instinct. He was sure this was his worst fear come true: the people had discovered what he had done and had come to lay their judgement on him.

But he was running with no sense of direction and little control and it was starting to get dark, so it was no surprise when he tripped and stumbled, the woman catching him before he fell. He twisted away from her grasp.

"Aku tidak bermaksud demikian!" (I didn't mean to!) He cried.

Indonesian. He speaks the native language.

Amila wasn't sure if that was a good sign or not. "Aku tidak bermaksud..."

"Aku tahu." (I know.) She replied in the same language. "No one's blaming you for anything, kid."

He paused.

"But we do need you to come with us."

Right at the moment, her partner showed up, brandishing a seraph blade.

At the sight of the sword, the boy took off again.

Amila slapped Jon's wrist. "You scared him away!"

He didn't seem bothered. "Drive him towards the edge of the jungle, the others'll be waiting there."

She swated away his seraph blade. "We are not going to hurt him." She said, pointing a finger sharply at her partner. "He is confused and he is afraid."

He rolled his eyes. "Fine." He droned. "But we still have to apprehend him."

She knew he was right, even though she didn't like the way he said 'apprehend' like the boy was a criminal that needed to be arrested, they couldn't let him live among mundanes; and if they left him in the wild he would surely die.

It was properly dark when he reached the edge of the jungle, which just made it more of a shock when these lights suddenly appeared in front of him. He jumped to a stop, moved one way then the other, realised he was surrounded and turned back to the jungle, the woman and the man with a sword emerging from it. A feeling of blind panic building inside him, the terrified warlock bent double, clutching his head, squeezing it as it moved around, blue energy building around him.

With a gut-wrenching cry, he straightened up, a shock wave of cobalt magic blasting out from him, knocking everyone backwards.

The next thing they knew, the boy was laying on the ground, twitching and trembling.

"The kids too powerful for his own good." Jon commented.

Amila crouched down by the shaking boy, who was once again unconscious. "We should take him to the silent city." She took off her gear jacket - still with the squirrel in its pocket - and draped it over the boy "They'll probably be able to handle him there." Before taking he boy in her arms.