Facet Lice

Overview

When Krystallis presses into the world, small things of its own come through with it. Facet Lice are the commonest: specks of living crystal that crawl out of the lattice's edge onto whatever is warm and still changing, and bite it into order.

On Caeldon they came only with the Krystallis Incursion (c. 352,000-c. 349,000 BR), into a valley where no one lived, and died with its lattice. None has been seen since the breaking.

Appearance

Each louse is the size of a grain of coarse salt: a perfect little polyhedron of clear crystal on six hair-fine legs, with no head that anyone can find. In sunlight they throw tiny points of the "mathematical colours" that hurt to look at. A swarm on a sleeve looks like frost forming in straight lines. Each gives off a faint, pure hum, and a swarm together is a high, steady note, like a fingertip on the rim of a glass. They have no smell.

Habitat and Range

They live only at the edges of an incursion, where the lattice meets the living world, and spread a little way beyond it on the beasts they ride. Away from the incursion they slow and grow cloudy, and within days they stop and are only grains of glass. They never bred on Caeldon, and the clear grains at the edge of the Hanging Vale are all that is left of them.

Behaviour and Temperament

They seek out what moves irregularly: a pulse, a twitch, a breath. They crawl into hair and under clothing and bite where the skin is thinnest. They do not feed on what they bite. They correct it.

Abilities

A bite leaves a small facet of flawless, clear skin, smooth as polished stone, that feels nothing and no longer sweats, bleeds, or heals. Each facet grows slowly at its edges while the louse lives. Many bites together can lock a hand or a face into a still, perfect mask, and a body bitten long enough begins the crystallization that makes Shard-Hosts. Heat cracks them; a flame passed over a sleeve or a hot bath kills them in moments.

Uses and Dangers

They give nothing. In a living incursion they would be carried out on clothes, dogs, horses, and refugees, and a village that took in those fleeing it might find perfect patches spreading on its own children within the week. Against them, the clothes of anyone coming out would have to be stripped and burnt, and a candle passed over the skin.

Lore and Belief

No one has seen a living one. Crossers who find the clear grains at the Hanging Vale call them "frost-lice" and think them dead seeds of the lattice; others believe they are pieces broken off the god itself. Neither is right; what they are is as unknown as everything that comes from the Outside, and see Knowledge of the Cosmos. The Shard-Hosts carried them without harm, like a dog its fleas.

Where It Appears

• Overview: Hosts of the Dark Entities