Book excerpt: The Collective had evolved at the very dawn of time, and now it had found a way to propagate by building a gigantic tree-entity which could spread its seeds to new worlds far across the universe. The Velociraptors of Haven have acquired a Spellbinder, enabling them to explore parallel universes. Having found a dinosaur-dominated Earth copy, they encounter one of the tree-entity’s seed-capsules at the end of its billion-year journey. Through its seeds, the Collective has mindlessly begun to enslave all life on the planet and to direct evolution. Now, for the first time, it has found intelligent life – the Raptors – which promises to bring it the power of awareness. Now Peterkin, the High King, is faced with a terrifying problem. If the Collective can learn how to manipulate the space-time Rifts that separate the worlds from each other, it will spread its seeds to all the parallel Earths in the multiverse, dominating all life. Can he prevent this – and what price will he have to pay?