Oh gods, I woke up this morning around noon – passed out in my bathroom, which was covered in le vomit. Too much alcohol by far… Then it's 1:30pm and I need to write Forged Destiny like… now. Eek. Damn Christmas getting in the way!

On last chapter – you'll learn things in this one but when something seems wrong like with them buying a place without looking – latch onto it, ask why. But don't just assume it's a mistake by me. It was put in there for a reason.


Beta: College Fool

Cover Art: Pachumaster

Chapter 13


If we'd hoped the lodge would look better come the morning, then we were left disappointed. A shiver ran down my body as cold air blew through cracked windows. On the couch, Ruby snuggled closer to her sister, the taller girl cracking an eye open as she yawned. "What time is it?" Yang asked.

"Morning," I shrugged and pushed myself up. The bones in my neck cracked as I moved my head from side to side, the floor having provided about as much comfort as expected. That was to say none. "We've got the day off though, so it doesn't really matter."

"Hm…" Yang probably didn't hear a word I'd said. She just turned over, dragging Ruby's form with her, and started to snore again. It might have been a cute scene were it not for the growl an irate Mage let loose as she stalked across the floor and gave Yang's back a swift kick.

"Up," she snapped, "All of you up!"

"Ren… make her stop…"

Weiss ignored the two, her hair flapping about angrily as she turned and stood with hands on hips. "We don't have a free day at all," she said, "We have to try and sort out this… this mistake." She held her arms out towards the walls. "We need to get our lien back and then kill that cheating NPC."

"Fine, fine…" Yang yawned as she stood up, lifting Ruby with her and waiting until the younger girl was awake to put her down. "So, we're just… hunting him down?"

"Will that actually do any good?" Ren asked. The Monk stood with his usual, calm expression, but I don't think anyone had ever seen his bed hair like I had. His pink lock was completely out of control, and Yang and Ruby seemed unable to take their eyes from it. "We signed a contract for this place," he went on, "We will need to see what the terms of that are and how we can go back on the deal."

"There has to be some kind of clause for him lying though," I said. They were fairly common, especially since you couldn't have people going around selling stuff they knew was flawed. Mom's shop had a returns policy while dad was always willing to repair any damage his tools took for the first month or two. "Ruby, do you remember what was in the contract?"

"Um…" The girl poked her chin with one finger, but I knew from the worried look in her eyes that the results weren't going to be something I wanted to hear. "I don't remember… Yang, do you remember?"

"I…" Yang's brows furrowed as she hesitated. "I remember he showed them to us, then we started to read through them. I can't remember actually reading them though."

"Unbelievable!" Weiss erupted in an instant, frost drifting from the tips of her fingers as she slammed her hands down. "How idiotic can you both be? What kind of person doesn't read the contract they're about to sign!? That was our lien you may have signed away!"

Ruby wilted under the deluge, but even I wasn't sure whether I should come to her aid. How could she have not read the contract? She was young and a bit naïve at times, but she'd never been completely stupid.

Ruby shook her head and took a step back. "No," she said, "I… I knew we had to read it. I was being super serious about it, I promise! Yang," she turned to her sister with wide eyes, "I'm sure we said we wanted to see it, I can even remember picking it up!"

"Me too," the blonde growled and rubbed her forehead. "We said we wanted some time to go through the details before we signed."

"Then why don't you remember it!?" Weiss snarled.

"Azure!" Ruby's eyes snapped open. "Azure said we didn't need to read through it."

I winced at that, especially the hopeful look on Ruby's face. Naturally, the excuse did nothing for Weiss who unconsciously summoned a chunk of ice in her anger. It smashed into the floor, shattering into a thousand shards of ice.

"And you believed him?" she howled. "Of course, he would say you don't need to read it. He's a scoundrel and a liar, but even if you didn't know that – why would you have accepted his word!?"

"We wouldn't," Yang stepped in front of Ruby, making her position clear as she glared at the white-haired girl. "Normally we wouldn't… I don't know what came over us, okay? We're not idiots, Weiss."

"But you just believed him when he said you didn't need to read it. Of course, how understandable."

"Didn't we do the same?" Pyrrha stepped between the two before anything could go wrong. "We believed him too, even though we should have asked to see the property first. There was something bothering me about that last night, but I think I've finally realised what it was."

Everyone went silent as we looked towards the red-haired Champion. "Well?" I asked. "What is it?"

Pyrrha sighed and crossed her arms. "I think Azure attacked us."

What? That sounded ridiculous. The guy had been in front of us all the entire time and what would he have been able to do against Heroes like them? Besides, he had been a Peddler. If his Stats were anything like my mom's, then he'd have never been able to actually hurt us.

"You mean he used some kind of ability on us?" Weiss asked. "He used something to make us agree to something we didn't want to?"

"That or just his Charisma," Ren muttered.

"Impossible," Weiss laughed. "How could an NPC have more Charisma than a team full of Heroes? We had a Knight with us for crying out loud."

I couldn't meet their eyes at that. "Why would he do something like that, though?" I asked.

"Are you joking? He did it, Arc, because he's a filthy swindler who wanted our lien. Are you still on his side after what he's done to us?"

"It might be the after-effects of Azure's Charisma," Pyrrha laid a hand on my arm. "It should wear off soon."

Weiss snorted and threw her arms into the air, but my friend's words did little to calm me down. It wasn't the after-effects, or whatever she thought it was. I knew exactly why I found it so hard to believe how Azure had cheated us.

It was because he was part of the Labour Caste. Had I, despite constantly complaining about it, given in to the same classism I hated? I'd trusted Azure not because of merit or anything else, but because of what he was. I'd trusted him because he wasn't a Hero. Because to me, it was only the upper Castes which felt the need to cheat honest people. Gods… I was an idiot.

"You were the only person to become suspicious," Ren said to Weiss. "What was it that made you not trust him when he told us about the hall?"

"It sounded too good to be true. I will admit that even I was excited at the prospect, but it just didn't make sense on an intellectual level."

Intellectual… My head perked up as I called out, "Weiss, your highest Stat is Intelligence, isn't it?"

The Mage turned to face me and raised an eyebrow. "It is," she admitted with a little shrug. "Why?"

"I think I see where Jaune is coming from," Ren interrupted. "It's possible that he overwhelmed us with Charisma, and the only one who had any defence was yourself – and only when his offer clashed with your Intelligence."

"That's ridiculous," Weiss shook her head. "While it could work, there's simply no way an NPC would be high enough a level to actually affect us like that. Charisma works like suggestion… it isn't mind control."

"Unless the discrepancy was big enough," I pointed out. "My mother's a Shopkeeper and she always said that Charisma is stronger the more you have over another person's."

"But even if we all had D-stat Charisma, our level advantage would give us more than an NPC could have. NPC's are low level because they don't face ramping challenges. While they may gain Exp from crafting or doing their own work, in most cases the work doesn't increase in difficulty or give higher rewards. Heroes, on the other hand, regularly fight against stronger and stronger Grimm."

I knew what she meant. It was something everyone in the Labour Caste faced. When I'd been younger the act of making a sword from iron had given me a full level's worth of experience. Now, the gain was barely noticeable. My father was an unusually high level for a Blacksmith, but even he was only Level twenty-four. When a Hero found themselves not getting enough Exp from a certain Grimm, they could just go and hunt stronger ones.

It wasn't the same for us. A Blacksmith couldn't just go and hunt rare ores or metals… you had to see what came to you. What people asked for and what life had in store.

"Well maybe he's an exception because he works at Beacon." I shrugged. "There has to be some reason… I know it sounds unrealistic but it's the only thing I can think of."

"It's all we have," Ren nodded. "Ruby and Yang were completely tricked and I don't think they would fall for such a thing normally."

"We wouldn't!" Ruby whispered.

"Like Weiss said, Charisma works on the power of suggestion," the Monk went on, "It can't make you do things you don't want to do, but we all wanted to believe the deal was a good one. We wanted to trust him and he must have played on that. When it came to signing the contract, I would imagine Ruby and Yang were so eager to believe him that his Charisma was even able to trick them into ignoring their common sense."

"Normally it convinces you to spend a little more in a shop," Pyrrha agreed, "Or it makes you trust someone a little more than you normally would. I suppose in this case we were all so desperate to believe the deal was genuine that we defeated ourselves as much as he did us."

"There has to be rules against that," I looked to each of them. "I mean, we would be in trouble if we attacked someone else in the Academy. I doubt this is much different."

"There surely are," Pyrrha said. "We just need to find Azure and then a teacher. We should check the contract too. Ruby, could you go and get us a copy of it?"

"Y-Yes!" Ruby rushed over to her clothing, tugging it on behind a cough while Ren and I steadfastly looked away. She was gone a second or two later, dashing out the front door in her eagerness to redeem her name.

I didn't think she needed to… if this was something that Azure had done to us then surely the fault lay with him. Or me… I was the Knight, or so my friends thought. They would have trusted in me to defend them against Charisma-based assault. Sadly, it was my worst Stat at a pathetic ten.

"Yang and Weiss," Pyrrha continued to order us with the calm of someone used to it, "The two of you should see if you can find Azure or the Merchant's Guild. The rest of us will wait here and see what can be done about this place."

/-/

An hour or two to explore the Lodge had revealed a few new things, though none of them were particularly good. Azure had completely lied about the water, which didn't work at all thanks to some of the pipes being broken. They were simple enough things, made of copper and using a gravity feed system to stop or allow water flow from a container outside that we'd need to fill up every now and then.

Other than that, and the general run-down state of the building, the place looked like it could have been a nice Guildhall in its time. It was spacious enough for the seven of us and had a few extra rooms like a kitchen, bathroom and living area. Ren and Nora were cleaning that up at the moment, since it was practically the only room we could make use of.

"We'll need some wood for the windows," Pyrrha sighed as she came up to stand beside me. "I've got a feeling replacing all the glass will be outside of our budget, so we should board them up for now."

"Maybe we could chop some wood of our own from the Emerald Forest."

Pyrrha smiled and nodded. I had no idea how she could be so upbeat in this situation. I felt like I'd personally failed everyone by standing up for Azure. I'd trusted him for no better reason than prejudice, and that had cost us all our hard-earned lien. Ruby had nearly died for us to earn most of it – and now it was gone.

"You shouldn't blame yourself for what happened," she said.

I laughed. "Am I so obvious?"

"Only because it's what we are all thinking. I've been blaming myself all morning, and I keep seeing Ren's frustrated face – or how Ruby shrunk away from us earlier." Pyrrha shook her head. "We all made a mistake here. The blame is not yours, Jaune. Nor is it mine for going with the flow, Weiss' for not trusting her instincts or Ruby's for being fooled."

"We should have asked to see it…"

"And he would have simply told us we didn't need to. It's easy to see what could have been done in hindsight. For now, we need to make the best of what we have."

"You're right." There was nothing we could do for now and in the end, it probably wouldn't matter anyway. The school would take back the building and force the Merchant's Guild to give them their lien back.

A commotion from the other room caught our attention, the sounds of Yang and the others returning drawing everyone in that direction. I didn't get a chance to ask what they'd found. Their faces said it all.

"We have a problem," Weiss sighed. "Azure… does not exist."

Shock ran through me, my eyes widening as Pyrrha and I shared a glance. "But he has to," I said. "Are you sure people just don't know him because he isn't a Hero?"

"We sought out the registry of Beacon. It contains the name of every student, every member of staff and even every NPC on campus. The Scholar working in the library was very clear in saying there is no Peddler who matches that name."

"There is a student called Azure," Yang chipped in, "But they're a Warrior… and a she. We even went to the Merchant's Guild to ask, and they claim they've never had a member with that name."

"Well they would," I said and waved a hand. "They're not going to admit to scamming us."

"Therein lays our other problem," Weiss sighed and held a hand out towards Ruby. The Reaper drew something forth from her hood, handing it over to the Mage. She in turned held it out to me.

"It's the contract," I said, briefly glancing over it before letting Ren have a look. He was by far the better person to spot anything than I. "What's wrong with it?"

"Look at who the vendor is," Weiss said.

Ren's eyes widened as he looked up at me. "It's not the Merchant's Guild. We're the buyers but the seller is someone called TRE."

"It's an acronym for a Guild… we've been unable to figure out which, just yet. The Merchant's Guild assured us that they don't sell Guildhalls… never have, never will."

"So, someone was pretending to be a part of the Merchant's Guild?" I asked. Come to think of it, there really was no way to be sure of anything here. Maybe there were official guild cards or something but we'd not known about them and had just taken his words at face value. "Does this change anything?"

"It means the vanishing act of a certain NPC is irrelevant," Weiss sighed. "He didn't sell the hall to us. It was this TRE Guild, to which we are now contracted."

"Then we go to them and put the same deal forward," Pyrrha crossed her arms and frowned. "It doesn't matter who we bought this from. They still lied to us and Beacon will surely rule on our side."

"They would," Weiss added, "If the contract included any mention of damage whatsoever."

What?

"She's right," Ren muttered, "The contract says the hall was in perfect condition and that we agreed to that. It's hidden so deep in that there's no way Ruby or Yang would have seen it. They would have rejected it by the time they read that far. Azure must have already convinced them by that point."

"But the Guildhall is a complete wreck," I held my arms out, unsure of exactly where I should point. There was damage everywhere.

"And so far as anyone would know, we were the ones to cause it."

"A story about a guild of friends trashing a Guildhall," Yang grumbled. "Sound familiar?"

It was the same sob story Azure had fed us as an explanation for why he needed to sell the hall. And now here we were, liable to be marked as the next people in that story. With a frustrated growl, I turned and kicked a piece of wood, watching as it shattered against the wall. It didn't fix the situation... but it sure as hell felt satisfying.

"My thoughts exactly," Weiss drawled.

"Well, can't we find TRE and end the contract?" Nora asked, "We might lose the first month's pay but we could stay in the communal dorms again."

"I'm sure if we tried the Guild would claim all the damage caused was done by us and that we must repair it or we'll be reported to Beacon." Weiss snapped. "And in case you're wondering, we checked what the punishment would be for us to return a Guildhall in this state to Beacon. It's not expulsion, but we would be expected to pay for everything to be repaired… and if we can't, then we won't ever be allowed to graduate."

"So, what?" I asked, "We're stuck with it?"

"The only avenue I can see to escape is for us to continue paying rent on it while also repairing the building. If we can get it to a state where it's mostly fixed, then we can end the contract without risk."

"If it were fixed then we might as well continue it." Just the thought of that was enough to have my stomach curdling. Those bastards would have completely gotten away with it. There had to be some way of getting them in trouble for this. "Should we at least try and find who we've sold our souls to?"

"Certainly," the Mage said. "We were unable to find anything but we did want to return and explain the situation. I'm sure we can narrow it down if we check the registry again. It may take some time since it's an acronym, but we'll manage. The question is… what can we do with that information?"

What could we do? We had no proof of what had happened to us or how they'd tricked us. On the other hand, they could hold out the threat of revealing what we had done to the Guildhall to Beacon. We were up against a Guild we didn't even know the name of... who had a Peddler under their employ who was so powerful he could trick Heroes - and who also apparently didn't exist. We were fighting shadows here. An enemy we had no idea how to confront. "Damn it," I growled. "We've got nothing."

"We have a Guildhall," Weiss indicated the building with a sweep of her hand. "And so long as we continue to pay for it, I don't expect there will be any trouble. As much as I hate to admit it… perhaps we should make the best of a bad situation."

"It's all we can really do," Yang sighed. "It's a total mess, but we can try and make it better."

"Can we, though?" Ren asked. "The contract states we have to use their approved workers to repair it. Call me cynical, but I have the sinking suspicion they will be not only incompetent, but extortionate too."

Ha… and to think Azure had said it was because they were worried we would hire poorly skilled craftsmen and make it worse. Of course, that was just another part of the trick too. They were already gouging us for the rent… might as well hand the threat of expensive repairs over us too. It was some kind of ridiculous pyramid scheme that we were stuck firmly at the bottom of. "Then we just don't do any repairs." I said. "Hell, we can stay in the communal halls if we want to. We don't need this."

"Then they will just draw Beacon down on us," Ren pointed out. "They want our lien… I don't think they are going to let us get away with interfering with that. They can always just say they were concerned at the damage caused and thus felt the need to bring in the teachers."

"So, we can't repair it and we can't not repair it? Should we just give them all our money now and be done with it?"

"No," Weiss' smile turned wicked. She flicked some hair behind her, crossing her arms and inspecting the dilapidated hallway. "In fact, we start our repairs immediately."

"But we can't," Pyrrha said. "We're only allowed to use their people to repair the damage."

"And what damage is there? From what I can see there's no list of damage on the contract… after all, this was in perfect condition, no?" Weiss walked past me to stand facing the bathroom. "For instance, officially it is only ourselves and the TRE who know that the pipes are broken. If we fixed those ourselves, they would have no way of proving that we broke the contract, other than to admit that the pipes were broken before we moved in. That would then allow us to leverage such information to break free."

That was it! Fire swam through my blood as I looked around the broken hall. Every little bit that we could repair now was something they couldn't charge us for – and one step closer to being free of this place altogether. If we could fix everything then we could leave... or we could stay. The Hunter's Lodge would be a perfect hall for us if it wasn't for all the problems.

"If they notice, they'll surely send someone to run an itinerary and record all the damage," Ren warned. "We can get away with this right now but we'll need to be fast."

"Right," I nodded, "Then let's not waste any time. Yang and Nora, I want you to go out and cut wood in the forest. Bring as much as you can carry back here as fast as possible. Ruby, can you go and find some hammers and nails – as fast as you please." The Reaper nodded and was out the door almost instantly. "Wei-"

"Whoah, whoah," Weiss crossed her arms. "And who made you the leader here?"

"That would be Ruby and Yang," Ren answered as he held up another piece of paper. "It seems when they formed the Guild, they chose Jaune to be Guild Master." They did? My eyes widened as I looked towards Yang, who only shrugged in response.

"It sounded like hard work," she said – immediately bursting my bubble. "Plus, Rubes said Jaune is the most leader-like out of us."

I was? I would have thought Pyrrha fit that, since she was the one who had commanded us in the Dungeon and also earlier when she'd sent people looking for the contract. The Champion only nodded when I looked towards her. If anything, she seemed pleased by the development. I wasn't sure if I was, but it did give me a chance to try and redeem myself. To prove to the others that I could be trusted.

"Ren, I need you to figure out what each piece of damage is. Weiss, can you go with him but I actually want you to try and see what damage we can conceal… something whoever they send to check might miss. That way we can repair them whenever we can. Pyrrha, start seeing what can be done with the woodwork… whatever you think you can fix, have a go. I don't think you could make anything worse than it already is."

"What about you?" Weiss asked.

"I'm going to take a look at that faulty piping," I grinned. "I've got a feeling I might be able to do something with it." It was metal, after all. So long as nothing was missing I could smelt the damn thing down to ingots and forge my own.

We'd get through this… it was a setback, just like Pyrrha had said, but there was no way I was going to let these assholes win.

"Get to it Guild," I crowed, throwing an arm out as a commander might have atop a magnificent steed. "Let's show the TRE who they're messing with!"


Well, a slightly smaller chapter than usual on account of Christmas and where it fell. It wasn't beta'd by College Fool either, since I wasn't going to ask him to spend Christmas day looking through my work. Also, because I'm being sick everywhere.

I'm sure there will be questions re Charisma and how it works – namely, whether it's a mind control or not. Hopefully the chapter did answer some, but worry not, more answers will be coming as we delve into TRE, who they are, and how they achieved this.

But like I said at the top, sometimes there are reasons why things look wrong and it's meant to be a hint for you guys. I felt like so many people found the hint, saying things like "Hang on, that's silly – why would they do that?"

But instead of actually thinking "Why would they do that?" A lot of people just made the assumption that I, as an author, had basically written them stupid for no good reason. As though I could somehow justify "Suddenly, everyone is an idiot!"

Have a little faith guys and gals. I usually do have an angle.


Next Chapter: 9th January

P a treon . com (slash) Coeur