Hewwo! OwO mwy name is Chwistian ^w^ XD and I'm back with anothew stowy fow u guys! =W= xP I wuv to have immowaw intewcouwse with animaws :) UwU XDDD

God, that was hard to type. Goodbye to any reader who had instantly clicked off this fic.

Anyway, new story. This is the reason I haven't worked on and updated R&D in a long while. That and goddamn vidya.

This is a fantasy AU Jaune x Salem story, as you could probably tell. I don't how long I'll take this, but I know it'll be in three different arcs. The overall tone will be (mostly) lighthearted, a bit cartoony and humorous (I hope so), with a bit of self-awareness sprinkled here and there. But perhaps sometime down the line, it'll get a little teary and angsty.

This was inspired by A. Lee Martinez's "Too Many Curses" and iammemyself's Portal fic "Portal: Love as a Construct". I recommend you go check them. I'm still not finished with either of them, but they're good stories so far.

With that out of the way, hope you enjoy.

Salem's Servant: Chapter 1

The night air was cold and near freezing, as if winter had decided to make an early visit upon the grand city. The winds that would occasionally sweep by bit and stung his already gelid skin. They were ruthless in their efforts to make his night even more miserable, and he could only do so much as burrow himself further into his worn coat and suck it up. He had experienced much colder nights before – this one was like hot night in the middle of a blazing summer.

Jaune's unkempt and filthy blonde hair swayed idly as he continued to walk down the cobblestone road. He could really go for a bath right now. When was the last time he had a bath? He couldn't exactly remember. All this trouble of trying to find some place to stay for the night for the past two or so weeks had him forgetting things all the time.

Chatter and merriment sounded around him. He must have unknowingly wandered into the more privileged areas of the city, where bright lights were everywhere and more quaint and rich-looking architecture surrounded the streets. No matter what time of the day, there were always so many happy people roaming around these areas. Don't get him wrong; he always like seeing people being happy. You could say their high spirits were quite contagious to the blonde. But nowadays, especially with his current predicament, listening to their laughs was like listening to a horrible orchestra. He wanted to plug his ears up and block them out.

But even if he tried, they were still clear as glass. Jaune sighed, running his mucky hand through his hair.

Jaune, you're an idiot. A big, dumb idiot.

It had been about a few weeks ago when his current situation had taken arise. He had just taken a long trip to large city of Vale. A very, very long trip to Vale. Endless miles and dirt paths of exasperating walking and hitchhiking, to be exact. And it was all for one reason: to enter Beacon Academy. The most prestigious knight training academy in all of Remnant. It was famed for being the alma mater of many honored and famous knights, such as his late great-grandfather. Their training and teaching was unlike any other training academy out there. Sure, their curriculum was bit… harsh, especially when you have no idea what you're doing. But the outcome was worth trudging through endless hours of back-breaking physical and combat training if you wanted to become a knight.

A knight. That was what Jaune wanted to become: a knight. Someone who saved people. Someone who vanquished those who did nothing but evil with the slice of a sword. Someone who was regarded as a hero throughout the entire land. As a young little child, becoming a hero was something of a life-long dream of his. After reading all those heroic fantasy books and hearing all his sisters' bedtime stories, it was nigh impossible to not want to become a hero.

But unfortunately for his younger self, many obstacles laid in his path to his dream. His parents, for one. Throughout his heroics-fueled childhood, they had been so adamant on keeping his dreams just that – dreams. Every breakfast, lunch and dinner, they would always jump to suggesting another less dangerous career, like a blacksmith or a baker. And every time he brought up his plans to become a knight, they would either ignore him or tell him to shut up (okay, it was less harsh than that, but you get the point).

His sisters were a problem as well. Although they weren't as discouraging as his parents were, they weren't as encouraging either. They mostly ignored him and went on with their day whenever he uttered a single word about knights or heroics. That was when they were on good moods. Other times, they often scoffed at him, laughing at the image of him in knight's armor like it was some funny joke to them.

And they, more often than not, were not in good moods.

It broke his heart numerous times. His own sisters, the same people that cared for him more than anyone else, laughing at him for wanting to become a knight. A hero. His life-long dream. It was soul-crushing. Like getting his little young heart stabbed every time they scoffed or mocked him. Wanting to cry many times back then didn't help either. Knights didn't cry. They would be weak if they did.

Perhaps all of that was the reason why he felt no remorse when running away. No lingering guilt, no looking back. He grabbed whatever stuff and amount of gold he could carry, stuffed them into a travelling pack and sneaked away at the dead of night, his eyes set straight for Vale.

No lingering guilt, no looking back.

It was a long journey to the city of Vale. One that made him wish for some kind of teleportation spell or something, because it was like walking along a long, long road of sharp spikes bare feet with heavy rocks strapped to your legs under blearing suns and a harsh cold moons, with bits of heavy rain sprinkled in between. He endured though, and eventually made it to the city's gates, grinning in sheer happiness that he had arrived.

That was when his problems began.

Looking back now, if he had the power to travel back in time, he would go back and punch himself in the face so hard, his jaw would dislodge itself from his head for being such a moron. Along the journey, amongst the trouble of trudging through Mother Nature, he had totally forgotten that he needed official, authorized transcripts to even be considered by Beacon's staff. And in the off chance that he did get accepted, he would still need to pass initiation to be fully accepted into the academy, which from what he had heard, required lots of prior physical and swordsmanship training to barely get a passing mark.

Jaune had neither of those, nor transcripts.

He panicked then, struggling with coming up with something. Submission of transcripts only lasted for two days more since his arrival at Vale, initiation started a week after that, and that sure wasn't enough to train himself.

That was when he decided to get a little… illegal.

Morality be damned in times of desperation.

Thanks to word of mouth and a bit of eavesdropping, he had managed to find someone who could forge him some transcripts. A shady looking fellow, who seemed to have a knack for high-class clothing, bowler hats and girlish make-up. Of course, being illegal, it was horrifyingly expensive, more than enough to drain all the gold he had brought with him.

But he was desperate, so he shrugged the price off and went along with the deal, and eventually sent the transcripts to Beacon, albeit very late at night. As for training, he could hopefully train himself. Buy a cheap set of armor and a sword from a backwater weapon's shop someplace, and train himself in the forests outside the city. He had a week to train himself. That was more than enough for him to get a basic grasp on sword techniques and fighting stances.

…And then came the rejection letter.

And it hadn't even been a full day yet. As soon as he woke up the next morning after submitting his transcripts, the owner of the inn he was staying in came knocking at his door with the letter at his hands. The very apologetic, officially sealed rejection letter. After reading through the entire thing, he could only sit on his bed in silence. He was tired and lacking of sleep, and in his hands was the confirmation of the destruction of his dreams. All the frantic work he had done the past few days, all the dreaded walking, all the numerous mosquito bites he got from having to camp outside. It was all for nothing…

That day, Jaune did nothing but cry.

And what's worse, he only had himself to blame. If he had been training like he should have when he was younger, if he had been actually striving to become a good knight, then he maybe… maybe he would have actually had a shot at Beacon. But no, he wasted it all on daydreaming and playing make-believe. Reading those tales of heroics like it would actually make his dream come true, when all it did was rot his mind with false hope and childishness.

Jumping off the highest cliff and falling to your death had never sounded so nice.

And as if the rejection wasn't enough, he practically had no gold left to his name. He had spent almost all of his gold on the transcripts, which had left him with only enough for a few scraps of food.

Now he was both miserable and broke. How wonderful.

When his stay at the inn came to an end, he spent the next few days wandering around Vale, downhearted, hungry and with no place to go. A part of his mind told him to go back to Ansel. To go back to his family. They would no doubt take him back in. Despite all the soul-crushing, they weren't that cruel.

But another, bigger part of his mind screamed not to. Screaming that there was no going back to that place. Going back would mean giving up, and knights didn't give up. Jaune may be no knight now, but he still had the willpower of one. He wasn't one to just give up so easily, especially through all he had been through.

And that's how he ended up staying in Vale. For the past days, he had went all around Vale, looking for odd jobs that could help him get some gold for food and a cheap place to stay for a night or two. His plan had been to scrounge up enough gold to be able to stay afloat until he could find a proper, stable job, or even open up small-time business of sorts, like a café or a restaurant.

But sadly, there were none that paid enough. He did some deliveries for a few stories and a few cleaning and dishwashing jobs for restaurants, but they barely ever gave him enough for a warm meal.

Which now leads us to now…

As Jaune continued making his way down the road, he noticed a couple of guards on horses trotting down from afar, pulling along a large metal cage on a wagon. Inside the cage was a woman whose old age should've definitely killed her. Her hair was a dying silver, and the wrinkles on her face were more copious than the entire city's tax money combined. Despite her old age, she pulled and pulled on the poles of the cage, demanding her release like a rapping monster. The cage rocked and shook as it was pulled, making her lose her balance a couple of times.

The guards and the cage continued down the road and past him, disappearing past a bunch of buildings. Jaune watched all of this and shook his head once it was gone.

Crime wasn't the only thing the knights of Vale had to worry about. The city seemed to be a popular attraction for a lot of witches, and they were not as friendly as tourist from other cities and kingdoms are. They were evil, terrorizing small, defenseless villages and lonely travelers seemingly to satisfy their thirsts for villainy and havoc. Most witches he had heard from newspapers and the news board of Ansel usually weren't a serious threat. Some only managed to burn down a small number of empty homes and buildings before they were stopped by nearby patrols.

But some had the strength, spells and power as a small army of well-armed knights. Those were the more experienced witches who had been around for a long while. They were ruthless and dangerous, able to easily wipe out an entire village in mere minutes. Jaune had managed to hear a couple of villages nearby Ansel that had been destroyed by the stronger witches thanks to word of mouth, and he would shudder every time.

Not only were they strong, but they were also immortal. Well, most anyway, at least the ones who managed to learn how to give themselves immortality. Which meant as long as they weren't executed (which they often were), they could escape capture and go on to wreak havoc and chaos whenever they liked for all eternity (or at least until the world ended).

Witches were the only things that managed to scare him and make him hesitant of becoming a knight – that and the endless armor polishing he had to do during the starting days of academy. Call him a scaredy cat, but witches were terrifying, especially the stronger, immortal ones. Imagine all of your fellow knights are all dead around you, and you were left to face the witch that has completely wiped the village you were protecting off the face of the earth, and the grin that that witch wore made you know your dead body won't even survive her onslaught. That would be eternal suffering in the Underworld levels of terrifying.

Jaune shuddered at the imagery and shook his head to dispel them. There was no time to think about that. He had bigger fish to cook, and a nice plate of cooked fish was all he wanted right now.

The ragged blonde rounded another corner and arrived at the front of Vale's city hall. It was huge, with pristine white painted walls, limestone pillars and a wide set of luxurious stairs adorning the front side of the building. If Jaune hadn't known, he would have thought this would have been some kind of fancy art museum.

It was clear where all the city's tax payer money went to.

Jaune ignored the lavish entrance and walked past the set of stairs, over to the large oak board by the side. The official Vale jobs board was one of the more clever ideas the city had. It was a board that the people could use in order to find and post up job offerings in the form of flyers. Those looking for jobs could just make their way to the jobs board, find a job suitable for their skills and contact the poster using the provided information on the flyers. It was quite handy, way better than having to go around the city for job and getting rejected by many in the process.

Though he didn't know why the city just left the board outside the city hall instead of having it inside. There wasn't even a guard guarding it most times. It was insanely easy to vandalize the board. You'd think they'd have at least assigned a guard to watch over the board.

…Then again, he… never really saw anyone vandalize the board. Not since he knew about the board.

Maybe that's why they don't have a guard here…

Anyway, as Jaune stopped himself from pondering too much on the city's odd workings, he scanned the board for anything. It was riddled with lots of flyers. Some were new, while some were having been posted for more than a month, judging by their heavily creased and damp look. Jaune had used this board a couple of times the past days to find a proper job, but he found no luck. They either needed some with a skill he didn't have or the pay was worse than the little he was already struggling to get from odd jobs.

And it seemed like tonight was no different.

Jaune sighed sadly. All of these job offerings, and not one was compatible with his skills. He had no experience in blacksmithing, no experience in carpentry or cooking high class meals, and he certainly had no idea what a "voluntary and legally aged snatch poker" was, nor did he want to know.

After a quick run through of the board once more, Jaune hung his head and began to walk away, beginning his way back to the old and decrepit building in downtown he had found – his home away from home for the past days. No luck tonight. Perhaps if he came back tomorrow, he could hopefully be lucky then. He just needed to be persistent and not give up, just like a real knight.

However, before he could even take one step, his eyes managed to catch something. A distinctly black-colored flyer, buried deep within every other same-looking flyer, its bottom corner swaying softly in the night wind. It looked odd and certainly out of place. Because really, what sane human being used all-black parchment? Did they just toss a roll of it into a tub of ink, pulled it out with a stick and thought, "Yup, I'm going to use this. This is certainly okay!"

No, it's not, and they should feel bad about it.

Eyeing the odd flyer with a raised brow, Jaune approached it like it was some strange animal. He pushed the papers blocking it aside and snatched it off the board, which had been kept up by some odd and smooth wood, almost shaped like the tooth of an evil monster.

Jaune read the flyer. It was… quite hard, actually. Red words written like it was by some doctor on dark black parchment wasn't exactly the clearest thing to read.

He squinted and pulled the paper close to his face. "Hiring: a servant for a high-class family living in a manor near the city of Vale. Skills required: must be good at cleaning, cooking basic meals, and other general skills in housekeeping. Will be paid… 1000 gold per week plus free accommodation at work place?!"

He pulled the flyer away in shock, his suddenly raised voice having scared a few rich folks that passed by. Though he couldn't give a rotten rat if he scared off Vale's king and queen. Because not only was he best at all the things the flyer was looking for in a servant (thanks to his sister dumping all of the house chores and responsibilities on him), the job would pay him one thousand gold per week?! Holy Underworld! That was way, way, waaaay more than the average gold a house servant was usually paid. And free accommodation at his work place as well? He might as well be the richest man on Remnant right now.

At the bottom of the flyer were a bunch of other nitty gritty details, such as a note stating more details of his job would be discussed at the manor and the name of the poster, which was simply "Selene". It even had a detailed map of the manor's location, which was incredibly convenient.

Jaune looked the details over. The manor wasn't too terribly far from the city's main gate. Only a couple hours of walking at most. He could easily make the trip in one morning. There wasn't as much rough terrain as well. He just needed to follow the main road, make a turn and after that was just a couple miles of thick forest before he arrived.

The blonde re-read the flyer over and over again, trying to make sure it was actually real. With the incredibly high pay and benefits, it was just too good to be true. Too incredulous. It was possible this was just one of those cruel dreams he'd been having, where they lured him in with something good then immediately crushed his hope and soul with the realization, like a one-hundred feet tall giant stepping on a little ant.

But after a few minutes of rapid blinking and arm pinching, the flyer was still in his hands, as real as real could get. Feeling the rough parchment in his finger, Jaune could do nothing but grin like an idiot who found a chest full of gold in his yard.

It was real! This was a real thing! He couldn't help but hug the flyer as hard as he could while jumping with joy, laughing like a young child. More and more city folk that passed by became weirded out by his happiness (some even covered the eyes of their children), but he couldn't much as a single damn. He had practically won the lottery right here.

Jaune stuffed the flyer into his inner coat pocket and sped off the road, laughing like a mad man high on sugar. All of his gloom had vanished as soon as he read that flyer, and all was left was an incredibly happy Jaune making his way back to the shoddy downtown building he would soon abandon. After a good night's rest and hopefully some sweet dreams, he would pack up his stuff, get some well-deserved breakfast with the gold he had left and begin the journey towards a new chapter of his life, working an unbelievable one thousand gold per week as a servant for a high-class family that, for some reason, suspiciously lived outside the walls of Vale and in the middle of a dense forest, where no one would hear him scream if he was to be murdered so horribly.

What could possibly go wrong?

Everything. Everything will go wrong, Jaune.

So yeah, that's the first chapter. Looking at it now, it's more of a prologue, with the whole set up to Jaune's inevitable demise and stuff.

Anyway, here are some things I want to get out of the way:

Like I said, this is a fantasy AU, which means thing will work a bit differently. Lien is called Gold here (creative, I know), there's no aura nor semblances, no huntsmen or huntresses (which are sort of replaced by knights), and the main threat to society are mostly immortal witches. Grimm don't exist here… yet…

Some characters may be a bit OOC. Salem definitely will be a victim of OOCness, though I do try to wiki-dive for info (forgive me, for I have only reached V3). I don't know about Jaune though. I know he's a bit of socially-inept in the early volumes, but I can't exactly pinpoint if he's actually dumb when it comes to things requiring common sense. But hey! At least it could be good humor.

There will be some OCs in this story. Don't worry, there won't be any powerful, all-knowing demon lord or anything here… Actually, now that I think about it…

Updates will be slow and random since I'm lazy and this fic is more of a hobby than something serious.

Of course, like I said, it's a Jaune x Salem fic. But the first arc of this story would be less Jaune x Salem heavy and more Jaune trying to survive stuff. The romance and friendship stuff will come later (hopefully).

So yeah, that's it, I guess. Let me know what you think about this. Send me some constructive criticism – tell me what I should improve on and whatnot. Or give me ideas for scenes, I don't know. Reviews help a lot in keeping me motivated, and if you want to see more of this, leave a review, criticism or not.

Anyway, bye.

~Christian Maulkner, Green Day fanatic and fox enthusiast