J.T. Sturm

Wouter van Aldenkerk wanted nothing more than to finish digging the irrigation canals of Laag-Kerk and keep his two stubborn oxen fed. But when his plow snags an ancient, seamless black tube in the alluvial mud, his life in the trenches ends. The tube is a signal key. With a single breath through its aperture, the mundane river silt around him hardens into moving, sharp-edged alloy, crushing canal gates and swallowing bronze spears whole. The God-King’s chariot generals have scoured the continent for this 'tongue of the river goddess,' needing it to wake the colossal iron silt-harrow buried beneath the delta. Hunted across mountains and marsh-realms, Wouter must race to the river's mountain source to disable the reservoir before his homeland drowns in living metal.

When a submerged holo-projector glazes a prehistoric stilt city in invincible hard-light ancestor holograms who demand micromanagement of daily tribal life, four beleaguered clan representatives must work together to short out the generator before they are nagged to extinction.

When shaman Brandcombe dropped his lucky bone into the sacred tar pit, he expected a blessing. He did not expect twelve-foot-tall, glowing, invincible "ancestors" to march out of the muck and demand to see everyone's residential permits. The hard-light figures can deflect mammoth-ivory axes with a smirk, but worse, they won't stop managing things. They've banned weapon-sharpening during quiet hours, put the warband chiefs on mandatory remedial teamwork workshops, and locked the fishing docks behind glowing barriers because nobody is wearing approved buoyancy vests. To save their way of life, Gougerow, Thatchwick, Brandcombe, and Miltrow must wage an underground war of sabotage against unkillable, patronizing light-ghosts and drown the master crystal in boiling asphalt.