Lattice Guardians

Overview

The Lattice Guardians stand in the deepest chambers of the Crystal Spire, merged with its crystal and become part of the archive. They guard the sounds too dangerous to keep anywhere else, and their purpose is that those sounds are never released.

Appearance

A Lattice Guardian is a figure half inside the crystal wall, as if a person had stepped into clear ice and the ice had closed. Its shape is a person's, but its substance is the spire's: faceted, translucent, coloured like the crystal around it, so that only the face and hands stand clear of the lattice. The faces are locked in awe or terror, mouths often open. Inside each, looked at closely, light pulses slow and dark, the colour of the sound it holds.

They make no sound and do not move. The chamber around one hums low, below hearing, a hum felt in the teeth.

Habitat and Range

They are found only deep in the spire, at the chambers where the worst sounds are kept, one or a few to a chamber.

Behaviour and Temperament

They are silent and almost wholly still. Whether they think is not known; whether they feel is guessed only from their faces. They act when a sound they hold is threatened: a hand on the crystal they keep, a tool, a working of silence. Then the hum rises, the lattice around the intruder begins to sing, and a mind and body near it may be broken by the frequency.

The Crystal Singers bring dangerous sounds to them and leave them there.

Abilities

They hold a sound within the lattice so that it cannot be drawn out, and can turn the resonance of their chamber against anyone who tries. They do not shatter when the spire's crystals do.

Life Cycle

Lattice Guardians are thought to have been something else first, Singers, visitors, or both, who merged with the crystal and stayed. None has been seen leaving the lattice.

Uses and Dangers

They are of use to no one but the spire. Their danger is that what they guard is wanted: the scream that broke a fortress, the command no one could refuse. Anyone who comes for such a sound meets the Guardian first.

Lore and Belief

Some say the Lattice Guardians are those the Spire shattered, visitors broken by a frequency and absorbed by the lattice; others that they are Singers who chose the duty. Both may be true of different ones. Their faces of awe are taken by pilgrims as proof that they heard something holy before they froze; their faces of terror are taken the other way.

Where It Appears

• The Crystal Spire
• the Writers' Guide chapter The Resonant Zones