Nikki Ranoakke - scholar, pagan, orphan, heiress, trained martial artist (regarded as the best fighter in the Order of the Glass Mantas), passionate eco-defender, skilled armorer and weaponsmistress, latent telepath, and all-around California-blonde uberwoman whose destiny is catching up with her fast...

She follows archaeology class. Her instructor, a wizardly-looking old cove named Prof. Burack, lectures on the explorations of one Chester Finnegorn, who in 1849 claimed to have found a surviving "Atlanto-Egyptian culture" in the jungles of the Amazon.

She has strange dreams, where she feels that "someone is using me as a receptor for messages from space".

Her prof, Burack sees the intrest she has, privately shows her his astounding trove of artifacts - scrolls, weapons and more - from Atlanto-Egyptian culture. The most intriguing item is a magickal device called the Hydromid, so powerful that just studying a drawing of it puts Nikki into a trance. A voice seems to speak her name - Nikki - and another name - Jatarri.

After her fathers death, she had the task of taking over his business. All this is added too much burden to a life already busy with school and her rigorous martial-arts training. Her friend, Bronn suggests she needs a vacation and she quickly decides to take it in South America.

Dan Fischer of Fischer Finances, the financial agency charged with managing - in reality, grossly mismanaging - her late father's property and holdings. After she wants to cuts of all ties with his company, but her father had already signed all the papers. So she decides to go to the Amazon-site an dshut it down.

Arriving to the site, she encounter Project staff, this lot poaching some local wildlife - a gigantic white tiger - and Nikki, outraged, guns them all down: "Putrid defilers! I am the wrath of this sacred forest! You will all die." Saving the cat, she instantly connects with it telepathically, and names it Minguss - Hungarian for "white beast".

Here she has meets a force of armed, painted warrior women steping out of the jungle ...