The Deity Akmadouric exerted the force of his willpower towards the interdimensional barrier. But something was wrong this time. There didn't seem to be much empty space within the uninitiated dimension. It was a rare problem but it was easy enough to solve. With a twist of one of his eighteen spiked ethereal appendages, the portal he was creating forcibly expanded and it's edges pushed away a hundred miles of solid matter as it formed.

Upon entering the dimension, Akmadouric saw that something was very strange about this one. Everywhere he looked he saw statues of all types of beings and upon closer inspection, all of them were fixed in various states of death. Some looked to have died by violence, getting ripped or torn apart or even immolated. Others were elderly and peacefully laid to rest. A few even seemed to be halfway through the process of getting blown apart by an explosion. After seeing this, Akmadouric came to the conclusion that all of the statues in this bizarre dimension were posed not just in the various states of death, but the precise moment of death.

Statues of plants, animals and bipedal creatures capable of using tools. Many of which Akmadouric had seen before and still more he had never encountered. Each one encased in what appeared to be petrified cells. Skin cells, bone cells, blood cells, every kind was there, even petrified versions of single celled organisms.

A complex and never before seen type of death energy permeated every piece of stone. Hanging over and within everything like a black fog. While most living beings feared those whose beings was made up of death energy, Akmadouric simply acknowledged it as a force on the opposite spectrum.

Akmadouric's booming voice rang out among the petrified statues "Name yourself!" the hive mind deity didn't expect an answer but for everything around him to be a single being was possible.

For a short time, all was quiet, then he heard whispering barely heard even with his incredible hearing "I...a.m...d.ea.th." each individual sound emanating from a different statue and it spoke using universal, the language that only the highest ones knew. This being had likely never needed to speak before but it did understand the mechanics.

Akmadouric took a moment to think about how to approach the situation "Many have called themselves that."

The entire dimension shifted. Individually the petrified statues moved millimeter by millimeter, but all of them were moving at once and the entity made of statues spoke "All that die and ever die, come here to be me and be a part of me. The ruins of their thoughts I know. For I am the bridge."

Then a hole opened up before Akmadouric and the great blue deity of many bodies and minds found himself looking at a statue that was a perfect copy of the body he was currently using. After delving into the great depths of his memories, Akmadouric remembered losing a body to one of Ulgroth's corrupted deities on a battlefield a long time ago. And now it's statue's copy was standing right before him.

As Akmadouric wrestled with the newest facet that reality had revealed to him, his scans came across the first oddity within this dimension. A human.

"Why do you have a living being here?" Although calling it a living thing was a stretch to the term. The man had been chopped up into eighteen seperate pieces and kept in a state that could be called a half life using a variant of the death energy within this dimension. 

Akmadouric inquired "Why is this man in such a state? Why torture him so?"

The deity made of statues took a moment before replying "Herbert West, the Reanimator. This blasphemous scientist developed a serum designed to reanimate the dead. What he didn't know was that every time he used his formula was that it turned the statue of the person in this place into dust. I went to the dimension where he resided and dismembered him before bringing him here. Where he will be...animated forever."

Unauthorized usage: this tale is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings.

Akmadouric found that distasteful but there were greater concerns than this Death deity's plaything "If you know of the memories within my slain bodies and slain minions, then you know of my struggle. All the beings within reality have a duty to defend it. What would happen if Ulgroth's corruption came here?"

"I care not for the nature of the multiverse or the nature of the life within it. Only that the living continue to die so that they may come here to be with me and become a part of me."

The Death statue deity paused a moment before saying "Immortal one, your crimes against me are greater than Doctor West's. You have made numerous deathless abominations that will never become a part of myself."

"Deathless? The immortals?"

"Yesss..."

Akmadouric still couldn't see the ending to how large this being had grown. In most dimensions he could tell exactly how large they were in under ten seconds but he had been in this place for three minutes, and there was no end in sight. 

'Is this being truly infinite?' thought Akmadouric.

A black wave of death assaulted Akmadouric from all sides and he formed a barrier made of 33 different types of energy  around himself in a protective shell. The death wave ate through each layer at varying rates. And Akmadouric responded by  continually replacing each one that went down with another energy barrier type that proved to be the more resiliant thus far.

Then the death energy became more condensed and Akmadouric knew that the pressure had only just started. What assaulted him currently was just from the statues in the immediate vicinity. More was coming.

Rather than fight an immensely powerful being that could very well need to exist, Akmadouric went back through the portal. Then evacuated his consciousness out of the body within the death statue dimension. He sealed the portal so it couldn't be traversed and let the body die, leaving yet another statue within that dimension.

The main body of the great deity Akmadouric sat back in the very heart of his deepest sanctum dimension and asked the empty air around him "Why do I keep running into these things? Certainly they're not this common?" this...death statue deity was definately an old one. But given it's nature it was all the more likely a first one. A being that was neither born nor created but was simply there within the seemingly beginningless multiverse.

Going off this assumption, many questions were raised. What kind of damage would happen to the Multi-verse as a whole if this death statue deity were to meet it's end? How did Herbert West's formula harm it? What part did it play within the mortal coil? How did the statues form? How did the copies get from one dimension to the one where this death statue deity resided? Were the statues really copied or did something else leave a person at the moment of death? Would life even be possible without this being?

Akmadouric then realized that he didn't even have the ability to kill the death statue deity even if he wanted to. Because the death rate for all living things in the multi-verse was greater than the rate of expansion for any of the chain reaction skills he possessed.

The great deity shivered with fear. He let it persist for a few moments so he didn't forget, then dumped the excess fear into one of his minor bodies at the very edge of his consciousness. Specifically, the one that held knowledge of all things to fear. The body hugged it's knees and then added the word 'Statues' to it's semi-psychotic mutterings. Not many beings could sculpt their own minds in such a way. But using this method, Akmadouric could still maintain his sanity while still knowing about the great many terrors hidden within the multi-verse.

Qz'jirhith, The Unhatched Nightmare...

Owarmil, Maestro of Screams...

Xsothk, Heart of Nothingness...

Iniirf, Predator of Time...

Lvuurm, Sower and Harvester of Madness...

Ulgroth, Threat to All.