Withered Leaves

It seemed that trouble followed Kies wherever he went. No, perhaps he was the embodiment of trouble itself.

Though he couldn't see the owner of the flower garden's face, he knew that she wasn't happy based on the long silence that hung in the air. She was at a loss for words.

"Wait, before you give me an earful, let me fix this for you," Kies offered to the flower garden owner, hoping to make up for his little blunder.

"Um... S-sure." She sounded surprised. It was something that she did not expect him to do. Kies picked up a few of the flowers and examined them.

"I'll be back in a minute." Kies flew off into the thick of the forest and uprooted as many of the same flowers as he could find. He surrounded them carefully with his winds so as to not harm them. After getting more than enough to replace the ones that he killed, he returned back to the house.

The flower garden owner was waiting for him and when she did spot him, she let out a yelp of surprise. "Oh, that was fast," she noted, eyeing the floating flowers next to him.

Without waiting for her instructions, Kies drilled holes in the dirt with his winds and gently plopped the flowers into the holes before refiling them with dirt. Within seconds, the flowers were good as new, and the old ones were buried underneath, to use as fertilizer for the new ones.

"Will this do?" Kies asked the flower garden owner as he was finishing up his work.

"...Yes."

"Sorry for troubling you," Kies apologized. Thankfully that was resolved. Kies made a mental note to himself to be more careful of his landings. The last thing he wanted was to anger more people to get angry at him for being so careless. "If there is nothing else, I'm going to go."

The flower garden owner didn't stop Kies and he went back into the forest. He went back to his original goal which was to find the other source of the poison. He had gotten information from one of the elves that they had initially found the poison around here.

Kies made a few loops around the forest, his eyes glued to the floor. It should have been easy but e couldn't find the poisoned area anywhere. There were no rotting trees or dead leaves to be found here. If anything, this part of the forest was as healthy as could be.

Did the elves lie to him? They didn't like him and he knew that for sure, but was it to the extent that they would be petty and lie to him about something like this?

There was a rustle nearby and Kies turned his attention to the source of the sound. He detected a humanoid figure behind the trees. He waited for the person to appear from the trees. It was the flower garden owner. She was out of breath and was taking sluggish steps.

"You're hard to catch up to," she said in between long breaths. "Are you looking for the source of the poison?" she asked.

"Yes, do you know where it is?"

"Yes. Please follow me."

The flower garden owner took him to a secluded part of the forest that Kies would have never found by himself. It was only a short walk from her small house but Kies could definitely see the effects of the poison in the place.

There was a massive bald spot in the grass, though some new grass was sprouting out of it. There were a couple of rotten stumps scattered throughout the area as well. Bugs and other critters were living in the hollows of these stumps.

"So the elves didn't lie to me..." Kies mumbled. It was just that he couldn't find it.

"What was that?"

"Nothing."

"It looks like you have already taken care of the poison here," Kies observed. It must have been not too long ago as there were new plants coming out of the ground.

"We dug up the contaminated ground and got rid of it." She walked to one of the tree stumps and planted her foot on it. It pushed into the wood like the stump was made out of clay, causing bugs to scurry out of the stump. She hopped back to avoid having them crawl up her and when they were all gone, she approached the stump again and crouched down.

Kies walked over to her side. She shifted a little to the side to give him space. The insides of the stump had an imprint of the sole of her shoe. The poison had softened up the wood to the point that a tiny amount of pressure would harm it.

Kies called down the winds to press down on all the other stumps nearby. None of them reacted the same way as the one in front of them did. While they were rotting and weak, they still have some firmness to them.

"So this is where it started?" Kies asked, assuming that was why she approached this stump out of the rest in this area.

"Yes."

Kies placed his hand against the stump and channeled his magic into the rotting wood. He had no way of sensing poison as he could not do that with his magic, but what he could do was check for any traces of magic. It was doubtful that he would even find anything when the poisoning was resolved some time ago already, but it was worth a shot.

The stump could not handle his magic and exploded. The wood was splattered in all directions instead of splintering, like some disgusting goo. Kies covered the two of them with his magic to prevent any of it from getting on them.

"What happened!?" the flower garden owner asked in a panicked voice. Kies lowered his barrier and the foul smell slammed into the both of them. "A-and what is that smell!?"

"I couldn't find any traces of magic. And sorry for the mess again. Let me clean this up." Kies vacuumed the pieces of the stump and condensed the wet ball into a solid. sphere. He also blew away the foul smell with his winds. "I'll take this back to analyze."

"Um... Yes, please do."

"Anyway thank you for your help. And once again, sorry for disturbing you."

"Of course."

Kies bid her farewell and returned to the central part of the village to find Nyana to hand over the poisoned stump to her. The place was empty and there was no one outside. It was odd since there was still a lot of time in the day but then again, if the elves here were anything like the ones in the capital, they were probably busy doing their own things.

Kies sent his winds to search for Nyana and after finding her location, he flew right to her. She was with another one of the elves from their team and when he dropped down, the two of them looked at him.

"Did you find something else?" Nyana asked, most curious about his appearance again.

"I found this." Kies dispelled the layer of wind surrounding the ball and dropped it into Nyana's hand.

"Ugh," Nyana flung her head back from the smell and the other elf did the same. She almost dropped the ball and she looked like she wanted to throw it as far as she could away from her. With her nose pinched, she asked Kies, "What the heck is this!?"

"Poisoned wood. This came from the other place that was poisoned."

"I see." With her hand extended as far as possible to keep the ball away from her, she unpinched her nose to fetch an empty pouch on her waist and dropped the poisoned wood in there. She then zipped it and handed the pouch to the other elf who was reluctant to take the thing but did so anyway after a brief moment of hesitation.

"Hand this to you know who," she told the elf.

The other left in a hurry, eager to get rid of the vile thing. Nyana turned back to Kies and shook her head unhappily. "Do give me a warning next time of what it is that you are giving me. Well, I suppose I should applaud you for your quick work." Nyana grabbed a fern off the ground and started rubbing it against her hand to get rid of the bad smell. "So, you find anything else?" she asked while she was doing that.

"Nothing."

"That so? Hm, well, keep doing whatever it is that you are doing," Nyana shooed Kies off. He almost felt like a dog that was fetching things for his master, but it was his mission to report to her if he found anything. Before Kies could leave, another person appeared.

"Has it been a decade, or has it been two?"

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