An explosion followed by tongues of fire marked the ongoing chaos in Altrecht's warehouse district; the resulting shockwaves were felt as far as a mile from the scene of the fire. The Town Guard moved in immediately to find the cause of the destruction but was pinned down by gunmen who made barricades out of overturned and broken carriages.

Rinvar did not expect that his trip to Connsbruick would be interrupted by an ongoing shootout.

His assistance was requested by the local constabulary who seemed to be having trouble with people from a group that was yet to be identified. The Blaurosen captain and his men quickly hit the place and tried to take the entrance to the warehouse compound. Bullets from unseen guns strafed the walls and threw grains of earth on their shoes.

The fire has consumed much of the warehouses and black air began blanketing the sky. Rinvar heard a cry of one of the town guards who took a bullet to the leg as he tried to move out of his hiding place to join the rest of the company. A faint muzzle flash was seen not too far from the burning façade of the first warehouse.

He pulled up the bolt and heard the click of a bullet readied in its chamber. Rinvar tracked the sniper who was running to the safety of the remaining intact warehouse.

"Bad idea..."

The trigger was squeezed with a split-second difference between the ejected round and the man's shoulder locked on to his sights. Direct hit. Rinvar's bullet lodged at the runner's shoulder and its force spun him to his side before hitting the ground.

"Got him..."

A second bullet was extracted and chambered. The bolt clicked in affirmation; his weapon was ready to release a follow-up volley. The captain was about to squeeze the trigger when he felt a hot, heavy wave of air heading his way. His eyes were off the sights just in time to see a bright crackling white ball about to hit where he hid. He withdrew his weapon and ducked, rolling out of the path before the compacted energy mass carved a crescent on the part of the wall where his head was supposed to be.

"What the... a magician?"

Rinvar got up right away and took aim at the source of the blast but he was only able to probe a tip of someone's cape disappearing behind a ruined warehouse. He leaped to his right and tried shadowing his target and ended up on the extreme right side of the perimeter. Rinvar used a hand as leverage to jump over the fence and rolled to an area where a building's shadow kept him hidden.

A man with a cape and hat stood alongside another who held his shoulder. Joining them were four unusual figures clad in metal and with glowing green eyes that resembled flared lamps. Rinvar decided not to use his rifle and watch what would happen next.

Four flying disks emerged from the smog and headed towards the retreating group and fired blue lights overhead. Those hit by the beam disappeared from where they stood. The captain watched the floating machines finish their job and fly out of existence as soon as every single body in that area was gone. Rinvar slapped his eyes to check if the smoke was messing with his mind and was convinced that none of the group was standing around after his palm hit for the third time.

"What the devil just happened?"

A town guard sergeant found Captain De Melvich standing dumbfounded at a corner minutes later; the officer saluted and said:

"We have cleared the area, sir."

It took Rinvar a few seconds to snap out of what he saw earlier. He shook his head and focused on the sergeant saying: "Good. Did you get any prisoners?"

"We've rounded up a few men who fled the place through the riverbanks," the town guardsman answered. "They seem to be more than happy when we turned them in."

"That's odd. These gangs would rather die than stay in our prisons."

"Our chief is talking to them as we speak. They are blubbering weird stories about an armored knight and metal monsters."

Rinvar fell silent in thought. He walked out of the area with the sergeant. He could hear jets of water flying towards the roofs of the blazing warehouses - the firefighters have finally gone in. The captain returned to the place where that energy ball almost decapitated him; the scent of smoldering rock left a faint presence on the wall.

He walked towards his Blaurosen colleagues who were helping in rounding up the stragglers, but he paid no attention to them. Rinvar stared at the sky; the black smog that blocked his view of the moon was thinning away. He searched his left jacket pocket and managed to pull out a block of chocolate from it. He peeled off part of the wrappings and took his first bite when one of his men called his attention. The young man was panting and held his knees before gathering enough air to say:

"Sir! Come, quick. You must see this."

Rinvar was led to an alley that connected the warehouse complex to Altrecht's market block. Four pyres were scattered all over the place. Rinvar picked one of them up and noticed that it was the head of one of the "armored men" he saw during the firefight.

Nobody was wearing these strange suits; the deep inward bows of their legs would have eliminated their possibility of being manned in the first place. What was left of their fearsome forms were melted circuits and charred insides, possibly caused by the implosion of an innermost component. These machines managed to draw fear and paranoia among the ill-fated men who defended the warehouses; their odd shapes along with the heavy weapons they wielded certainly caught many off-guard.

"Mechanical soldiers..." Rinvar kicked one of the now-inert husks; most, if not all of the shots that put the machine out of action were found at the back.

An acidic yet metallic scent of spent core fluid stung the investigator's nose. Bullet holes were found where these machines' 'hearts' would have been. The size of the punches quickly suggested that a pistol or another firearm of such a type was used to destroy the constructs. Rinvar knelt down and felt for the holes in the rear armor. While possible, it would have taken several bullets to even make a dent in the alloy used in creating these automatons. The metal seemed to have oozed away, allowing the rounds to enter with little or no resistance offered by the outer shell.

"I wonder what kind of bullet whoever took these down used to punch right through them..."

The accounts from the surviving Dragon's Claw members recollected the failed attempts to engage the constructs frontally. A tough alloy doubled by the sleek, sloping form of these machines made it near impossible to break through them using pistols and rifles. Bullets bounced in front of these metal warriors, and they returned fire and killed off their attackers with little difficulty. Whoever destroyed these constructs was far from dead, Rinvar could ascertain. Shots to the rear were the best recourse, but the plating would have easily deflected pistol rounds.

The Empire did not have any bullets that melt through armor to penetrate.

All Rinvar could do was to thank whoever this combatant was. He at least found and showed all the constables involved in this firefight that these menacing machines were not invincible. Plugging grenades or rockets to the rear armor of these fighting machines would be the only viable tactic should any law enforcers come across them. His thoughts were dragged back to reality when a small chain of explosions rocked the area. The fires seemed to have reached the ammunition stores kept by one of the blazing warehouses.

"Are you all right Captain?" An Altrecht town guardsman approached Rinvar and extended his hand.

"Yes, I'll be fine. We'll have to take these wrecks with us to the Capital." Rinvar addressed the town guardsman who led him to the site. "Tell your chief to keep these under custody until we can get transports from Blaurosen."

"Right away Captain."

This was a vastly different battle than one would expect of warring syndicates, especially when one of them had a strange mix of mechanical killers and magic-wielders in their arsenal.

The one who cast the energy ball on him was in league with whoever created these constructs. Rinvar's stopover at Altrecht would be longer than he expected. Now he would have to question those caught from tonight's incident if they had any members with magical affinities.

Rinvar read the documents; the alleged "unknown technologies" used by the Gray Fox. The constructs before him could give him a lead, but not more than saying these machines belonged to the elusive crime lord or someone under his wing. There was that angle and another that had the question of whether or not magicians were being recruited by syndicates in their phony war.

All of this was too much for him to absorb in one night.

Rinvar took another bite out of the dark bar and listened to his mouth smack and munch while staring at a construct's severed head he held on another hand.