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There is a monster haunting the grounds around the Motherlobe base.
Not many people know this anymore. Not a lot of the ones that do believe it actually exists. Like the Green needle witch, it phases in and out of reality in the collective understanding of all that work there.
Nevertheless.
There is a monster.
It's said it's entirely made out of water.
It's said it doesn't have a face, only rows upon rows of jaws, coming and going in waves, teeth jagged and sharp, dripping with thirst for violence.
It's said it scuttles around on many insect legs that stick out of its body at odd angles, like they grew without any rhyme or reason.
It's said it has wings like that of a cicada, yet torn up and useless, unable to do anything but make noise as the thing crawls over the uneven ground.
These are just stories of course. No one expects them to be real, right?
There is a ghost haunting the grounds around the Motherlobe base.
Almost no agent working for the psychonauts believes in ghosts or curses. There is always a scientific explanation to something someone might consider a 'ghost'. Psytanium overdose, delirium, foggy conditions combined with psychic interference, you name it. So not many believe in spirits of the dead roaming the earth long after their demise.
Nevertheless.
There is a ghost.
It's said they're a child, soaked through with water, their clothes dripping with it at all times.
It's said their eyes shine a deep crimson in the night, two perfect orbs of red light in the darkness.
It's said they walk around the river and the lake aimlessly for hours.
It's said they used to work at the Motherlobe once, not that long ago.
These are just stories of course. No one believes in ghosts, right?
There is something haunting the grounds around the Motherlobe.
It doesn't know what it is. Sometimes it walks, sometimes it scuttles, sometimes it crawls, sometimes it's more solid than other times, sometimes it can see and then it can't anymore. Sometimes it is in the lake and it is nothing, just an idea of a something that takes no form but the bonds between the molecules of hydrogen and oxygen.
It doesn't think about all that though. It doesn't think about a lot of things.
It knows that it is water but also it is not. It's content being water but being something else, even if that something is unclear.
On some nights it shapes itself to come out of the river in the woods or the lake in the quarry and roam and see things, people, shapes and colours that it doesn't fully understand anymore. To listen to the wind howling way up in the trees and caves, the cicadas singing their mournful yet joyous song.
It thinks it is a cicada sometimes.
Some people run from it. Others try to talk to it, reach out with their mind to do something to it, to break through a wall, to reach a mind that somewhere deep inside itself it knows is not there. There is nothing there.
Only water.
Sometimes, on clearer nights, when the wind is quiet, when the people aren't there, it can almost remember something. The memory is Just out of grasp, but it gets the impression of it sometimes.
It can almost remember being something else, being someone else, being someone.
The someone that it used to be had a name it thinks, thought it does not remember it. The people still call it by that name sometimes, hoping for a responce.
The someone was small and fast and brave and tried so hard to help people. He tried so hard to help everyone who needed helping.
And he was happy. There were people that he loved, he was doing what he'd wanted. He was content.
Something happened.
It doesn't remember what it was exactly. Something painful. Something sudden.
Something that the flesh of the someone that it used to be was too weak to withstand.
It almost remembers when it stopped being a someone and became noone, became nothing, became what it is.
It almost remembers flesh tearing open with a sound like fabric tearing at the seams, skin shredding and coming apart like wet paper, flakes of it falling to the ground like confetti.
It wonders (wondered back then too, in a delirious sort of way) if this is what insects feel like during metamorphosis.
It almost remembers the pain that shot through its head as the mind that was its tore apart under the pressure of something on the inside that poured out of the discarded chitin shell like a waterfall.
It was angry at first. It was in pain, confused, disoriented. It lashed out until nothing could hurt it anymore, but it hurt to even think, to try to understand what it was doing. The water flowed through it like blood yet something dripped from where its face used to be that was red that might have been glass or something else.
It went to the water, to be nothing, to hide in the thing that tore it apart from the inside.
It got better with time.
It doesn't know how long it's been. Sometimes it doesn't know if it understands what time even is.
Sometimes it doesn't know if it remembers being anything else.
The people who don’t run are kind. They speak to it softly and it lowers itself down to see them better and they’re soft and warm and fragile but it is gentle. Their minds are odd but familiar against its thoughts.
They’re sad when they talk to it. It wants to help but doesn’t know how.
There is a monster yet it doesn’t cry out in malice in the night. There is a ghost but it doesn’t remember what they used to be.
There is something in the water but it does not stalk or rage. It roams and does not remember.