Thinking about it, I tossed up a Holo of a white flag and let it stream out behind me. We’d see how they reacted to it.
The Old Steed came down as the waters got shallower, and the final force of the Vortex petered out, reducing the sea below to normal waves nothing that big could hide in. I moved towards the largest intact warship, clearly rusting away, but still mostly intact.
A man stepped out onto the deck, and my suspicions were confirmed when I saw he was holding an old carbine in his hand, pointed into the air and away from me. There were other rifle barrels poking out of windows and ports in my direction, but none of them were magical, so they were no threat to me.
“That is far enough!” he called out in English, holding up his hand, and the Old Steed hove to without needing an order from me. I could tell I was making him very nervous as he looked the two of us over from thirty yards away, hot and cold primal fires on a very dangerous skeletal not-a-horse mount, and me riding it without a care or reins.
I held up a finger to wait as I looked over the warship back and forth. “I cannot tell, sailor; are you standing aboard the USS Houston or the Dallas?” I asked him, also in English.
His jaw dropped despite himself. He certainly wasn’t expecting that, given my appearance, especially with a trans-Euro accent.
What ‘modern’ clothing he had had doubtless worn away long ago, and he was clad in a mixture of hides and roughly woven cloth that did the job of holding things and giving him some rough protection against the weather. The Hollow World was hot most of the time, so they didn’t need much, and there wasn’t overmuch UV radiation in whatever the sullen orb up above was spewing out.
This fellow looked to be in his sixties, roughly bearded, fairly clean and groomed, something else that likely wasn’t easy here. He’d lost the stiff bearing of a soldier, but that carbine was kept in meticulous shape.
“This is the Dallas,” he responded at last, a little dazed. “You... you come from Earth?” the man asked.
“I am the Lady Traveler, Monarch of The Jet and Silver, affiliated with Heavenbound Hall. I was doing a survey of the landscape in the Bermuda Triangle when I stumbled upon the activation Formation for the Vortex and triggered it to see where it would lead me.” I smiled at him, and he grew even more slack-jawed on seeing that. “Who do I have the honor of addressing?”
He straightened up despite himself, suddenly realizing he was in the presence of nobility, and managed a remnant of a salute as his rifle hit the ground beside him. “M-Mike Portier, Your-Your Ladyship!” he stumbled by way of reply.
“Bosun’s Mate Michael Calvin Portier of the Elijah Brown?” I clarified quickly, /eyeing a copy of a very old photo ID my techno-eyes Lisa Pine back in the Hall had quickly pulled up.
He gaped at me again, totally stunned. “You-you know my name?” he squeaked out, while doorways and windows were suddenly full of older men, and some younger ones, all staring at me in disbelief.
“Once I discovered the Formation, I naturally perused a list of the ships, planes, and crew believed lost in the Triangle.” I smiled widely at him again. “If you like, I can bring you all back home.”
The shouts that went up at that declaration were definitely not unfriendly at all, while Bosun’s Mate Michael C. Portier had tears starting to fall from his eyes as he stared at me.
---------
They were all astounded when I whipped up forty Force Disks to shuttle them all ashore at the same time, no need for ropes or nets and wading through the surf or anything. There were definitely familiar with the basic Powered spells, counted on their fingers, and some of them went quite white when they realized my Caster Level.
Mr. Portier had determined that he was going to be very respectful, but not afraid of me, and on behalf of the men, asked about the Old Steed as they all rode next to me toward the cliff-dwellings, which now had a lot of people standing in cave-doors on the ledges before them.
A lot of them weren’t human, either.
“My Old Steed here used to be the mount of an Old God, Mr. Portier. He’s extremely dangerous, but only if you threaten him. He’s smarter than you are, can understand you perfectly, and is not a dumb beast anyone can ride. He also doesn’t do children well, but he is extremely patient, if aloof. If you all either ignore him or treat him respectfully as a very powerful intelligent being, you’ll get along fine.”
“Yes, ma’am. Will it be alright if we address you as Master Steed, sir?” he directly asked my dreadfully frightening mount.
A burning eye regarded him, and the Old Steed dipped his fanged and burning maw slowly. -That will be fine, Mr. Portier,- the Old Steed /replied telepathically.
“Alright! Everyone hear that? No? You call the terrifying burning flying old mount of a god MASTER STEED, you got that?!” Mr. Portier yelled out, and everyone replied very quickly and loudly that they did.
Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
The Old Steed arched his neck up proudly, horns burning to make an impression, and I just smirked as I looked ahead, hiding my frown.
No human women...
Oh, there were females present. Unsurprisingly, the naval ships had had scant numbers of women aboard, and the merchant marine crews likely none at all.
I did see some elven women, and arched an eyebrow, because they were all of the dusky-skinned, pale-haired variety made famous as the drow on another world. With them were some younger halvyri, obviously their daughters, all of them watching me with great interest.
The rest were... anthropes.
Bunny-women, cat-women, mice-women, dog-women, fox-women, squirrel-women, raccoon-women, bull-women, deer-women, pig-women, various forms of bird-women, and monkey-women, just at a glance, and not all of them were of the same breeds or subspecies, either.
No human women, however, and nothing reptilian.
I wasn’t human, either, so I couldn’t fault them for that, but it set off an alarm of some kind, and not just for strangely kinky sexual proclivities.
-----
A crowd came down to meet us, comprised of said females and some older men, many of the latter needing to be helped along to see us. Some of the younger men, with bone structures that said they didn’t have human mothers, had raced ahead to bring the news that I was someone from the other world, that I had come there deliberately, and that I could bring them all home!
I dismounted the Old Steed, and bid him go investigate the immediate area. He galloped off, turning invisible as he did so, which made the more thoughtful among everyone realize that I was being very open by not sneaking in first.
I was ushered to the meeting area, really nothing more than a depressed area in the stone chipped out with seats and spots where most of the town could stand and look down at whoever was speaking. I looked out at the vague depression and irregular and uncomfortable standing areas, and just sighed.
“A moment before we begin,” I requested of them, and as they blinked, I unleashed my Duskstopped Widened Stone Shape VII on the place.
That worked out to about four thousand cubic feet of stone I could reshape every six seconds... which was quite a bit by any mortal standards.
The very rough amphitheater platform beneath me smoothed out and rose, forming a protruding lower stage in front and a higher, broader stage behind. The other half of the circle reshaped itself into concentric rings, leveling out and reforming into seats, footwells, railings, stairs, and walkways.
The change was like flowing water, pushing up and out and away, often right under the shocked feet of the people who got there first. By the time I was done, the place was at least four times bigger than it had been, capable of holding the entire population of this settlement twice over, and with a bigass stage with a backdrop behind it.
It also had drains and subtle inclinations to deal with what were undoubtedly frequent rains here.
It was a display of power, sure, but also of thoughtfulness. Among other things, there was space behind the stone seats and an opening for the tailed women to stick their tails through if they were of a mind to.
I also had especially wide seats in places, specifically sized for the three bull-women and the one bear-woman and those like them, with other seats sized for children or the smaller people, which they glommed onto quickly. These seats also sat up higher so their view didn’t suffer.
It also thoroughly subdued the spellcasters, who were dominated by the elven-blooded women. At least, I didn’t see any spellcasters among the human men, and the anthros were registering mostly as Primos, and not very talented at the spellcasting thing. Apparently, they gave up something in the mental arena for the animalistic gifts, which probably didn’t hurt in a primitive world like this, where physical power and keener senses were extremely valuable survival traits. Tool development took time, generations of experimentation, and passing the knowledge on, after all, and magic was a very demanding tool.
Several of the older captains had moved to the Force Disks I’d made up, which I’d politely molded to them and which could be pushed around effortlessly by their escorts.
Detect Human III was pinging off all the anthropes present here. Whatever was done to them, they could all interbreed with baseline humans. All the younger men had anthrope mothers and human fathers, and all the anthrope women likewise, meaning that bunny-woman with the floppy ears, killer figure, and rabbit’s feet and tail had a younger brother who had a bit of a softer line to his face, but was otherwise totally human.
The older elves took their places with the captains, two accompanying the older men, three seated alone on Disks. All of them were very wary, having only to feel the Caster Level on the Disks beneath them to realize I was towering over them in power, and it wasn’t even a contest.
None of them had much in the way of Class Depth. I was actually unsurprised to find that the dark elves and their children were using the Elven Racial Class, as many of the younger people were using the Human Racial Class. The men that came from the surface were Class-based, and most had advanced to Four or higher in them, with an Expert/10 actually the highest-Level of them, a spry fellow with an early-graying beard and weathered appearance who Assayed as Professor Shellington, a famous anthropologist who had gone missing in Africa somewhere in 1948.
He also seemed to be designated the unofficial elder of the community, taking the initiative to speak up after everyone was seated, rising from his Disk to address me and bow formally.
“Lady Traveler, I bid you welcome to the settlement of Waterdown,” he said in a once-British accent that had faded in the face of time and other languages over the years. “I am Professor Cecile Shellington, once of Wiltshire, England. While we welcome all people from the other world, this time, it seems, your arrival is propitious!” He smiled in expectation as he straightened. “Please, tell us about yourself, and the world without. It has been nearly twenty years since the last time we had new people arrive through the Vortex.
“Also,” he hesitated for a moment, “could you confirm the date for us?”
“Today is March the Twenty-First, 2019, Professor Shellington,” I stated with certainty, and the men from the surface all sighed and closed their eyes.
“Only three days off,” the Professor smiled sadly, as he reclaimed his seat.
“Also, you are not on another world. You are Inside your homeworld.” As they all blinked at the impossibility of that, I raised a hand to the sullen orb overhead. “This is the Hollow World, a dimensional space excavated out within Terra itself. The dimensional passages which brought you here merely bypassed the Felldeep to deliver you to this place. The access points are limited in number, but they have been forced to open by the Shroud of the planet above you. There is at least one permanent passageway at the North Pole that is keeping this place stably locked open and accessible from the surface, without need of the Vortex there, or whatever means brought you here from Africa, Professor.”