The Monster Below

The Monster Below is the title of one of the most famous and important stories in the Canon of Legends, the authoritative collection of mythological stories which constitutes the basis of Asarebas. The time when the story was first written down is unknown, but it is chronologically set as one of the very earliest stories in the entire Canon. The Monster Below is typically classified as a saga, mostly written in prose but in a poetic and deliberately archaic style and occasionally switching to full-on poetic verse for descriptions of places or people or to highlight emotionally intense moments.

The Monster Below is primarily focussed upon Cheriselle, the goddess of death and queen of the underworld, and it serves essentially as her origin story, but it also explains how she came to be the wife of Coravin and how the eternal war with Mocavierre began. The title is one that is deliberately ironic, first framing the main character Cheriselle as the "monster below" and then going extensively out of its way for the rest of the saga to prove that she is the exact opposite of that. In fact, one of the major themes of the story is to not be fearful and repulsed by the concept of death and not to curse and hate it, because - without any exaggeration - the goddess of death is a nice lady and it hurts her feelings when she is hated.

## Descent Into the Underworld

After the creation of the world, all of the gods were fairly pleased with themselves, but the unnerving issue of the souls of the dead became a rapidly worsening problem with none of the gods were willing to attend to or even acknowledge, greatly disturbed by death and mortality which, as immortal beings, they were confused and terrified by. Cheriselle, at this point still fairly young, could not bear to see the deceased mortal souls suffer, so she took it upon herself to descend into the chaos of the underworld and pacify it, making the realm hers and building shelters where the deceased could exist in tranquility. As she spent longer in the underworld, she began to adopt the aspects of death; her skin turned pale and cold, her irises blackened, and any fabric she used turned to black - hence why Cheriselle is only ever depicted wearing black, and black is her symbolic colour. She also gained the power to manipulate coldness and ice by becoming queen of the dead.

Cheriselle's association with mortality and her literally deathly appearance caused her to become shunned by the gods, including by her own father, whose name is not given in the saga, possibly because the original authors desired it to be forgotten. Her father cursed Cheriselle and proclaimed he no longer had a daughter, and he warned all of the other gods not to venture into the realm of his accursed child who had turned her back on the living. Cheriselle also came to be widely hated by the mortals themselves, who cursed her name and blamed her for taking away their loved ones to the underworld, not understanding or caring that Cheriselle was actually helping them by providing them with peace after death. Cheriselle became depressed and isolated herself, withdrawing from all others and permanently hiding her face with an opaque veil. Her only defenders were the original deceased mortals whom she had first saved, who knew that Cheriselle was no monster, and took up arms as the Knights of the Black Rose to serve her. They were granted supernatural powers by Cheriselle in order to defend the underworld - just in case the hatred of her ever turned violent.

Although Cheriselle was deeply hurt by the relentless hatred of her and her father's abandonment of her, it never drove her to anger or bitterness towards the mortals coming into her realm; she still provided a place for them in the underworld where they could find peace. She did, however, become progressively more bitter towards the other gods, and her building resentment soon festered into hatred - with one notable exception.

## The Librarian Visits

If there is one major personality trait which defines the deity Coravin, it is his rabid curiosity - so when Cheriselle's father declared that no god should visit the underworld, Coravin's natural response was to find his way into the underworld as soon as he could. This was a difficult task, for Cheriselle's father kept a vigilant watch, and the entrance to the underworld was well-hidden. After many months of searching, Coravin did manage to finally place its location within an obscure cave, and he went to it at night, disguised as a mortal - but he found it guarded by the great beast Zabise, queen of the spiders, who had made it her lair without knowing what it actually was.

Coravin explained to Zabise that she had made her web right over the gateway to the underworld and asked to pass through, but she refused, as she would not move for any mortal, and she had recently lain eggs. Coravin therefore risked showing his true nature to Zabise by summoning a ball of fire into his hand, which Cheriselle's father did not notice as such a small display would not rouse him from sleep. Zabise was satisfied that Coravin was a deity, but she still refused to move her eggs - so Coravin waited with Zabise until her eggs hatched, passing the time by telling her tales he remembered from books, and then Zabise moved to allow Coravin into the underworld. An unintentional side effect of the young spiders being told tales by the god of learning was that they were significantly more intelligent than normal, and they became known as the Clever Brood - and since they had heard Coravin's voice since they were first able to hear, they saw him almost as a father.

Coravin descended into the underworld, and quickly found that the place was intolerably cold for the god of fire, but whenever he tried to summon a flame to warm him up, an unknown force snuffed it out. His pursuit of knowledge about the underworld had to be set aside for the pursuit of warmth, so he rushed to the closest sign of civilisation, a modest and unremarkable town. He asked the inhabitants - who were all deceased mortals, obviously - where their leader was, and they pointed him in the direction of a house which was notably more impressive than all the others in the town, but still very humble. Coravin knocked on the door, and was promptly told to go away by a voice inside, but Coravin pleaded to be let in so that he could light a fire in the hearth to keep himself warm, and the door was opened for him, revealing the woman inside.

Although Coravin had no idea who this woman was, the description of her makes it abundantly clear that it is Cheriselle, and the narrator helpfully points out her identity in case the reader was unaware. Despite his vast wealth of knowledge, Coravin displays an extraordinary lack of deductive reasoning as he lights a fire and asks Cheriselle if she knows the queen of the dead. Cheriselle grew paranoid and cautiously questioned why Coravin wants to meet the queen, since everybody else reviles her, and Coravin candidly responded that he wants to know more about the underworld and she would be the best person to ask. Cheriselle thought this to be a trick designed to betray her trust, but kept her cool, asking why Coravin wanted to know about the underworld, whilst silently telling a bat to go and call the Knights of the Black Rose to arms. Coravin explained that he simply wanted to know more, as his mission was to make himself the great enemy of ignorance, and ignorance was causing deity and mortal alike to hate the underworld and its queen without actually knowing why.

*To be continued*