Return To Sky Raven (Book 2) Read Online Free PDF

sighed, then launched into an explanation. “I know we look like small humans, but we’re not even mammals, so we don’t exactly procreate like you, either. It’s more of a pollination process. Male pixies visit the Mother Tree in the spring, and females visit the tree in the fall. The tree acts as a repository of their essence and it decides what “pollen” the female receives based on the needs of the tribe…it is a very old and wise tree!”
    “So you don’t really know who your father is?” I queried in surprise.
    “No, no pixie does, but males and females still form family units to care for the young, at least that’s how it usually works,” she sniffed sadly.
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    Maya
    I dropped silently out of the tree. Dark elves know spooky dark woods; hell, we seek them out as places to build our homes. The darker and more foreboding, the better! But I had to admit that this place was starting to get on my nerves. There weren’t any animals above insect level to be found anywhere, not even sparrows or rodents.
    Cautiously, I headed in the direction of the only clue I had, the buzzards that I had spotted in the distance to the west. Generally speaking, carrion birds are a very bad sign; they usually don’t like forests. Because of their large wingspans, the trees growing so close together impede their ability to take off and land quickly. So for them to hazard a dense forest landing, there had to be a big food reward at stake and not just a single deer carcass would do, either.
    Winya was on full alert on my wrist, ready to change into either sword or crossbow if required. I could also feel that she had taken over some aspects of the suit’s operation, carefully monitoring the enchantments that Alex had placed on the boots to ensure that when I put a foot down, the heavy weight of the armor was precisely countered by a matching lift pressure. This way, I left no mark on even the softest of moss patches. Habits like stepping across and over rocks and deadfall instead of walking on them were trained into me since I took my first steps. Equally important was testing each step carefully before fully transferring weight onto the lead foot, being mindful of the wind direction, and taking the time to periodically stop and scan in all directions for trouble. These are skills dark elves learn quickly or don’t survive, but few humans ever fully master. As much as I adore Alex for all the right reasons, he is still a clueless human in the deep woods, and I could clearly hear him approaching the pixie camp several hundred yards to the east - I’m pretty sure the warhorses are quieter than he is!
    Crouching to break up my outline, I parted some branches and smelled cooked flesh, and not Alex’s voskk roast kind of good smell, either. A few steps out of my way took me to the body of a striped polecat, dead, half its body charred beyond recognition. From the marks in the leaf litter, it had dragged itself this far before succumbing to shock and died, and it had come from the direction I was headed. From what Winya had learned from Nia and Alex, there should be something called a “Mother Tree” nearby, but with all the hanging moss and dense low level branches, I probably couldn’t have seen it if it were more than twenty feet ahead of me. Moving ahead, I recognized signs of a clearing ahead, basically just a lessening of the gloom in that direction. As I approached the end of the trees, what little breeze that was apparent shifted and the smell of smoke and death hit hard. Stifling a gag, I parted the last of the branches and focused on what I saw. “By the Gods, no!”
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    Alex
    The village was exactly as Maya had reported - empty. Nia flew up into the birdhouse rooms in the trees and came back confused, saying there was a lot of personal items and good food that would never have been left behind by any