The wind rustled steadily through the heavy canopy, weather conditions looked perfect for the maiden launch, and subsequent crashing of the Duster Dumper Seven. Shar slid her inexpertly crafted goggles over her eyes; the band caused her wild red hair to resemble a cotton puff being squeezed in the middle. The tiny fey woman began making her final preparations. Then a loud rushing howl started from some distance away and approached rapidly. This was it, the big one!

“Uzungieeeee!” Shar kicked the twig prop away from her leaf boat and jumped aboard as the flimsy craft began to fall earthward. Then the howling wind caught the craft and sent it tumbling and spinning madly. One minute the sky was over head and the next the ground or a tree. Shar worked the rutter of her little craft to steer away from the tree trunks with limited success.

Inevitably a tree started rushing toward the little craft and no matter how hard she pushed the rudder the tree persisted in staying her path. Shar sighed and leaped from the craft, her wings humming into motion to steady her against the wind. She righted herself, and located the Duster Dumper just as it smashed spectacularly into a massive oak tree. She removed her goggles letting them drop silently to the forest floor far below and gave a smart salute before lowering her head in a moment of quiet contemplation for design improvements on the Duster Dumper Eight. With the wind today she might be able to get in a couple more crafts before it got too dark to continue.

High pitch chatter suddenly cut through the rustling three boughs and Shar looked up almost in time to dodge the acorn hurdling toward her. Instead of a full hit that might have dropped the delicate pixie, it glanced off her hip and tumbled after the remains of the DD7.

“I’ll skin you Scompers!” The red hair wild fey shook her fist at fat grey squirrel that was readying another acorn. The second acorn sailed harmlessly through the air well wide of the now alert pixie. Shar wasn’t sure if the tree was Scompers’ home, or if it was just part of what the squirrel considered his territory. Either way, the fey woman doubted her flimsy air raft had inflicted damage to the tree. Defiantly not enough to justify an underhanded sneak attack like this.

Scompers was in a fine rage by now, bouncing around the oak tree and lobbing acorns is rapid succession. Shar made a show of dodging out of the way; adding in exaggerated leaps and twirls to be extra insulting. This served to enrage Scompers even more and the fat squirrel ripped a twig off the tree and began waving it through the air like a throwing spear.

“Oh I think it’s time to replace the hearth rug. How about a nice fat Scompers skin rug!” Shar grinned and opened herself to the magic lay line that permeated most of the local forest. She started to draw power from it for a lighting surge.

Only the flow was less like a bubbling spring and more like a river filled with debris after a flood. Something odd had happened and twisted the flows, it felt dirty, murky…unclean. Shar slowed and released her hold on the weave. Scompers had stilled too, as if he too somehow sensed the unnaturalness the pixie had just touched.

Without a parting shot or a wave goodbye, Shar turned and began flittering back through the trees. The river analogy was accurate, because like those watery pathways, lay lines flowed and moved from the source to a delta. Well generally, there were aberrations in mana streams the same as with normal rivers. What was important in the river analogy was that if one wanted to find the cause of pollution it was as simple as moving upstream.

Shar had traveled a ways out of her normal territory, into an area of the woods she couldn’t even recall having seen before. There was a large rock sort of slab that sloped at a dramatic angle. It rather looked like a giant had flung it as a discus and it had landed with one side jammed into the ground. She dropped down on the rock outcropping and began climbing her way around it. Careful, careful she chanted silently in her head. If she had to use magic here she risked depleting herself since she couldn’t depend on the local flow.

She reached the apex of the outcropping and peered underneath. A figure was sprawled across the forest litter at the base of the outcropping; the residue of tainted magic was strong to Shar’s sensitive nostrils. She didn’t need to touch the weave to know this was the cause. The figure was unmoving, and glitters among the leaf litter hinted at the remains of spell components. Shar decided it was worth the risk of investigating. She flipped off the rock and fluttered under the gloomy overhang in a winding circle.

One of the figures hands was out flung and looked blackened. Odd, it didn’t feel like fire magics had been used here; it didn’t smell like burnt flesh either. Shar flitted hesitantly closer to the figure. Its clothing was predominantly black; it looked ragged as if the wearer had been in heavy combat, but not burnt. It was finely made and had odd similarities to elven design, though twisted and jaded in ways that make the pixie’s stomach upset compared to the elven she was familiar with.

Long strands of white hair escaped from the figures hood and fluttered on the wind. Shar paused and appeared to stand in mid air rubbing her chin. Well that cinched it, if it had been fire hot enough to cause that shade of blacken skin, there wouldn’t be hair left to flutter about. Must have been an old mage who’d been caught and fey marked an unnatural black to show he engaged in dark ritual magics. Fortunately he’d died before he completed whatever he was doing. Best look at the spell components left behind to figure out what he was up too and get it cleaned up. There was no telling what effect dirty magic flows might have. The forest hardly needed another Scompers, or worse, and army of intelligently warped squirrels.

Shar flitted to a landing and began hunting through the debris. It looked fairly standard for the most part. There was coarse dust made of crushed gems, pearls or bone that most mortal mages used since they didn’t have the ability to glean magic essence straight from the magic flows and turn it into dust the way pixies did. Some odd looking pebbles, several strands of white hair… maybe a binding spell? Shar couldn’t think of any other spell lines that a mage would use his own hair in.

The focus of the spell though, was not what Shar expected. It wasn’t even anything she recognized. It was an odd piece of bone like a turtle’s shell that curved in on itself in a hollow spiral. One end opened into a wide somewhat arched looking mouth. Shar sniffed it curiously. Something had lived in here, and died in here not too long ago.

Shar tapped her chin and studied the odd piece of bone. Well, when faced with the unknown, it was always best to work small and note the results. She cast a minor cleanse cantrip, removing the dust used to mark the oddly curling bone and effectively unraveled the spell at the same time. She blinked in surprise and almost dropped the odd bone. It shouldn’t have been that easy. Shar frowned and began studying the bone even more intently.

The figure on the ground however gasped loudly, rolled over and continued gasping as if it was remembering how to breathe. The wild pixie woman froze, and then hurriedly pulled on the clearing mana stream to hide herself from view. She shot up into the air silently intent on making an escape and paused.

The person… man lying on the ground was young, very young; the skin on his face, neck, and where it showed through the tears in his clothing was black. Vaguely Shar realized it contrasted pleasantly with his white hair, a sign of vanity perhaps? He blinked his eyes too rapidly to make out any color other than red… probably bloodshot, that what he got for fooling around with dirty magic.

The man’s hood slipped aside revealing a pointed dark ear. How very curious, Shar hadn’t heard of an elf ever being curse marked. It was something to look into later. For now he wasn’t as dead as first indicated, this could get complicated. She hovered watching intently. The man raised a long fingered, slim hand to shade his eyes, opening them finally. They weren’t blood shot; they were red, as red as Shar’s tangled hair. What exactly had this guy done? More importantly who had he angered to earn such a marking? This was looking less likely to be cleared up easily.