Sarhemoth (2016)

From Introduction:

A Slumbering Idol

At the top of the world, buried under snow and ice and the obscurity of time that itself flows like the mightiest of glaciers, lies an ancient temple. Built for the singular purpose of containing the only item inside its walls, this temple is crudely fashioned, with rather few decorations. The golden idol inside it looks quite different. Though gruesome, with a squat, misshapen body, its features are exquisitely realistic. Its muscular, quadrupedal body, bedecked with tentacles, vestigial wings, and a head that resembles the head of several animals squashed together, veritably seethes with lifelike energy.

It is not a deceiving artistry, this appearance, for the idol is no sculpture. It is one aspect of the Hemoth, the divine force that shaped the multiverse into its current form, cursed to inactivity in this immobile form. Where the other aspects are the ones that built the walls between the planes, solidifying their differences and preventing living beings from crossing over between them, this idol is the Sarhemoth, the one that destroyed the multiverse that came before. And if disturbed, it will return to life.

Known to the ancients who had not yet succumbed to historical amnesia as the Four-Mawed Trumpeter of the End, the Emerald Flame, and the Blind Horse with Many Eyes that Tramples the World in Its Wake, the Sarhemoth would have destroyed all of Creation if it had not been imprisoned here in this temple. It has been much reduced in power since the multiverse as it is today was created, and perhaps it will never return to its original glory, for other aspects of the Hemoth have themselves been laid low — but then again, perhaps it will.

Or perhaps the world will never find it? Perhaps there will never be a band of power-hungry, foolhardy adventurers who cross the miles of frozen wasteland to find this temple and its golden idol. Perhaps no one will ever see that metallic patina fade away, will never see that head swell and grow twice or thrice as large, its myriad turquoise eyes opening to gaze upon the world it will soon destroy. Perhaps.