There was a click behind her and the woman froze in terror, the sound of a hammer being drawn back drilled into the back of her brain. A quick prayer to the One God of the Infinite Machine gave her courage enough to turn and face her assailant; her gaze fell onto the figure of a man who she thought she'd known.

“Michael,” she questioned him with a blink, her green eyes scared.

“Hello Amadis,” he responded in kind and gave her a waxen smile. “I thought it might be time that we had somewhat of a chat?”

She fanned herself in the shade of the room and breathed a sigh of relief, “What about?”

“What you said to my father?”

“Oh,” she blanched a little. “I didn't mean it, it was spoken in the heat of the moment, and you know I would never accuse you of such heresy if I were thinking straight.”

The man, in his early twenties shook his head and sighed, he waved the gun a little off to one side, indicating for the woman to sit. He took some perverse pleasure in watching this cheap little blonde squirm.

“You were right Amadis,” he explained. “That's the thing, you were right. I am a heretic, I can cast magic.”

She narrowed her eyes a little and put her hand to her mouth, “You can weave the Tapestry?”

“And more,” he boasted.

The door shattered in under the violent kick driven by the boot heel of the Inquisitor's heavy foot. Kalon Rhadon: the dark haired right hand of the Church of Progression forced his way into the room and before Michael could even fling a single thread of arcane sorcery in the churchman's direction, Kalon pulled the trigger on the tech-magis pistol three times.

Michael was silenced for good, his body landed on the floor with a thump and Kalon put away his gun.

Amadis put her head in her hands and she lifted her chin to look at Rhadon, the man's dark eyes had no hint of compassion, no emotion, just the blind doctrine of the Church of Progression burning in their depths.

“You've done well Amadis, or should I say Verity,” the Inquisitor turned to leave as the woman took off the blonde wig and replaced it with a red curled one.

“It's always a pleasure,” she said in acrid tones. “To serve Fate's Hand.”

Kalon left the room in silence.

The truth, It's honest!

In Kalon's case, the truth often ends in a bullet.

A fun little side-story here. Well-written, well-written indeed. Although for the life of me I can't figure out how their guns work. They can't be like a single-shot black powder deal, or he wouldn't have shot three times.

Sorry, I just get carried away with my fantasy sometimes. :)

Like I said, good job.

Steely: the CoP Tech-Magis weapons are a curious mix of science (probably early 16th to 17th century) and magic. The greatest hypocrisy I could think of when I designed the CoP was that they pursue heretics, burn and kill them for using magic and so forth yet they themselves use magic in their technology to avoid the limitations of power.

The guns (there are several variants) including Kalon's two pistols are complex devices that channel aetheric energy into chambers, it's there that the energy is converted to matter and the weapon charges up (it takes roughly sixty seconds for a 6 shot variant and 80 seconds for an 8 shot variant) until it's ready to fire. Once it fires a round, the solid projectile is ejected at speed via a combination of chemical technology and mystical assistance.

A spell is in place to prevent combustion blowback from the weapon itself.

That's the basic look at it.