The New World
Copyright© 2024 by Dark Apostle
Chapter 6: Trip to Town
Fan Fiction Sex Story: Chapter 6: Trip to Town - The story follows James Smith, a man who dies and finds himself in a surreal afterlife courtroom, where his life is judged as "zero sum"—neither good nor evil, just utterly average. Dissatisfied with being consigned to eternal mediocrity, he manipulates the cosmic bureaucracy into granting him a second chance in a new world, where he is reincarnated as a child with his memories intact and perks... - edited by my lovely Steven.
Caution: This Fan Fiction Sex Story contains strong sexual content, including Ma/Fa Ma/ft Mult Coercion NonConsensual Reluctant Slavery Lesbian BiSexual Heterosexual Fan Fiction Farming High Fantasy Rags To Riches Restart Alternate History DoOver Extra Sensory Perception Body Swap Furry Magic Incest Mother Sister Politics Royalty Violence AI Generated
James followed his father, Garrick, down the frost-gnawed path leading away from their farmstead, boots sucking at the muck with every step. The carriage—cobbled together from scavenged wood and scavenger’s ingenuity—waited at the end of the lane, as if ashamed of its own existence. James hauled himself up, the morning’s chill biting through threadbare sleeves.
Bob, his loyal companion—a small, iridescent slime—pulsed at his side. The creature was no more than a fistful of translucent jelly, barely substantial, yet James felt its weight, both literal and otherwise. Bob oozed up his coat sleeve and perched on his shoulder, a gentle, comforting pressure. Once wild, the slime had been tamed through magic. James looked at Bob and said, “Not today, I don’t know if it is safe in town. So spend today in the field eating the weeds and insects.”
Garrick took the reins and urged the plodding horse forward, its bones visible beneath a patchy coat, and the carriage jolted into reluctant motion. The world around them was bleak: ochre fields mottled with stubborn weeds, skeletal hedgerows tangled in the grip of perpetual spring, the sky an oppressive, funereal gray. Their poverty was inescapable, woven into every aspect of their existence—their clothes mended and remended, their dreams scaled back to the barest necessities.
In the distance, Castletown came into view, its name promising grandeur it never delivered. Squat stone cottages crowded around a modest keep, the air thick with smoke and the faint stench of decay. Even so, as the wheels trundled onward, James felt that same peculiar tingling—a whisper of latent sorcery in this threadbare world—reminding him that even among scarcity and gloom, something extraordinary might yet await.
The carriage jolted along the pitted track, its wheels clattering over ruts left by years of previous carts. The cart path meandered through tangled woods that pressed close. James sat beside his father, feeling each jolt in his bones.
They sat in silence while Garrick concentrated on controlling the horse. James’s gaze drifted from the dense forest to the distant silhouette of their destination. He couldn’t help but wonder what he would find there. Would it help in his quest? Would he see more of the magic offered by this new world?
“Seems like a boring name.”
“Oh?”
James mused, “Castletown.”
“Well, it’s a castle and the town grew up around it. It has been the county seat and trading hub for as long as I have been alive. Since we had so little, I only went to town a couple times a year.”
“Yeah, but at least call it something cooler, King’s Landing,” James said, thinking of A Game of Thrones, “at least is showy.”
His father laughed.
The sound was a rare thing, brief but genuine, and for a fleeting moment, the tension that weighed on Garrick eased. But the shadow of danger never truly left. Along these roads, the threat of bandits was as constant as the biting wind. Every hollow in the landscape, every gnarled tree, seemed to harbor a watching eye. James glanced back, half-expecting to see dark figures moving in their wake, but there was only the empty lane and the steady clatter of hooves.
Still, as they drew nearer to Castletown’s worn ramparts, James could not help but imagine more—names that glittered, stories waiting just beyond the edges of the ordinary, and the tantalizing promise of something remarkable concealed within the mundane.
They arrived in good time with the sun not yet high overhead ... By James’s estimate, the journey had taken just over an hour.
As they drew closer, Castletown revealed itself first by suggestion—its tallest towers rising in the distance like pale, blunted fingers. The nearer they came, the more the details resolved: the walls, thick and weathered, built not merely for show but for grim necessity; the ring of squat towers, their arrow slits, and the broad, sluggish moat that circumscribed the town. James was surprised at all of the defensive features. He had pictured the castle like in a movie, all show, not a necessary bulwark against the world’s danger. The water was darker than James expected, thick with silt and the slow movement of things better left unseen. As the carriage trundled onto the drawbridge, its timbers creaked in protest, and James couldn’t help but lean out, peering into the murk with idle curiosity. How many secrets had the moat swallowed over the centuries?
The drawbridge itself was a marvel of engineering—chains as thick as a man’s arm, gearwork half-swallowed by moss, but all perfectly functional. No guards stood watch, and no portcullis barred their way. James found this odd, but soon realized the rationale. Castletown was not some frontier outpost that was constantly under threat; the king’s bannermen were only a horn’s call away, and if a real threat ever materialized—a barbarian horde, a dragon’s rampage, or some peasant uprising—the drawbridges could simply be raised, and the town sealed off. Until such a calamity, the fortifications were less for present danger and more a monument to the strength of the kingdom.
Passing under the shadow of the outer gate, the interior of Castletown unfurled with a deliberate, almost ceremonial orderliness. It was not a rabble of haphazard alleys and crooked lanes, but a town carefully laid out by a master builder. Every street was claimed by a single craft, the buildings and market stalls arrayed in orderly ranks. Baker’s Row was a riot of scent and heat, where crusty loaves were stacked like gold ingots, and the air shimmered with flour. Goldsmith’s Lane gleamed even in the muted daylight, shop windows displaying chains, rings, and cunningly wrought trinkets, their makers hawking promises of fortune and fidelity.
They passed through Chandler’s Court, the air thick with the honeyed perfume of beeswax, and onto Mason’s Alley, where blocks of granite and limestone were carved into stoic lions, columns, and saints—an abundance of stone waiting to be animated by commission and coin. There was a sense of the eternal here, a feeling that everything one needed to build, create, or repair could be found if only one followed the correct street to its end. Each avenue had its own rhythm: the metallic clangor of the smithies, the whisper of fabric and the rhythmic clack of looms in Weaver’s Way, the clipped arguments of apothecaries hawking bottles of dubious, glinting promise.
Garrick, knowing his task, guided the carriage with assurance onto Builder’s Street—a thoroughfare redolent with the scent of fresh-sawn timber, tar, and mortar. Piles of wood flanked the street. Stone blocks stood in organized clusters, awaiting their transformation. Here, men wore leather aprons, their faces ruddy from sun and effort, their hands marked with calluses. Hammers rang out with a steady cadence, sawdust drifted in the air, and at every door hung examples of their craft—miniature gables, fanciful dormers, beams notched and interlocked with ingenious precision.
The carriage’s arrival drew a handful of glances, but it wasn’t until Garrick dismounted that all attention converged upon him. His voice, deep and unembarrassed, cut through the din. “I have money and an immediate need. I need to rebuild my farmstead house and build a second one. Who can help me?”
There was a brief, electric pause—the kind that precedes either a brawl or a bidding war. Then Builder’s Street came alive. A heavyset man, beard carefully trimmed, strode forward first, puffing his chest with proprietorial pride. “What sort of house? How many rooms? Timber frame, stone walls, or both?” he demanded, trying to size up Garrick’s worth by the set of his boots, the cut of his jacket, and the condition of the carriage.
Another man with silvering hair and a gaze as precise as her tongue interjected, “Location? Do you want it raised before the first frost? I’ve got three crews finishing roofs this week—can have men to your fields by next dawn.”
A slender, boyish builder—barely more than James’s own age—offered, “I do quick work, cheap and honest. My uncle’s a stonemason; we’ll throw in the hearth for half price if you hire both of us.”
Others joined, voices rising in a cacophony of promises, boasts, and negotiations. They spoke of timbers from the haunted wood, of roof shingles that shed water like duck’s backs, of stables with clever drainage and wells lined with imported brick. Some sought to impress with pedigree, dropping names of old families and famous clients. Others offered deals, whispered guarantees, or sidelong glances to gauge if coin would change hands under the table.
James, forgotten in the spectacle, watched with a mixture of awe and amusement. This was commerce at its rawest—urgent, desperate, and tinged with hope. The builders circled his father, peppering him with questions about acreage, foundation depth, the pitch of roofs, and the proximity to the river. It was as though a man could conjure a house out of thin air, provided he had enough gold and was quick enough to catch the attention of the right craftsman.
He let his eyes wander back to the towers and ramparts behind them, imagining the times when deals like this might have been struck in the shadow of siege engines or to the accompaniment of drums. The very street was redolent with the ghosts of old ambitions—houses razed and rebuilt, fortunes lost and reclaimed with each passing decade.
All the while, the town itself seemed to pulse with its own peculiar vitality. Children darted in and out of the crowds, chasing one another with the single-minded glee of those who knew nothing of taxes or famine. A stray cat twined through the legs of the builders. The smells—smoke, sawdust, baking bread, and the faint, briny tang of the moat—wove together into something like belonging.
As negotiations wore on, James’s mind wandered back to the drawbridge and the dark water below. He wondered how many arguments, betrayals, or sudden violence had played out here—if the very act of building and rebuilding was its own kind of battle, a struggle not against invading hordes, but against entropy and the capriciousness of fate. Castletown might not have the grandeur of a King’s Landing, but it had a gravity all its own, pulling men and their ambitions in, drowning some, elevating others.
Eventually, Garrick began to separate the wheat from the chaff, his questions sharp and unsentimental: “How soon can you start? What’s your price, and what guarantees do you offer if winter comes early?” The crowd thinned as less confident bidders drifted away, but the best remained—hard-eyed, pragmatic, sensing opportunity.
James watched his father with something close to pride. Here was a man who understood the real value of things, who would not be swayed by bluster or charm. A deal would be struck, a new beginning hammered out among the dust and noise of Builder’s Street.
James lingered at the edge of the jostling ring of craftsmen, caught somewhere between nostalgia and a strange new awe. It struck him how utterly foreign this world felt—negotiations conducted face-to-face, every decision hammered out in real time, the weight of every word and gesture assessed in the raw, unfiltered present. He watched his father’s deliberate scrutiny, the wary yet hopeful glances of the remaining builders, and found himself fascinated by the spectacle. Here, trust and reputation were currency, traded in broad daylight.
A grizzled mason stepped forward, voice level and practical. “If you want stonework, you’ll have a foundation that’ll last longer than the house itself. I can start tomorrow, provided you’ve the coin to cover the labor.”
A carpenter with sawdust in his beard interjected, holding up a piece of fine timber. “Oak from the northern ridge, tight-grained and seasoned. My lads work quick, no corners cut, and we’ll raise the frame in a week if the weather holds.”
That was all it took for another builder, a sharp-eyed, wiry man, to scoff and step forward, crowding the carpenter. “No corners cut? You’re the one who nailed up green wood last spring, house warped by harvest!” He jabbed a finger at the carpenter’s chest, and in a heartbeat, the street filled with the sharp scent of competition turning sour.
“Liar,” the carpenter shot back, voice rising, fists clenching, “I don’t cut corners—maybe if you watched your own crew, you wouldn’t need to run your mouth here!”
The two men squared off, their voices escalating, and tools nearly clattering to the ground as others intervened, pushing them apart. A few spectators snickered; others called encouragement or jibes. James couldn’t help but grin, the absurdity of it all tickling something deep inside him. In his old world, competition happened quietly, behind screens and with review stars. Here, it broke out on the street, loud and physical, more real than any user rating.
What amused him even more was the look on his father’s face. Garrick grinned broadly, eyes glinting with satisfaction. This was good—better than good. The two men fighting meant neither wanted to back down, and their pride would spark an all-out bidding war. Garrick could almost smell the desperation in the air, and for a man in need of a deal, it was as sweet as the scent of sawdust and fresh-cut wood. He was content to let their tempers flare and let the price come tumbling down in the scramble to win the job.
Meanwhile, Garrick weighed the offers with careful silence, eyes narrowing, and replied, “Price for both? Foundation and frame. I want this done before the first frost bites.”
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