Unleashed Fury (BloodRunes: Book 1) by Laura R Cole Page A

into the flesh of
his forearm. The peephole clicked shut, and a moment later the door
swung open. Jonathan hurried inside. He asked for the master and
was ushered farther into the building, where an altar had been
erected for Nuko.
    As he entered, he saw that before it knelt
the man that he wanted to see. Jonathan took a seat on the bench in
the back of the temple, waiting for Master to acknowledge his
presence and call him forward.
    His eyes wandered around the room and came to
rest upon an open tome that was balanced on the top of a pedestal,
illuminated by the fires above. Within its pages, Jonathan knew
that it told the true history, not the watered-down version that
was commonly known. It was with pride that he had recently had the
privilege of committing those pages to memory. His latest
advancement within the Order had revealed much to him and he felt
more conviction for their purpose than ever before.
    The tome told how during the age of the Dark
King, fear and bloodshed had filled the world as the Dark King rose
in power and started the Massacre. Under his rule, the world was
stripped of the unworthy as one by one he sent them to his death
camps for slaughter. It became a time of blood-magic where those
who were privy to its use were god-like in their power. The regular
history books condemned him for these actions, but those in the
Order knew that his cleansing had been important for the impending
return of the true god, Nuko. The world must be prepared, and only
the worthy would survive when His time came.
    The Dark King had been on the right path for
Nuko's reawakening, but had fallen prey to human temptations. He
had been crazed by his own power, convinced that he was the god
himself, and that madness had proved to be his downfall. He started
sending powerful mages – who he convinced himself would oppose him
– along with the unworthy to the camps, and in his paranoia ended
up depleting the world’s stock of talents rather than building it
up in preparation for the reawakening.
    After he was overthrown, the Order had banded
together to protect the information about blood-magic and Nuko's
return from the ignorant fear of the common people. The rebels who
overthrew the Dark King had held a great book burning to try and
purge the world of the sacred information about blood-magic, and it
was only through the efforts of the first members of the Order that
any of it had survived. It was the first goal of the Order to
protect this information, to keep it from falling into the wrong
hands, and to use it to further the human race. When used
correctly, it was an important factor in Nuko's resurrection.
    Within the Order, there were those called the
book-keepers who had possession of the books, and others who knew
the keys to open them. The organizational complexity allowed no one
person to control the power that each book contained. It was
imperative that the information did not fall prey to the prying
eyes of another of the ilk of the Dark King, hoping to deify
themselves rather than make way for the true god’s return.
    Though the Dark King had made mistakes, and
ended up failing because of his own ambitions, he was right in
spreading the Word of the true god. Nuko was the one true God as
the Dark King had tried to get the people to see. The trio of gods
that the common people worshiped in their folklore was nothing more
than that: lore. Physical acts of the Three hadn't been seen for
centuries. But Nuko was real, and he would be returning. When he
did, those who were in the Order who had spent their lives planning
for his return would be rewarded in turn. I will be
rewarded.
    Jonathan's thoughts wandered to Jezebel and
her little crony, Devon. During his observation, Jonathan had been
unable to fathom why Devon would continue to put up with Jezebel's
demands on him and serve her so loyally. Perhaps Devon secretly
loves her. They certainly are two of a kind. He tried to
imagine the two of them together and wrinkled