The Abyss.

It's lore, it's allegory, it's a visual representation of experiences I've held.

Amaiya is assailed by disruptive shadowy figures. Involuntary interferences that upset and dysregulate her.

For years she treated each one as it's own monster. So be fought back against or ignored until it went away. Yet they kept spawning, forming a constant harassment against her.

The shadows emerge from The Abyss. An massive underground cavern with a floor just covered in corpses. A place that Amaiya doesn't want to go to, or even acknowledge it's existence.

The shadows aren't really monsters though. People are trapped in the Abyss, and their cries and pleas for help get distorted as they echo through the caverns, slowly taking on a shadowy physical form that escape and cause chaos.

Whimsy was once trapped in the Abyss, until Amaiya figured out what was happening and ventured in to rescue her. Bringing her into the light. With Whimsy rescued, there was a massive decrease in shadow creatures coming out from the abyss. They're not all gone though, others are clearly still trapped deeper down.

That's a very surface level of the lore. The abyss is an area of repression. It's me ignoring my mental and emotional needs, pushing them down, only for them to be antagonized by these feelings that I refuse to face. Learning to listen to myself, to validate and soothe these feelings I have, allows me to work through these feelings instead of being dysregulated by them.

I'm working on a game. A Metroidvania built around Amaiya venturing into The Abyss to rescue Whimsy and others. A project designed to make me identify and represent the various things I have repressed under there.

There's a lot more to The Abyss, and what it means for these characters of mine. These Shadows, and caverns, are represented in a lot of my art. I'll try to present more explanation to it all in time as more artwork is uploaded.

Character: Amaiya
Location: The Abyss
Owner: Amaiya(Me)
Artist: Percy1839