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Unfortunately making the Dark One desperate enough to turn and clutch at Captain Addams's chest and plead with him to, "Stop it! The Entity, it's in my head. Make it stop!" turned out to be a bad plan.
Addams started yelling, “Zucker, open your gate at the end of the passage. Garth, follow him in and then saturate the entire chamber.”
I watched the big guy head into the room to shield the Porter with his body as Zucker opened a hole in the air and stepped inside. The Big man followed him in and put a table up in front of the hole on the inside, so I couldn't see what the two of them were doing inside.
Saturate? They were going to spray down the room with water somehow? That would mess up things for my cavalry, but unless they could use some kind of hose on the tower, the shooter up top wouldn’t be affected. What the hell of agony were they planning?
I soon got my answer.
Dictum of Law stopped all explosives in my Dungeon.
The Porter’s white space was not in my Dungeon, just the hole that opened up into it.
Explosives worked just fine in there.
I didn’t see it coming. I should have, I had heard of Porters firing siege weapons from inside of a white room back home.
The table inside the hole tipped over on its side to reveal the big man standing behind it with a gun large enough that it needed a strap connected to a harness to hold it up. A gun that had six tubes that began to spin around.
Then he began to fire it. Across the central keep, from the tower on the left to the high tower in the middle and then back down to the tower on the right.
Inside the dungeon core, I could hear the bullets through three feet of the dungeon wall.
The Kobolds that got hit sort of turned into mush.
Then the big man began shooting into everything in the room as he waved the gun back and forth, turning his whole body to do so. Trees, bushes, my other kobolds, and their mounts. Fleeing squirrels, the mounted crossbows, even the ground which revealed the pits.
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And each time he turned the weapon from one side of the room to the other, he saturated the central keep.
The building that housed my Dungeon Core was made of the same magical reinforced stone as the outer walls of the Dungeon, so the weapon wasn’t doing anything to it, except leaving scorch marks. But nothing else was able to survive the wave of destruction.
No wonder Wizards are so rare in this world, they don’t need them.
A belt filled with bullets was being sucked into one side of the weapon and the parts that remained after they were shot were flying out to bounce off the floor and scatter everywhere. The Porter was keeping himself busy by adding more belts to the one going into the gun, long past the point that there was anything left alive in the room to shoot at.
Their leader was trying to shout at the two of them, but between the roar of the many tubed gun and the fact that the Porter's door was blocking the end of the hallway, it was impossible for him to get them to stop.
Finally, Addams swept his curved blade across the hole from the side, causing it to vanish until the Porter opened from the inside again.
Walking into the room the Captain gazed at all the destruction with a look of satisfaction on his face as he turned around to look at the Dark One. “Was that enough to make him stop Lucia?"
The Dark One stepped into the room with a look of smugness. “Oh yes, that shut him up.”
Well, yeah.
The Rogue dashed forward and looked back at where the hole in the air had been before turning to her leader. “Permission to loot Sir?”
The Captain nodded. “Sweep the room for more of those pits while you’re at it Swiftwater.”
Then he looked at the miniature keep, and crossed about half the distance to it. “I’m guessing you’re inside of there Tark. It looks like that is the dead center of this place. And it looks like we can’t get to you from here. I suppose we have to go all the way down another two floors and then work our way back up the middle.”
Behind him, the Dark One grinned.
"But we're going to do it your way. Hand weapons against your monsters the rest of the way. As long as you don't pull any more crap like that. I don't know how you were doing something to the Special Agent, or why you were only doing it to her. But if you want us to play by your rules, you only get to throw things at us we have at least some chance to deal with. Deal?"
“Tell him we have a deal Dark One.”
The Dark One seemed to consider my request, then shrugged. “The Entity agrees Captain.”
The Porter opened his gate again and the big man came trotting out with a large clear shield strapped to his arm. He grunted out “He’s got one more of these in there Sir.”
Addams looked a bit surprised and gave the Porter a look of approval. "Good thinking there Zucker."
The Porter grinned and shrugged. "I had room and found them in the hangar in the pile of stuff we got sent that no know what to do with. I just wish I had grabbed more of them but I could only carry two at a time, and then Kolwalski was yelling at me to get on the plane.”
Addams took the proffered shield while Zucker tried to give the other one to the big man, who only shook his head at him. "You keep it, I want both of my hands free, and if you get shot we lose a lot of options."
The Porter winced at that, then began fiddling with his shield. Trying to find a way to keep it in front of him without his legs hitting it or having to hold its weight with his arm stretched out.
Bad news there little guy, there isn't one. The best you can do is put a strap on it to hold the weight then swivel it up from your side when you need it.
Their group gathered up again at the exit of the room, their Rogue went forward to look down the steps and came to a sharp stop. “Sir, you might want to come look at this?”
The wall at this landing had writing on it as well.
The Captain looked at it and read it out loud.
“No more warning.”