Hiss-Flies

Overview

The Static arrives as a hiss, and some of that hiss comes loose. Hiss-Flies are the scraps: flickering specks that drift out of the Glitch Field like gnats from a marsh and settle on anything that sends or receives a signal.

No incursion of the Static has reached Caeldon, and no Hiss-Fly has been seen there; what follows is what they would be.

Appearance

A Hiss-Fly is not quite there. It shows as a grey fleck the size of a midge, never in the same place twice: seen from the corner of the eye it has wings, legs, a body, and looked at straight it is a smear of tiny moving dots, like the specks that swim before tired eyes. A swarm is a shimmering patch in the air that crawls with motion. They make the sound they are named for, a dry, shrill hiss that seems to come from inside the hearer's own ears. They have no smell, though people near them often swear to one that changes every moment.

Habitat and Range

They would hang at the edges of an incursion, thickest round anything that carries a message: a bell, a signal fire, a lamp in a window, a speaking mouth, an ear. Away from the incursion they would thin and fade within a day or two.

Behaviour and Temperament

They drift towards clear signals as gnats drift towards breath. They settle on a lantern and its light stutters; on a bell and its peal comes out as hiss; on a face and the face's speech comes out garbled to those listening. They do not bite. They seem to want nothing but to be where the signal is clearest, and to blur it.

Abilities

Each fly carries a little of the Glitch: the senses stop reporting truly what it sits on. A few on a man make him hard to understand; a swarm on him makes his speech gibberish and his face hard to recognise, though he thinks clearly inside. A swarm in the ear brings the hiss into the head, the first step of being jammed. They cannot be swatted, because the hand never finds them. One plain, steady sound, a single note held, or one clear word repeated, drives them off a little way.

Uses and Dangers

They give nothing. Their worst harm would be quiet: a village near an incursion could not ring its alarm, read its signal fire, or hear its own children calling. People coming out of a Hiss would carry them in their hair, and would have to be met with one steady lamp and a single voice before they were let near others.

Lore and Belief

Folk who met them would take them for gnats that carry the voices of the dead. That would not be so; what they carry is no voice at all. Nothing certain is known; see Knowledge of the Cosmos.

Where It Appears

• Overview: Hosts of the Dark Entities