THE ABYSS ALTERATION

People always WANT. They have a longing for something more than they truly need. People have this desire to be sated more than anything. An unsatisfied person is a sad person. And yes, this is bizarre in many ways – that a life can be defined by the lack of something, but it is true, and it can be manipulated and used against Superheroes to destroy them.

One of the biggest WANTS that people have, is the craving to speak to a lost loved one…just ONE MORE TIME. I’ve always found that odd. Just once? If you loved them, surely you’d want them back for more than just one more conversation.

And this WANT is what drives people like you, Rain. Your super power is your ability to communicate with the dead, but the passage from the living to the dead is complicated and shrouded by grief and a bottomless pain.

A chasm. AN ABYSS.

After all isn’t that what an abyss is, Rain? An endless void dripping in agony and discomfort, existing by definition only to torture by its absence of closure? I can sense a darkness in you Rain. What happened to you that made you stare into the abyss like this? Are you longing for a loved one too?

Nietzsche once said, ‘When you stare into the abyss, the abyss stares back at you’. He was a smart man. You have spent so long scouring the abyss for whoever it is that you lost, to no avail, that the abyss is now ravaging your mind. I’m certain your body will follow shortly behind. You have become one with the abyss, yet it is more of a symbiotic occupation.

There’s another saying, Rain, and that is that if you stare at someone for long enough, they’ll eventually look back. I think that’s rather apt here. If you stare into this abyss for long enough, you’ll find what you want – your loved one will look back at you. But whilst it may be what you WANT, it will not be what you NEED.

We’ve seen right here in the temple walls that once people are dead, they are no longer themselves. Their souls are malleable. Good people become lost, evil souls. It’s likely that whoever you are searching for will no longer care for you in their new state. They will manipulate you, exploiting your DESIRE for them to return to you, so they can escape the purgatory they dwell in.

Just like Caleb.

He’s used you already. He feeds you half stories and untruths and you have fallen hook line and sinker, taking up a war with someone you had never spoken to based on the fraudulent whispers from the abyss.

You are as lost as the people you speak to, Rain. There is no good outcome for you. You will either drive yourself into an early grave as the abyss takes you, or you’ll be driven insane by your loved one’s transformation when you eventually find them.

I’m happy with either choice…