Day two of the Schweiglands investigation.

Rinvar sat beside a shattered gun emplacement that used to overlook the conquered fortress' eastern flank. There was a hole right under where the gun barrel used to be; a weak scent of burnt ammunition could be traced to the interior of the broken husk. He imagined that one of the Navy's ships fired at the coastal weapon before it could turn its muzzle to reply to the attackers. The shell pierced the turret housing and hit the magazines inside, cooking all ammunition into one great fireball that popped the turret roof. Those who manned the guns suffered a fiery death; men who were instantly vaporized in the blast were more fortunate than some who were thrown out of the defensive installation while burning alive. Rinvar saw it fully: the pain of flames that gnawed into clothing and through flesh, its scent that was somewhat close to overcooked meat but worse, and the screams right before their souls abandoned the incinerated vessel.

These scenes should have been common to him – only that he has been either on the observing side or the executioner that delivered the enemy to the land of the dead. No matter what his colleagues would say about "getting used to it", images of those he killed continued to remind him. It was ultimately a job that had to be done, and the only notion that justified putting lead on someone's head as if he didn't do it, that person would do it to him or to anyone else.

It wasn't exactly the time to wallow in such thought, Rinvar thought to himself. He looked at the charred structure one last time before he stepped on the uneven stone path that led to the fortress' interior. The investigator passed by a trio of docked supply ships whose ramps were still connected to the ground; these were probably meant to stay on the islets to collect salvageable machinery from the Gray Fox's abandoned facilities.

Rinvar's view of the conquered fortress was polluted by shell craters and more destroyed gun emplacements and bunkers. The northern face of the facility took the brunt of the attack, with all its defensive installations annihilated by Lord Cecil's guns. Patches of black from the soot of burnt rock and deformed metal were found in places where many smaller-caliber guns used to be. Some parts of the wall had their firing ports replaced by gaping black voids.

A blow of wind raked over the officer's hair and followed a couple of patrol ships that had begun their island scouting duties. His eyes followed their low superstructures and steeply-angled hulls before the distance between him and the ships reduced their figures into weird polygons. Rinvar entered the biggest break in the fortress wall where a steel door used to guard the entrance before it was taken down by the advancing government troops; its uppermost left and right sides had ugly, round scars made by precise naval artillery fire. He always found Albertan ship guns wonderful, and these holes were proof of their accuracy.

He felt for his rifle strap which was beginning to slack away from his shoulder, easing the leather restraint back up as he passed by the first facility building. Rinvar had surveyed its interior before he stepped out of the facility and found nothing of use inside; the only knowledge he had after leaving the place was that it was supposed to be the Gray Fox's barracks. The Albertans had cleared the entire facility of its gun cache, although Rinvar found a metal case overlooked by the inspecting soldiers and was still considering whether he should surrender the article or keep it to himself as a trophy.

The second structure was the most badly-beaten building among the compound's sections. Reports from battlefield recorders said that when the defense of the first and third buildings failed, many of the syndicate men took refuge inside and fought to the last man. Whatever the building housed could not be recognized but it would have been a supply depot of sorts, based on the destroyed food crates found at the building's basement level. It kept a mostly unharmed façade, but the destruction was done inside by the remaining fighters who opted to burn the place than surrender to the Albertan assault forces.

Again, Rinvar decided not to venture inside the area; the scent of burnt wood, oil, and metal had lingered for some time and mixed with rotting food matter and possibly traces of those who perished inside the facility in its defense. It made an atmosphere only tolerable with a filter mask guarding the nose and mouth.

At the farthest left was the third building – the only structure that was kept safe from the destruction done by either attacker or defender. It was the facility's generator housing that centralized the fortress' power source. All eight of the magnetic crystal reactors were dismantled by the Albertans after they drove out the Gray Fox and were replaced with four smaller generators that powered the military installations set up for the stationed guarding forces.

A burnt tower at the heart of the compound stood erect and was still overseeing the other four doomed buildings. It had an almost perfect cone if not for the large hole at the top level that looked like a giant took a bite off the tower. Rinvar knew no ship gun could be positioned to an extreme angle to damage the building. Aside from the warship logs having no record of any shells that reached the eighth level, the damage was still too small to be inflicted by such weaponry; the whole tower would have collapsed if one of the main naval guns struck it. The interior was burned down just like the second facility building; only the metal casings of various machines were salvaged and were pulled out to be brought to Blaurosen for further study. He passed by the conical structure and took a look at a few soldiers that exited from it. They were not that important, he thought; their uniforms were not the usual blue of the Albertans but theirs were rose suits with the blue lining that belonged to those of the Capital. Rinvar rubbed the bridge of his nose and moved on.

He stood in front of the most controversial building of the entire fortress compound – the site where the commander of the attacking forces fell to the fleeing syndicate members. Its destruction was different from the other buildings that were captured during the assault. The place was blown up, but the explosives were not planted around its foundations but were belted only at the ground level. Soldiers who encircled the facility structure recalled that it was the last to be destroyed when the Albertans stormed the compound. Rinvar saw the third and fourth tiers of the structure intact and settled in an acute leaning angle. Troops who did initial inspections had to stand diagonally to survey the halls filled with large shattered glass cylinders. These machines were too broken to be reassembled, but a largely-intact device was found and brought out of the oddly-standing building. One of the Albertans standing guard paid him a salute after seeing the captain's insignia. Rinvar saluted back; he was not too comfortable with standard military etiquette after years of participating in undercover and plainclothes operations, but wearing the medals and seals had its own benefits.

He entered the place through a square hole cut by Albertan engineers the day before the investigator arrived at the Schweiglands. The floor, being in a rough thirty-degree alignment, was a challenge to cross and forced whoever would go inside to tread carefully. A short belt of lamps guided their way inside the broken building; this was a makeshift lighting system the military devised since the sunlight could not break through the ruins. Near the back of the compound was the chamber said to be the last place Cecil von Schild fought in before he was defeated by syndicate stragglers. It has not been completely cleared of the struggle that took place inside. Rinvar saw a saber that collected dust at the far right edge of the chamber; a rifle's muzzle poked out between large pieces of rock behind them. The rotting smell of its ill-fated wielder trapped inside crawled out of the gaps, clinging right up to the captain's nose with a stubborn grip.

His attention was drawn into an area at the rear center where a panel was mounted on the wall. Rinvar pushed the buttons and the sole lever on it, only to realize later that the original power source of the facility was on its way to some other place and that the new power source was not connected to the fortress' circuits. The investigator felt for the floor, where after dusting fine grit traced a shallow depression that ran on a ninety-degree angle before the trail was cut by a huge stone slab that was originally part of the ceiling.

"I'll need a crowbar... no. Three pickaxes would be better." Rinvar ordered the Albertan sergeant who watched behind him. "And bring four spotlights too. We might come across someplace underground."

The orders were shouted; tools were brought in by three large-framed men who began work on breaking the large piece of stone. Picking and clinking filled the place for almost an hour; bits of stone and mortar flew around, with a few specks almost hitting Rinvar's eyes. A large enough section of the obstruction was dislodged, revealing what the investigator expected.

It was a mechanical trapdoor that shared the dirty-green color of the floor. The three men shifted their strength to open the jammed mechanism, which took them five minutes' worth of levering the center with their picks. Six strong clacks marked every three inches of the forcefully-opened door until the final pop that marked the complete opening of the laterally-placed portal (and also the destruction of its lock mechanism). Two soldiers with handheld spotlights entered the underground passage revealed to them; pistols were pulled out of their holsters. They navigated through the dark tunnel until a faint light was seen at the end of it. Rinvar and his company reached an underground port where a tongue of the sea slept inside a wide cave. The investigator ran to the mouth of the cave, only to find an unrestricted Arentz rolling in its calmed pace. From here he began wondering how the Gray Fox and his men escaped the Albertan force.

The port could not house a decent-enough ship to be kept hidden from the Navy as well as be large enough to allow all of the stragglers to flee the besieged island. Boats were out of the question since the random current can steer the crafts right into the muzzles of awaiting navy guns. They must have swum through the current, but the broken ropes tied on makeshift docks suggested that sea vessels of sorts were used.

What kind of vessel did they have to allow them to escape without being detected by the sea patrols which were moving around the Schweiglands as early as the first minutes of the attack?

"Hmm... from one problem to another. Any records of drowned men picked up on the shore Sergeant?"

"The patrols returned with nonesuch. If they did, the waters would have fed them to the monsters below." Was the quick answer to Rinvar's inquiry.

Rinvar sat down on a rock near the cavern's mouth, allowing the spray to moist his face. He stared at the open waters, trying to figure out if the sea could answer the riddle of the Gray Fox's escape. If the escapees chanced upon an opening provided by the patrols, there was no way they could have slipped from the nearby warships that were shelling the syndicate stronghold. The investigator set his rifle stock against the ground, capping his palms at the end of the muzzle, and placed his chin above it.