Majimonsters: Rosewood Journey - Chapter 147

“What? The claws? I don’t think those would be easy to sell, bro. They look like something a noble would claim was theirs or something”, Alyra said while appraising the claws.

“But they look so…beautiful”, the boy said as he slowly walked toward the corpse, his eyes glazed over.

“Bro? What are you…”.

But the girl’s question came a touch too late.

Before she could act, the boy had already reached the slab where the corpse was resting.

“When did he…”?

In an unnaturally fluid manner, the boy removed the two gauntlets from the corpse’s hands, revealing a pair of hands that would look more at home on a living person rather than a corpse. As he quickly donned the silver gauntlets, the blades of bone jutting out of them suddenly retracted into the gauntlets and disappeared from view.

“Aren’t they beautiful, dear sister?”, the youth said in a strange tone while admiring his new gauntlets. Before their very eyes, the gauntlets began to shrink down until they fit snugly onto the boy’s hands.

“Bol, I think we should get going now…I already picked out something we can-“.

“Just a moment, dear sister”, the boy said in a tone of voice that was much deeper and more sinister than how he was speaking a few moments prior, “there’s still one more treasure for us to plunder”.

The boy had jumped on to the slab at this point and placed himself face to face with the corpse’s death mask. The youth dislodged the mask, revealing to the world an androgynous, beautiful face that looked warm with the touch of life.

“What? I thought this place was a-“.

But before she could finish, the body before her began to decay at a rapid pace. From a peaceful sleeping face, to a shriveled mummy in one second and finally dust in another. All that was left was a set of elaborate robes, the silver gauntlets on the boy’s hands and the death mask in those hands.

For a moment, the boy just stared at the mask. A feeling of intense desire radiating off of his body. In an oddly slow manner, the boy began to put on the strange mask.

Sensing that something was wrong, Alyra rushed towards him to try and stop him, but an invisible and inexplicable force began to impose on her.

“Bolero, don’t do it! There’s something wrong with that mask!”, she screamed in vain. Ignoring her pleas, the boy donned the mask…and began to scream.

His body began to spasm, squirm and grow. His voice, loud and shrill, slowly turned into a growling roar. Lastly, the mask and gauntlets fused into his flesh, but where once was a human face underneath the mask, a hideous maw began to jut out. As the transformation came to an end, the force acting on Alyra suddenly disappeared.

She stared on in shock at the monster her brother had become, but only for a moment as her instincts to survive told her to escape as quickly as possible The next thing she knew, she bolted from the mausoleum as a loud, pain-filled roar echoed behind her.

She did not dare to scream as she ran, afraid that it would draw its ire.

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After finisher her story, Alyra refound her appetite and downed her bowl in a quick succession of gulps.

“That is…quite an experience”, I said while trying to sound nonchalantly as possible. Internally, I was panicking. I might be being trained to deal with the magical issues that normally come with maji and binders, it doesn’t mean I am at all prepared to actually hear about it…unlike Voxea.

As our bowls were being taken away, I could feel Voxea muttering in the back of my head.

[Silver treasures…a moon hidden tomb… horrifying mutations…the only Mani I knew who could do that were…gyaaaa, no…quick, ask her if she remembers anything more specific about this mausoleum].

“Out of curiosity, do you remember anything else that stood out about this mausoleum?”, I asked with genuine concern and curiosity.

“Anything more…wait, I did take this”.

Reaching into her pouch, Alyra pulled out what looked to be a silver hair comb shaped like a crescent moon, a star stone embedded in the handle.

[Of course it’s them…], Voxea suddenly groaned.

[What’s wrong]?

[The Circle of the Argenti Bestia], Voxea said with a sneer.

[The Circle of what]?

[Best way I can describe them? A bunch of crazy druids who followed a rather unpleasant philosophy in dragoncrafting], Voxea said with clear distaste.

[Which was?], I asked, afraid of what the answer might be.

[Mutating mundane humans with aether].

[Well…crap].