Discover the World of Volatile
A land on the brink of destruction…
A Wasteland between two kingdoms…
Between the kingdoms of Daryatla and Soltierra stretches a Wasteland. A place where, for millennia, people have barely been able to eke out an existence. A place of arid plains, toxic springs, and a slumbering danger far below the surface…
A super-volcano on the brink of eruption. And if it goes, it will trigger the world’s other major volcanoes as well.
Extinction will follow. Unless the world’s strongest Aflame can tame it.
Sigmann, formerly known as Daemon, primal of the Aflame
The primal of the Aflame…
Sigmann, son of Phoenix, spent a century and a half as Daemon, the first person ever Awakened to power of flame and lava. Branded a demon by the tyrant who condemned him to life in the heart of Fjordlandi’s largest volcano, he had embraced all they told him he was. He grew hard to keep from being shattered. And he was so accustomed to a life of darkness broken only by the light of lava that it has taken him three and a half years to embrace not only freedom, but a life lived in daylight. A journey back to who he is by rights: Sigmann, secondborn son of the seraph known as Phoenix.
He has spent the last few years in Ellas, to fulfill an agreement another made and let the Ellesian scientists study him. He’d expected it to be a new form of slavery. Instead, he found new friends, a new family…and a new threat.
Enemies in Ellas have triggered an event that could mean the destruction of everyone on the planet. The world’s volcanic systems are in revolt, and Sig calls upon his Aflame brethren to help him bring them back under control. He sends them each to the place he thinks they’ll be the best help, leaving the most enormous, threatening system for himself: Sunstone, in the Wastelands between Daryatla and Soltierra. An ancient super-volcano that has lain dorment even befor the Great Cataclysm. Sunstone, which could wipe out the continent and trigger destruction around the globe.
But even he, the most powerful Aflame, can’t save the day alone. Because it isn’t just lava threatening to erupt. Half the danger is from the super-heated water ready to blow the land to pieces, and for that, he needs the woman he resisted as long as he could. The woman he wants nothing more than a future with…if they can live long enough to claim it.
Nothing can bring Perla down for long…except a prophecy she’s been sidestepping her whole life.
Perla, Crown Princess of Daryatla
Ever since she was a child, Perla has demanded attention and brought laughter and joy wherever she goes. And ever since she was on the cusp of womanhood, she’d been looking for her perfect match. She knows he’s out there–her seraph grandmother told her so, when she gave her a prophecy that Perla has been both clinging to and dreading every since. A prophecy of love found…and sacrifice made. But hey, prophecies are notoriously vague, right? She’s happy to believe there will be centuries between finding her true love and that eventual need for sacrifice.
And she knew the moment she zapped Sig’s palm in the volcano in Fjordlandi that he is the man she’s been waiting well over a century to find. And finally, after years of near-daily messages, they’re friends. Maybe leaning toward more than friends. And nothing like a little world-obliterating extinction event is going to get between her and her man.
Probably. Maybe. Hopefully… Right?
Together, Sig and Perla venture inside the enormous Sustone volcanic system, where lakes of lava and super-heated aquifers prove a challenge even for them–two of the most powerful Awakened in the world. But failure isn’t an option.
Because if they fail,
the whole world will pay the price.
Imani
On the other side of the world is a continent the Awakened kingdoms all thought dead, one they’d called the Dark Continent. Since the Cataclsym, this once-vibrant land has been devastated and impossible to reach, surrounded as it is by deadly currents and disastrous shoals.
But the Dark Continent isn’t dead. A people thrive there, and they call their land Zamara…and they think they’re the humans who survived the End of Days.
Imani has always been fascinated by history, especially the ruins around her city, Kitali, that date back to the world before that great disaster. Though only her cousin, Temba, can be convinced to help in her tasks, she’s spent the last decade excavating a site that was once a library so enormous, she can scarcely fathom its size. As she excavates, she’s been learning the languages represented in the surviving artifacts, and she’s learned that this library was called the World Heritage Repository. Most of the place is nothing but ruins, but Imani has just discovered a door on a lower level that is still intact. And a room beyond it that holds information she’s only ever dreamed of.
Books. Books that have somehow survived millennia. Books in scads of languages. Books with pictures. Books that promise more than a lifetime of discovery.
But before she has a chance to share her find,
visitors arrive and change everything.
Terrifying, pale strangers have emerged from the volcano…
Strangers who don’t speak Zamaran. Strangers with odd, pink skin and hair like cornsilk. Strangers who can melt a crossbow bolt in midair. Strangers her neighbors are quick to call demons. But Imani, called upon by her father, one of the five leaders of their region, recognizes people when she sees them, and she sees in them a chance to do something she’s been studying for her whole life:
Communicate, building a lexicon word by word.
And the words they convey…the paint a picture she knows is true. Because the volcanoes of the Riftlands have been increasing in activity for years. Whole villages have had to be evacuated. Regions have been dying.
These strangers claim they can stop it. And Imani is desperate enough to believe them.
Mt. Senga, outside Kitali
The Riftlands, Zamara
The Awakened fan out across the world…
in an attempt to stop disaster before it can kill them all.
But it will come down to one question they all must answer:
How much are they willing to give for others?
Volatile
is a gripping novella to read between
Amazed and Alight.
Roseanna M. White is a bestselling, Christy Award winning author who has long claimed that words are the air she breathes. Having successfully launched two homeschool grads, she now spends her time writing fiction, designing book covers, and pretending her house will clean itself. Roseanna is the author of a slew of historical novels that span several continents and thousands of years, as well as a fantasy series and contemporary mysteries and romances. Spies and war and mayhem always seem to find their way into her books…to offset her real life, which is blessedly ordinary.