B30C22/23 - Tree Drop

I circled back to the campsite. Visser One had been instructed to wait there. I floated down, skimmed in, hidden from the Visser's sight. I landed in the middle branches of a tall pine.

Only then did I see the goblin form of a Hork-Bajir, standing perfectly still. So still it could have been a statue.

<Rachel? Tobias?> I called.

<Rachel,> she answered. <Haven't seen Tobias, yet>

<I'm here,> a thought-speak voice answered. <Right above you, Marco.>

I jerked my head upward. The seven-foot-tall, bladed form rested comfortably another twenty feet up the trunk.

<You guys forget: Hork-Bajir are arboreal. Why be on the ground when you can have some altitude?>

<Where are Jake and Cassie?> Rachel asked.

(...)

She was a dozen feet away, two long strides away, from Rachel's Hork-Bajir blades.

Rachel stepped into the open.

Tobias dropped easily from the tree, landing on T-rex feet.

My mother . . . Visser One . . . swung her backpack forward and reached inside. The Dracon weapon was in her hand in a flash.