(The Lost Mine)

"Ahh!"

Jaune released, in his opinion, a manly scream. Of course, not everyone present would agree with him.

"What pair of lungs you have, Master!" Crocea exclaimed.

"I'm gonna die, Crocea!", cried out the wielder of Crocea Mors as he fell into the depths of 'Lost Mine' mountain.

"Calm, Master," soothed the voice of the blade, "Pull me from my sheathe.", it guided.

Jaune did so, albeit still screaming.

"Good! Now, tilt your body closer the stairs." As Jaune did so, the weapon continued talking, "Now, on my mark to one, stab me into the stone surface of the wall. I will then use Hyper Perception once you do, to which you will launch your lower body half onto the stairs."

"Okay! Okay! Hurry up already!", pleaded the blonde.

"Very well! Three!" Jaune held Crocea Mors above his head with both hands.

"Two!" He pulled back and readied himself.

"One!" Jaune stabbed the stone wall. There was a loud 'cracking' sound as metal met rock. Crocea Mors pierced the stone as easily as a hot knife would cut through butter.

Once Jaune impaled his blade, the young teen felt the shift in reality as he did over a month and a half ago. All color had been sapped form his vision and his descent into the darkness of the mountain slowed exponentially.

No, that was incorrect. His perception of falling was slowing down.

Hyper Perception, Jaune noted. His fall hadn't slowed to a crawl, as he had hoped, but that made sense. He was dropping at an insane rate. Even now, as he fell, stabbing his sword into the stone stairway barely did anything to stop his fall. Although, Jaune did note that his descent was slowing down by the... well, he wasn't sure if seconds would be the correct measurement of time within Hyper Perception.

"Hurry now, Master, a flight of stairs is approaching." Crocea reminded.

And, as per his sword's words, Jaune could see below him a cut-off of stone where torchlight shined through and stone stairs could be seen. Steeling himself, the blonde prepared himself by rocking his lower body. Forwards. Backwards. Forwards. Backwards.

Each time, Jaune swung his body with more force and momentum.

As the cut-off approached, Jaune swung his lower boy backwards one more time and threw himself onto the flight of stairs while pulling out Crocea from the wall.

Smack!

Jaune's body crashed onto the wall from within the stairway. There came a 'Clang' as well from his partner as it landed a few steps above him.

"Oww…", a moan of pain erupted from the teen. He could feel a soreness rise from his shoulder muscles. Jaune had twisted himself in the last…microsecond? He wasn't sure what it was, but he had twisted himself so we would crash side-first onto the wall and not with crash with his legs and risk breaking a bone.

"You made it, Master. Congratulations! I'm glad to see you putting your physical training to good use!"

"Oww…What do you mean?"

"You were only capable of pulling off this acrobatic due to the control of the muscles you developed through your calisthenics training. Therefore, you could say you just reaped the fruits of your labor, Master."

"Well, this fruit doesn't particularly taste sweet right now, Crocea," Jaune spoke as he pulled himself up, "Actually, it tastes quite painful."

"Silly Master," the sword vibrated in amusement, as if laughing, "At the very least you can taste anything right now, and not falling to your death."

Jaune paused comically, "Yeah, you're right."

The young adventurer sheathed his partner at took a moment to check himself for any other injuries other than his sore, and probably bruised, shoulder. After being satisfied that there was no other significant damage, Jaune spoke out, "So, do you think I should climb up or down?"

"It's hard to say. It would depend on which side you're closer to." Crocea eventually answered.

Jaune carefully leaned his head out of the stairway and looked up, "Can't see any light from up there…", the teen then looked below, "…And I don't remember hearing the torch I dropped make a sound."

"I'd be surprised if you did, after all your screaming."

Jaune blushed in embarrassment.

"Well, in for a lien…", the blonde muttered as he grabbed a torch from the wall and then properly began his trek down the immense flight of stairs

It wasn't much later when Jaune spoke up once more, "You know, I really wonder who could've built this kind of place and why."

"Yes," Jaune's trusty sword agreed amusedly, "Telling by the style of the architecture, they must have been very talented."

both teen and sword encountered a door.

"Hey, check this out, Crocea!"

"How peculiar…", the sword spoke softly.

Jaune stared at it for a moment before whispering to his sword, "Do you think anyone may be inside?"

"There's only one way to find out, Master."

The small wooden door that both reached up the blonde's chest, which was about four and a half in height. Feeling curious, and a tad hopeful, Jaune knocked on the door (he was taught to be polite), but received no response.

"Hello! Anyone there?", the teen asked as he knocked slightly louder. Having waited quite a bit, Jaune muttered an apology before he reached out for the handle — a round, bronze knob — and twisted. "It's open." Jaune spoke out in surprise.

It was then that Jaune crouched down and let himself in. Using his torch, the blonde began to explore.

What he found left him confused: a smaller than average table, chairs, bed. All quite normal furniture to have, but all in what were sizes too small for regular people; human or faunus. It appeared to be a room belonging to ten-year-old who lived alone or something.

"Are you seeing this, Crocea? This is sort of bizarre…"

"I am, Master. I'm still trying to piece together what we have, quite literally, fallen into."

"Yeah, me too…", Jaune agreed absently, "Maybe whoever lived here was just short?", the swordsman decided after a moment. Who was he to judge the furniture size preference of someone whose dwelling he barged into?

"Well, it doesn't seem that anyone is here." The teen concluded. He sighed in disappointment, "I was really hoping that we'd find someone to help us out. Guess I was too optimistic, huh?"

"Indeed. Considering we fell into a mountain that, for all purposes and appearances, has been abandoned." The sentient sword commented dryly, but not unkindly.

"Yeah. In retrospect, that makes sense."

Seeing himself out, Jaune continued to climb his way down the flight of stairs. It was a few minutes later that Jaune found another door. The same size of the one he had just recently come across.

Jaune once more stopped to stare at it.

"You don't think… that this room might be like the one we just explored, do you?"

"I'm willing to bet it might."

Once more, the teen repeated the same process of knocking on the door and opening it when he did not receive an answer.

"I'm coming in!" Jaune announced loudly.

Crouching into the room, the young adventurer once more explored a dwelling. What he found was quite identical to what he expected. A miniature home set just like the one he had just seen. This one even had plates and cups on the table, both quite proportional to what he supposed was the size of whomever had lived in there.

Having nothing else to say, Jaune exited the room without a fuss. Taking a deep breath, he began making a quick jog down the stairs until, a few minutes later, he found another door. The same size as the last two. Not even bothering to announce himself this time, Jaune opened the door and crouched into the abode. The blonde teen looked around, confirmed what he had suspected and walked out of the room.

The fledgling swordsman then began to climb down the stairs in in slight confusion. "Okay. So, I fell into an abandoned, small-man neighborhood mountain… or something…"

"It certainly appears to be something along those lines." Crocea agreed hesitantly.

Sure, Jaune supposed, these short-men had a weird language, but they seemed to have a created a close, tight-knit community. Proven by how they built their group under a mountain and their rooms right next to each other.

Though something did still seem strange to the blonde, but it was probably just the dankness in the air. A mountain wouldn't have been his first idea of somewhere to build a home. But hey, to each their own.

With that last thought, Jaune kept descending the stairs at a fast and steady pace — though he made sure to be mindful of each step. It eventually took the blond quite a while to reach the ground floor. Once he did though, Jaune had to pause to catch his breath.

"Pant...Gosh...pant...How many floors...did I just go through?"

"Since we landed into the stairway, forty-two floors," Crocea dutifully supplied.

Regaining a bit of energy, Jaune reached into his backpack, pulled out a water bottle, uncapped it and greedily gulped down its contents. It wasn't until then that the young Arc realized just how parched his throat was. Once finished, the teen licked his lips to hydrate the skin of his mouth, noticing just how dry they were.

"We better find a way out soon, Master." His partner urged, "Deadline notwithstanding, you can't afford for your supplies to run out while inside the mountain. I doubt we'll find any food or water here."

"Yeah," Jaune nodded before speaking seriously, "More important than that, I'd rather get out of here before needing to use a restroom. I'd rather not chance this place having a toilet."

Crocea did not deem his wielder's words worth a comment.

Feeling quite revitalized, Jaune finally walked deeper into the ground floor and began to analyze the 'Lost Mine' mountain lair.

It's huge. That was Jaune's first thought.

This would probably be the first thing anyone would think. It was difficult for Jaune to make a perfect estimate, but it was easy to say that this room was at least a couple hundred meters wide. The area was circular and everything, from the floor to the walls were tiled with marble, all perfectly sized and symmetrically squared. The marble pillars were round and extremely thick, about as thick as half the length of his arm. Jaune knew that these pillars would have to be strong enough to support the insane number of floors the mountain had.

As Jaune walked through, he immediately noticed that around the room laid pickaxes, shovels, helmets, swords, shields and many other kinds of tools and weapons. All these were finely crafted. Through the dimly lit room, these items had a certain shine to them. They emitted a sort of dim moonlight glimmer.

Feeling quite curious, the blonde picked up the nearest tool, a Warhammer. It was quite heavy and the teen even found himself slightly straining to hold it, though he did in the end. What caught his attention of this weapon were the carvings on the sides of the head.

"Those strange letters again, Master. Can you read them?" Crocea asked the million-lien question.

Indeed, they were similar to those symbols that were on the Magic Door, the same sharp-shaped characters, yet Jaune found himself clueless to what they meant. He couldn't identify these letters; they were certainly not any he remembered.

"Sorry, Crocea... I can't understand it at all." Slowly and delicately running his fingers over the carvings, Jaune silently promised to himself to look up his father's old tongue. His mother's too, while at it. The blonde slowly lowered the Warhammer back where he grabbed it from.

Most of what the teen had seen so far made the hidden community look quite beautiful, in an old-fashioned way. Perhaps it was the taste of the short-people that decided to keep everything so antique. It had its own charm; though the scratches on the furniture and stains on the wall curtains detracted from it.

Jaune wondered just how old it all must be. The number of cobwebs and dust sure made it difficult to figure out if it was either just old or damn ancient. He certainly was no archaeologist so he supposed he shouldn't bother looking too much into it.

It wasn't that much later until Jaune reached the end to the passage. A large metal door met both teen and sword. It was rounded at the top, similar in design to the magical stone door, twice as tall as the hopeful-huntsman and one side was already slightly ajar. Jaune noticed though that it was extremely dark inside, unlike the other sections of the mountain where the torches within the rooms were lighted upon being close.

Grabbing one of the nearby torches, Jaune slowly squeezed himself through the door, not wanting to push such a heavy looking thing.

Walking in, the darkness of the room almost completely consumed the light of his torch. It was quite difficult for Jaune to even see two feet around him. He was quite careful to make sure to run into anything. Or fall into something. Again.

It wasn't until Jaune took a few more steps forward that he almost released his torch and gave an unmanly shriek. Thankfully, he had covered his mouth just before he did so.

Jaune's breath hitched when he came face to face with… whatever the hell he was seeing. It was a familiar white mask with red markings of a Grimm mask. But it wasn't a Beowolf…or any other type of Grimm he remembers ever seeing.

It was humanoid and short. Incredibly short, probably reaching to his hip; with a head too big for its body, pointy ears, a chubby belly, arms too long that its hands touched the floor and greenish skin. And, probably most important, it was asleep.

Jaune cautiously backed off, making sure not to look away from it lest it awakens.

"Careful, Master! Behind you!", Crocea warned.

The teen had never made a one-eighty spin so fast in his life until then. He pulled out his sword from its sheathe and readied himself in a 'not-so-practiced' practiced stance. Though there had been no reason to use it, as Jaune's enemy was currently sleeping as well. The same humanoid creature stood with its head staring down. Jaune would have believed them to be statues were it not for the slow breathing of it and its slightly heaving chest.

Although these Grimm — for what else could these be? — were completely unconscious, Jaune's heart thumped with fear. How did he land himself in a room full of Grimm? His legs were shaking. It felt like his encounter with that Beowolf from the forest all over again.

Suddenly, the short green beast began to stir. Slow and steady breathes began to transform into grunts of exertion. It was guttural and throaty. Something between the noise of a pig and a goat. Jaune then noticed that it was not just this one creature stirring, but the one behind him was grunting as well.

No, listening even more attentively, the teen could hear more. Not just one or two, but dozens upon dozens. Possibly more. Grunts, groans and growls filled the room. This only served to agitate the teen more.

"Calm yourself, Master!" Crocea commanded. "Grimm are attracted to fear. If you begin to panic, you'll awaken all of these creatures up. Then you'll truly be in danger."

Hearing his partners tone of voice triggered a trained reaction in Jaune. The same tone of voice that had commanded him during his training. As such, the blonde immediately did as he was told. More out of not knowing what to do and looking for something to latch on than out of true obedience.

Jaune closed his eyes and took deep calming breathes.

In. Out. In. Out. In. Out.

He did this several times. Jaune forced himself to have calming thoughts. His home was his immediate one. Nibelheim. The green pastures that surrounded his country town. The farm, his sisters, mother and father.

The noises then slowly began to cease. It was eventually quiet again, though Jaune did not dare to immediately open his eyes. Slowly, he began to crack open one eye, all the while keeping the peaceful thoughts in mind and keeping a steady breath.

Yes, the Grimm in front of him was once more slumbering, its big head craned in an uncomfortable position. It was surely going to have incredible neck pains if it ever wakes up again, he mused. With that humorous thought, the tension in him eased. Jaune could slightly relax himself.

Well, not really. At best he wouldn't jump at every little noise he hears. But he was certainly on guard.

Turning around, Jaune could see the light glimmer from the door he had entered from. Though it was surrounded by a vast sea of darkness. The space between him and the door.

"Should I turn back or keep going?", he wondered worriedly. Jaune kept his voice low, to make sure not to once more agitate the Grimm. Midgets, he began to call them. The new name would serve to make them less scary in his mind.

"There's no point in going back. This is the main path. Did you see any other hall or doorway on your way here?"

"No…But maybe we can still make our way out of the mountain. We could go back the stairs to the magic door an-"

"No."

Jaune froze. It was one word, but Crocea had voiced it with a strong firmness, yet didn't raise its voice.

"No, Master," his partner corrected itself, "You have made the choice to go through the mountain. Now, you must have the courage to see it through."

"E-Even if it's scary?"

"Yes, especially if it's scary. That's why I said courage," Crocea spoke softly this time. "I'm actually somewhat glad you decided to follow through your adventure, Master. While I initially believed adventuring into the mountain would be dangerous — and I was right — it has given me the chance to instill this lesson into you."

"To be more careful? To be less of an idiot?", Jaune offered lamely.

"To face your fears."

"What?" the blonde blinked owlishly.

"Yes. As I mentioned, you must have courage. Not be reckless, not be fearless, but to be courageous. As a Huntsman you will have to face dangers and fight monsters much more deadly than the Grimm you see here."

The blonde teen shook his head uncertainly, "You're right! I know you're right…But it's not so easy for me. When I faced that Beowolf back then all I could think of was 'I'm going to die', and when I saw those midgets I thought, 'That thing is going to kill me'."

"Yet you were still able to slay the Beowolf and capable of calming yourself."

Jaune opened his mouth to protest but no words left him.

"That was courage, Master. You simply did not recognize it for what it was." The blade continued, "Now, it is important you realize that. No longer think 'I'm going to die' but instead 'I'm going to survive'. Rather than 'That's going to kill me' believe instead 'I will kill it'. You still desire to be a Huntsman, do you not?"

"Yeah, of course!" Jaune answered automatically.

"Then internalize the idea that for every Grimm you slay is a life you save. That same Grimm may someday kill someone if you let it live and grow."

The Huntsman-in-training stared wide-eyed at the ground. The words seemed foreign to him and, in a manner of speaking, they were. Jaune never even contemplated thinking like that.

"Now, with this lecture done, what's next, Master?"

Jaune clenched and unclenched his hands. He was still scared. Who wouldn't be? About three months ago he was still a small farm boy from Nibelheim. Yes, he had resolved himself to become a Huntsman since far earlier, but he had never come face to face with a creature of Grimm before.

'…For every Grimm you slay is a life you save. That same Grimm may someday kill someone if you let it live.', this thought repeated itself in Jaune's mind. 'If I don't kill these Grimm, they may kill some innocent people someday. Those deaths could be my fault.'

The duty of a Huntsman is to help and protect people, and Jaune fully believed that. So, swallowing his fear, Jaune pulled out Crocea Mors from its scabbard and approached the first small, fat, big-headed creature he found.

With only the torch-fire at hand to light his way, Jaune stood four feet from the Grimm. Taking deep breaths, the teen steeled himself for what he was to do and thrusted his sword arm.

SQLSH!

Jaune stared in horrific fascination. He did not avert his eyes when Crocea's tip perforated the Grimm's head. The human-like green beast could only release a grunt that died in its throat as its big, red eyes widened before its body finally dropping like a puppet that had its strings cut off.

Pulling his partner back, Jaune released a sigh he didn't know he was holding. He stared at the Grimm's now dissipating figure. He did not pity the beast, nor did he feel bad about slaying it in its sleep (though that fact did surprise him). Perhaps what did bother him most was the gore of it all.

Now, Jaune had experience it killing animals for food. He used to live in a farm, after all. But no matter how many pigs, chickens, or cows he had to kill it never got easier for him. Maybe he was too compassionate?

"Are you okay, Master?" Crocea asked softly.

"…Yeah," Jaune answered after a beat, "Just trying to get used to it, that's all."

"Hm," Crocea vibrated softly, "Perhaps we can practice basic swordsmanship as you continue?"

Jaune thought it over a bit before nodding. "Yeah, that'd be awesome." The anxiety hadn't completely left him, barely a tiny bit, but he felt less afraid now. Jaune began to contemplate his inner doubts as he approached the next Grimm.

"Let's start with the vertical slash," Crocea began explaining the correct position.

Maybe he still didn't have what it takes to be a hero like his ancestors. But he'd get there, he thought comfortingly. That's why he was heading to Beacon. And if that failed, he still had his partner.

SQLSH!

'Yeah…', Jaune thought soothingly as he pulled back his partner from the parted skull of the now dead Grimm, '…I'll definitely get there.'

AN: Hello there! Long time no see!

Thank you for your patience on this chapter. A lot of things have happened since the last update. I won't bore you guys with the details of it, I'd rather talk about this story!

This goal of this chapter was to develop a bit more backstory to Jaune and a bit of character growth for him. I'm still new to writing stories, so please tell me what you liked and disliked.

I'll be ending the Lost Mine mini-arc next chapter and continue on the Road to Beacon Arc. Originally, I wanted to finish it all in one, but decided I wanted to finally put something out after so long.

We won't see more about Jaune's Family until a bit more down the story, unfortunately. And finally, kudos to those who deciphered who or what lived in the mountain and what these original Grimm character (OGC?) are supposed to be!

Thank you for reading and please leave a review!

-IH