NIGHT of the RAPTORS: Every fifteen years on Mandeler's planet there are great black winged creatures, the Raptors, which come in the night to kill and take people away to their distant lair. On his sixteenth birthday, Mandeler is gifted with a remarkable green stone, but it also coincides with the return of the Great Raptors. Driven by his tormented dreams of flying with the Raptors, he sets out through rugged country, on a quest to warn others of the advancing attacks.

Mandeler is accompanied on his journey by one of the planet's strange creatures, a denzel named Alheeza. While they make their way from one settlement to another, he meets the street-smart Gwenelle. The three of them soon learn that their very survival depends on their ingenuity and trust. Each night Mandeler is tortured by his dreams of the deadly Raptors, often coinciding with real attacks from above.

Their only choice seems to be finding the mythical olive raptors in the vain hope that somehow their combined efforts will be a match for the worst danger of all, the Great Raptor Queen and her deadly hunters.