The Archway of the Strangled Echo was a stone-built marvel designed to turn the human voice into a weapon of self-destruction.
Built during the Second Epoch, the portal spanned forty arm-lengths between Entry halls 538 and 539, built from seven nested curved ribs of dark, polished snake-like marble. Each rib was carved with hundreds of tiny, hollow sounding-coffers, arranged in an exact progression that captured any percussive sound generated beneath the arch and reflected it back upon its point of origin with seven-fold sound amplification.
A whisper beneath the arch sounded like a shout. A shouting voice sounded like thunder. And the discharge of a firearm was a sound disaster.
Six elite snipers from the Azure Firmament Sect’s Cloud-Piercer Brigade had taken up positions upon the high iron rafters beneath the crown of the arch.
They were armed with heavy potion-made spirit-muskets: long-barreled iron rifles that fired three-ounce slugs of cold-forged star-fallen lead, propelled by tightly packed spirit-powder cartridges. Over their eyes they wore multi-layered sight goggles of ground quartz crystal, designed to track heat signed names in total darkness. Over their ears they wore light leather flaps lined with rabbit fur.
“Movement at the southern entrance!” the sniper sergeant whispered through his speaking-tube. “Two figures on the lower walkway! One barefoot in an oilskin coat. One carrying a stone tablet!”
