Abyss (Les Légendaires)

"You think you know her better than I do? I have seen the depths of her soul! The darkness within is similar to my own! She has received the legacy of Evil!!"

- Abyss' delusion about Ténébris

Abyss is a major antagonist in the French comic book series Les Légendaires (The Legendaries). It is an extremely powerful and intelligent monster created by Darkhell, who regards the Dark Sorcerer as its father and strives to pursue his goal of taking over the world of Alysia. It was unleashed after the Anathos Cycle and tried to put his "sister" Ténébris, Darkhell's daughter, on the throne of the kingdom of Orchidia; only to get thwarted by the Legendaries and left for dead. The series' creator Patrick Sobral has stated that Abyss will return and antagonize the Legendaries once more.

Nature
Abyss is a parasite who needs to take over a body to interact with the world (and perhaps even to survive outside of the bottle in which it was created). Its exact nature is not explained but it was noted to have an overwhelming aura of evil. When it takes control of a body, it instantly kills and replaces its host. When passing as its host Abyss looks perfectly normal, but when it reveals its true nature its skin turn chalk-white and its eyes turn red. Although initially genderless, it takes the gender of its host and is referred to as a "he" in the comics.

Powers and Abilities
Abyss is powerless in its basic state, but once it gains a human shell becomes able to use its incredible magic powers and its vast knowledge about spells and potions. It has proved able to bewitch an object to poison a defined target at contact and to brew magic potions, among others. Abyss fights by hurling huge bolts of black and red energy which it can distort and move at will, and send underground for sneak attacks. It also uses them as tentacles or "hands" to seize its foes. It is able to create shields of black and red energy and displays above average strength and durability. Its most dangerous power is its ability to spawn smaller parasites through which it can take complete control of those who swallow them.

Moreover, Abyss has access to its host's memories, knowledge and skills, which it uses to impersonate its host flawlessly. It is extremely intelligent and cunning, being able to devise complicate plans and to skillfully adapt them to the circumstances; and is a master manipulator who played the Legendaries and the entire Kingdom of Orchidia like a fiddle.

Personality
Abyss is very cruel, selfish, scornful, and overproud. It ruthlessly kills and manipulates anyone it sees fit and takes defeat extremely poorly, refusing to back down until those who thwarted his plans are dead. In its twisted ways, it regards itself as an orphan who wants to reunite with his siblings and pursue the works of its father. Except than the father was the most evil mage of Alysia's history and the offspring is arguably even worse. Darkhell's daughter Ténébris states that she could somehow pity Abyss, but she is far too disgusted by its actions to bother and fiercely hates it.

Abyss regards the fact that Darkhell left it in a bottle as parental neglect and strives to prove worthy of him, by taking over Alysia in his name. In the same way, it regards Ténébris as its sister and wants to have her by its size at any cost. However, Abyss' fraternal love is extremely disturbing, verging on an incestuous infatuation (although they are technically not related). It is delusionally persuaded that Ténébris is as evil as it is, even though she has redeemed herself; and believes that brainwashing her would merely turn her back into what she always should have been. As such, Abyss is obsessively convinced that Ténébris and it belong together and is unable to conceive her hatred towards it.

Prior to the story
Abyss was created by the dreaded Dark Sorcerer Darkhell prior to the start of the series. Why did Darkhell created him and for what purposes remains unknown. He might have created it intending to make a super weapon or a powerful henchman, but considering that he left it in a bottle and put it away, he likely deemed it a failed experiment. It might also be possible that Darkhell kept it away until he could find a suitable host for it.

Abyss was accidentally released at an undefined time after the Legendaries' final victory over the God Anathos, probably even before. Queen Adeyrid ("A des rides" being French for "has got wrinkles"), ruler of the country of Orchidia, suffers from an incurable illness called the Lerdamer Disease and has only few months left to live. Professor Kalisto Vangelis, the royal medic of Orchidia who was secretly in love with the queen, could not bear the idea of not being able to prevent his beloved's death and resolved to find a magical cure.

Decades before the start of the series, Queen Adeyrid, who could not bear children due to an accident, made a secret pact with Darkhell to produce an heiress to Orchidia's royal line of Magician Queens. With Vangelis' help, Darkhell devised a way to cause a magical pregnancy and Adeyrid eventually gave birth to a daughter. However, Darkhell wanted the child for him alone and abducted her shortly after her birth, raising her and naming her Ténébris. A few years later, Vangelis was able to reproduce the spell with some alterations to give birth to Jadina, who would later be part of the Legendaries.

With that in mind,  Vangelis reasoned that since Darkhell's magic proved more efficient that his medicine once, it could happen twice. He then ventured into the ruins of Casthell, Darkhell's castle, in spite of the many monsters still living here and took as many things as he could from the late Dark Sorcerer's laboratory. (Darkhell was defeated years prior in a battle against the Legendaries, during which the divine Stone of Jovenia was broken, turning everyone in Alysia into children.) This proved his undoing however, as the bottle containing Abyss numbered among the artifacts that he brought from Casthell...

Search for the Emeraudia
As the Legendaries (the mage princess Jadina, the beastman Gryf, the Elementary Elf Shimy, the Barbarian Razzia and Darkhell's redeemed daughter Ténébris) are partying in a tavern to celebrate the death of the God Anathos, who destroyed a huge part of the world of Alysia, they are attacked by soldiers from Jadina's home-country of Orchidia. It turns out to be a misunderstanding however, as Jadina's father figure Professor Vangelis reveals that Queen Adeyrid merely requested Jadina and the Legendaries to visit her. On their way, the Legendaries learn that the kingdom of Orchidia owes its prosperity to the gigantic Gamera Tree that towers over it, whose sap can be turned into a highly valuable magic-amplifying jade when extracted. (However, the jade is extracted by mutilating the tree's roots on a large scale.)

There, Queen Adeyrid reveals the secret behind Ténébris' and Jadina's birth and gives them one day to decide which one of them will become queen after she dies. If they both refuse the throne, it would be given to Jadina's tyrannical cousin Count Kasino (who contrary to them is overjoyed by this prospect) marking the end of the Mage Queens' line. Jadina later reveals that she travelled into the farthest depths of the Gamera Mines to search for a jade pure and powerful enough to use against the God of Evil. There, she made a fall that would have been fatal had she not landed in the Emeraudia, the magical substance which sustains the Gamera Tree and gives it its power. The Emeraudia healed Jadina and granted her the healing factor and power boost which puzzled her companions during the battle against Anathos. She resolves to go back there and use the Emeraudia to cure Queen Adeyrid from her disease.

Professor Vangelis notices that Jadina bears no scar from the wound inflicted by Anathos or the surgery he performed to save her life back then, and decides to go with the Legendaries to perform tests on the Emeraudia. However, Count Kasino's bodyguards spied on them and the corrupt aristocrat resolves to follow them into the mines to kill them and make it pass as an accident, to be the only heir left to the throne.

Struggles in the mines
The following day, Ténébris enters Professor Vangelis's lab to tell him that the Legendaries are about to venture into the mines. She accidentally hits Vangelis when he creeps behind her to pull a prank. As the Legendaries enter the mines, Jadina warns them that they cannot use their powers, as the magic-amplifying power of the Gamera Tree would react to them and cause a disastrous overload. Professor Vangelis then sprays a mixture of his invention on their eyes to enable them to see in darkness as clearly as in daytime. (He does not use it on Shimy, who is blind and uses magic brooches to see, and Amy, Razzia's demonic prosthetic arm, who goes into slumber. However, he warns Shimy never to use her Aura Vision to avoid a magic overload.) Meanwhile, Queen Adeyrid gets mysteriously poisoned after reading a letter in which Vangelis reveals that he suspects Jadina to be an imposter.

One night, as Vangelis is comforting Ténébris, who laments the fact that the mother she wanted to meet never displays parental affection, telling her that his own father also let him down. Kasino and his bodyguards blow up a cliff to make it fall on the dorm where the Legendaries are sleeping. Ténébris manages to protect the building, but the mines are too vast to track down the culprit. Later, Jadina starts behaving strangely and carnivorous plants erupt from the roots to disperse the Legendaries. Vangelis then tells the Legendaries that the Jadina who travelled with them is a clone. (He noticed that she lacks the real Jadina's birthmark when she showed them that all her injuries were healed.)

Before they can do anything, they run into Count Kasino who attacks them with his bodyguards. The two highly skilled assassins battle the Legendaries in perfect synchronization and prove to be a match for them. Shimy then makes the mistake to use her elementary power over earth, and the ensuing magic overload causes a cave in. Razzia and Gryf only owe their lives to Amy's intervention, while Kasino's bodyguards are not so lucky. As they rush to Vangelis' rescue, they watch the fake Jadina kill Count Kasino with her bare hand and try to rush after her, but Vangelis is so scared that he accidentally prevents them from pursuing her. The group then finds a shell-shocked Shimy, who just discovered the corpse of the real Jadina. The grieving Legendaries confront the Jadina clone who is too powerful to be subdued, until Vangelis injects her with an anti-magic serum that renders her powerless and she gets captured.

Ténébris's rule
The Jadina's clone is held captive as the primary suspect in Queen Adeyrid's poisoning, being permanently injected with anit-magic. But she does not know who she is herself and expresses concern for the Queen's wellbeing. Real Jadina or not, the Legendaries cannot bring themselves to believe that the one who fought by their side against Anathos could be evil. They later learn that the members of the Royal Council of Orchidia were arrested, as evidences proving their responsibility in the Queen's poisoning were discovered; that Vangelis was named First Advisor; and that Ténébris decided to become Queen of Orchidia. She reasons that with Danael (the former leader of the Legendaries who got possessed by Anathos and died alongside him) and Jadina dead, their group has lost all meaning and that they must now find another way to help the world. However, the Legendaries are not convinced by the Ténébris' and Vangelis' sudden change in personality and start to investigate.

Gryf learns that Count Kasino was killed with a metallic blade instead of Jadina's Clone hand as they thought, while Shimy ventures into Vangelis' laboratory and discover a bottle wrapped in Darkhell's banner imbued with a frightening evil aura. As for Razzia, he begins to think that it was Ténébris who killed Kasino, something that Amy confirms. (She tried to warn him immediately but he refused to listen.) The Legendaries understand that they saw Jadina instead of Ténébris due to an illusion caused by Vangelis' mixture to see in the dark, and start suspecting him. Suspicion later confirmed when Shimy sees Vangelis' overwhelming evil aura and a similar one coming from within Ténébris.

Shimy and Razzia then ambush Ténébris, allowing Razzia to extract the parasite that was controlling her mind. Meanwhile, Gryf infiltrates the public execution of Jadina's Clone intending to save the one whom the Legendaries still regard as a comrade. However, Razzia makes the mistake of squishing the parasite despite Ténébris' warnings, with Vangelis sensing his creature's destruction and figuring out that the Legendaries know too much. The three rush to the arena where Jadina's Clone is about to be executed, where Gryf has freed Jadina's clone and is taking her to safety. However, Vangelis activates a trap he devised to prevent any escape which knocks Gryf out with a powerful energy blast.

Confronting Abyss
Enraged, "Vangelis" restrains Jadina's clone and curses the Legendaries for ruining his plans. It is then revealed that the real Vangelis made the mistake of opening the bottle containing Abyss, who immediately killed him to claim his body as its own. Abyss took profit of the succession crisis and devised an elaborate scheme to put Ténébris on the throne of Orchidia as a puppet-queen, likely planning to use its military might to invade the rest of the world.
 * Pretexting to take care of the health of the the royal family, of which Ténébris was now officially part, he had her drink a medicine in which he hid a parasite to take control of her mind.
 * He then left a bewitched letter denouncing Jadina, which would poison Queen Adeyrid when she would touch it to get her out of the way and create a country-wide panic.
 * Abyss initially planned to frame Count Kasino  for his own crimes and dispose of Jadina, leaving only Ténébris as an heir to the throne; but upon realizing that "Jadina" was not the real one, he decided that she would make a better scapegoat and changed his plan.
 * He followed the Legendaries' expedition pretexting scientific studies of the Emeraudia, and used his illusion-inducing mixture to make them see Jadina instead of Ténébris when she would kill Kasino. The discovery of the real Jadina's corpse was unexpected but he used it to give credit to his accusations.
 * With Jadina and Kasino dead, he framed the Royal Council of high-treason to remove them from the way. When a brainwashed Ténébris was appointed Queen of Orchidia, he had her name him First Advisor. Given that Vangelis is an old friend of the royal line, the promotion would not raise many eyebrows.

It now becomes clear that Abyss crept behind Ténébris in his laboratory pretexting a bad joke to prevent her from discovering the bottle in which he was created. In the same way, he forbade Shimy to use her aura vision in the mines, pretexting the danger of a magic overload, to prevent her from discovering his true nature. Moreover, when he told Ténébris about how he wanted to make his late father proud, he was referring to Darkhell. However, he did not bother keeping a facade of benevolence after gaining power and neglected the fact that the Legendaries would try to investigate further; and like many other evil masterminds, his overconfidence was his undoing.

Just before he can kill Jadina's clone, the Legendaries barge in and Shimy knocks him away with a giant stony hand, while Ténébris orders the evacuation of the arena. Alas, Abyss captures her and easily dispatches the Legendaries, who make the mistake of attacking him one after another. Jadina's Clone then enters the fray and kisses Abyss on the mouth, injecting him with anti-magic through her saliva to weaken him. It is not enough to block all his power but enough to weaken his grasp over Ténébris, who breaks free and angrily knocks him out. Just as she is about to finish him off in spite of Jadina's Clone's pleas, giant roots suddenly erupt from the ground and seize the villain, crushing him into a bloody pulp.

It appears that the Gamera Tree is a sentient being with incredible magic power, and she can no longer stand the mutilation she suffers from the people of Orchidia whom he protected during millennia. Gamera reveals that when Jadina died falling into her cavern, she used her blood to grow a half-human half-vegetal clone, much more powerful that she ever was and virtually immortal, in which she transferred Jadina's soul. As such, the present-day Jadina is a clone and the real one at the same time. Gamera resurrected the princess hoping to gain an emissary and make the mutilations stop, but Jadina's priority was to defeat Anathos and she sealed away the memories of her rebirth. Having watched Jadina's battles to save the world, Gamera understood that Alysia needs her "daughter" more than she does. As such, she decided to leave the world until mankind would become more responsible with nature; but not before granting Jadina's wish of curing Queen Adeyrid from the Lerdamer Disease and Abyss' poison.

Gamera then flies away; leaving the Legendaries to reveal the truth about Abyss’ schemes and while Queen Adeyrid takes back the throne. Adeyrid wishes to mend her relationship with her daughters, which she strained by favouring her royal duties to the point that Jadina hardly knows her mother better than Ténébris does. However, Jadina knows full-well that Professor Vangelis' love for her mother was requited, and she cannot accept that Adeyrid, who knew firsthand the suffering of a marriage of interest, willingly destined her daughter with another one with Prince Halan of Sabledoray (a pun on "sable doré", French for "golden sand"). As she departs, Gamera is seen in space orbiting around Alysia, and Abyss' hand emerging from her roots clenches into a fist, foretelling his eventual return.