Cursed by silence.

‌‌A lightning bolt struck the ground, and from it the creature emerged.

Hands first—limbs and joints cracking, chains rustling as it pulled itself free.

The worst of the noise came from its many mouths. They covered its body: no eyes, no nose—only mouths. The creature was cursed with two ears to hear all of them, and with chains on its hands, unable to silence any. Its arms hung permanently in the same position.

“Reason,” said a voice.
“Logic,” said another.

The loudest mouth, now positioned on the forehead, began a monologue.
“This incessant chattering, purposeless, filled with—”

“Farts!” said a voice from the neck.

A few mouths laughed while the rest kept talking. Suddenly, the loudest mouth shifted—from the shoulder to the forehead again.

“Silence!”

Half the mouths obeyed. The rest didn’t. It never lasted long.

The creature tried to reach out, to quiet at least one of them, but the chains pulled from every side, keeping its hands frozen. The only thing it could do was rattle them—at least that was a different sound.

Its ever-mutating body always rearranged itself so the loudest mouth ended up on the forehead. A self-aware creature, full of poison in every mouth, careless enough to bite its own tongue.

A certain resistance to the poison kept it alive, but it was a slow death—caused by itself.

A pitiful creature, searching for something to stop the noise, the pain, the poison.

An aimless search, bound to itself.
To its own voices.
Consumed by its own poison.

With nothing left but a loud mouth on its forehead.