Vurstha

Vurstha Reeka's weary hands ached as she pushed lightly on the thick oak door. A dozen pair of eyes locked onto her frail frame immediately as she shuffled across the room towards the tavern-keeper. "A glass of warm ale, my good man." Her voice, colder than the harsh winter air, cut through thick bubbly tavern laughter. The room fell silent and only the crackling of burning firewood in the fireplace served to counter the increasingly stifling hush. A burly mercenary nearest to Vurstha shifted uncomfortably in his seat and fiddled with the hilt of his broadsword.

"And what will you be paying with for that?" The tavern-keeper, a powerfully built dwarf, eyed Vurstha suspiciously. Strangers in Dharkha were a rare sight and were not treated amicably, much less strangers who wore tattered robes and walked unsteadily.

"This!" Vurstha hissed as she slammed a dented golden coin onto the keeper's counter.

The tavern-keeper hesitated for a moment before he picked up the coin and examined it closely. The flames in the fireplace cast strange twisted shadows that danced on the tavern walls. The coin, old and abused as it was, glittered unnaturally in the weak light and felt remarkably heavy. The dwarf bit hard on the bent metal. It was real gold. Satisfied, he poured a glass of frothy ale and put it in front of Vurstha. "Here's your ale."

Vurstha took the glass and tasted a little of the dark liquid that swirled within. She grimaced as the rancid Dharkish ale stung her tongue and mouth. Closing her eyes, she sipped from the glass and felt the liquid work its way down her throat, burning and healing at the same time. Dharkish ale, well-known for its rejuvenating properties, was a favorite with the rough and tough of Khanduras despite its sour tang.

The tavern slowly regained its life as the patrons resumed their banter. This stranger did not appear to be dangerous. Vurstha paid no attention to her surroundings, choosing instead to quickly finish her glass of ale. Outside, frost had begun to form on the windows and the first signs of winter were manifesting in the form of light snow-fall.

The flames in the fireplace wavered suddenly as though hit by a draft. Vurstha froze and swallowed hard. Her enemies were closing in on her. She had to leave, fast.

Summoning the last ounces of strength in her physically exhausted body, she pushed herself to her feet and headed for the door. As her withered hand closed on the knob, a blast of fire threw open the door and smashed her against the back of the tavern. Three dark figures stepped through the flames and into the tavern, apparently untouched by the fiery tongues that lapped at their feet.

As Vurstha lay groaning in pain, chaos erupted about her as the tavern patrons scrambled for cover. The tavern-keeper, anxious to protect his establishment, took his trusty war-hammer and charged at the dark figures. Before anyone could help him, the figure in the center grasped him by the neck and lifted him off the ground. The war-hammer dropped onto the floor, its hundred pound head breaking one of the floorboards as it landed.

The disarmed dwarf punched at the figure that his short arms could not reach. Gradually, his futile efforts dwindled and his legs stopped kicking in the air. It was as though the touch of the figure had sucked the life out of him. The figure cast the lifeless body of the tavern-keeper aside easily, like a child discarding a puppet he had gotten tired of playing with.

"Monsters!", Vurstha cursed as she picked herself up, scowling as her face contorted with pain.

She reached into her robes and drew forth a silver amulet. With her left hand, she traced a circular symbol in the air and hurled the amulet at the figures. Even as the amulet flew towards them, the white metal ignited and burned with a bluish flame.

"Ethra Domas Trivoli!" Her shrill voice deafened those who still possessed their hearing after the initial explosion that had blasted open the door and injured the sorceress. The flaming amulet flared and exploded into a thousand shards of light that pierced the three figures. Like darkness in the face of the rising sun, the three figures wilted and faded into nothingness.

With the catastrophe momentarily averted, Vurstha saw darkness envelope her vision as she collapsed into a heap onto the floor.

"So you awaken." A strong mellow voice washed over Vurstha.

Blinking as she recovered her vision, the sorceress saw a man bent over her, his wizened face breaking into a smile. "Wh-" she started, but the pain that ran through her body like lightning stopped her short.

"Hold your breath, child." The man stroked her hair. "I have negated the effects of the aging spell that was cast upon you. You will be young again in just a while."

Vurstha looked at her hands that were changing before her very eyes. The deep lines that stretched from the back of her hands to her elbow slowly became faint and eventually disappeared. The colour of youth returned to her skin and as she touched her face with her hands, she could feel tautness where loose folds of skin were just a day ago. Relief swept through her and she wiped away a tear that involuntarily ran down the side of her face.

"Thank you, whoever you are. How did you know that I was under an aging spell?" The sorceress smiled as she sat up on the make-shift bed of straw and wood.

"Easy, Thorada told me." The man replied.

Vurstha's smile vanished as quickly as it came. "Thorada? The frightful One?"

The man nodded gravely. "He was the One who brought you here. He ordered me to heal your wounds. It was He who told me your story."

The sorceress gasped. "Why...why should a God do that for me?" Instinctively, she reached within her robes for her amulet. Her fingers closed around a familiar star-shaped device.

"Do not worry. He has not taken away your amulet. He could not." The man uttered. "The magic in the amulet is too strong, even for a God."

Vurstha narrowed her eyes as she appraised the man standing before her. He was dressed in a simple white tunic, middle-aged, slightly rotund and a crown of hair framed a balding top. A thick gold chain hung around his neck and a large black opal sat in the center of the locket that dangled from it.

"He knows the secret of my amulet?" Vurstha asked.

"Of course, He is, afterall, one of the Gods." The man smiled contemptuously. "He saw what was going to happen to you and sent me there to help you."

The sorceress swallowed and fingered her amulet. The cold metal vibrated with power at her touch. "Who are you? And why is Thorada so interested in me?" Her eyes followed the man as he waltzed across the room to a chest sitting atop a vanity.

"I am Yipo, a priest of Thorada." The man pondered. "As to why He is interested in you..." He paused for a moment and opened the iron-wrought chest. From within, the priest took forth a glowing green gem and returned to Vurstha's side. "Look into this gem. It will tell you what He has planned for you."

There was darkness blacker than the soul of night. And a silence that smothered like thick dense smoke. She was in a space that was without walls, without floors and ceilings. Although it appeared that there was nothing that held her up, she was not falling. It was a place in which logic ceased to exist.

She was still but the place she was in moved. In the distance, she could see two shapes approaching her. As they neared, she could see that these were large misshapen blocks of blue gelatin-like substance that glowed with its own unnatural light. Within each of these blocks, a black form was trapped in suspended animation. She could not make out clearly the exact features of the dark forms.

Behind the two gelatin blocks, a shape gradually came into view. It was a large form, similar to the two trapped within the blocks, but much bigger. Like a gargoyle, it had wings, massive appendages that extended obscenely from its back. The back was facing her.

As the huge creature began turning towards her, she felt a sense of terror building within her, a sense of fear that threatened to overflow the banks of sanity. The creature was unknown yet familiar to her at the same time. The curves of the body were alien to her, yet she could recognise them. Her heart pounded so loudly in her own ears that she thought it would just rip itself from her body and float away in the darkness.

As the creature finally faced her directly, her entire body was quivering in horror. The creature was the embodiment of Terror, every single ugly bulge sending dread through her psyche. It moved closer to her, its unseeing eyes looking beyond her, into her. It raised its head, as though sniffing the air. It lowered its head and looked straight at her. Its mouth, a gaping orifice, curled in a grotesque smile. Then it opened and a ball of crimson fire came from within and enveloped her completely, burning her flesh and spirit, consuming her very essence.

Like the fires of hell, the crimson flames ate her flesh and tore her bones apart.

She screamed. Vurstha opened her eyes. Her entire body was drenched in cold sweat.

"You are back. Thorada was right. You are indeed special. No mortal has ever returned from a visit to Diablo and his brethen." Yipo muttered.

"Diablo?" The sorceress shuddered. "Is that..."

Yipo nodded. "That winged creature you saw in the sightless crystal was Diablo. The two blocks are the prisons that entrap his brothers Mephisto and Baal. They are the Prime Evils of the realms. Powerful demons that even the Gods fear."

"Demons." Vurstha grabbed her amulet. The cold metal burned her palm. "Is Thorada afraid of them?"

The priest looked away. "He has his concerns. Diablo is trying to free Mephisto and Baal from their eternal incarceration. Alone, Diablo is nothing to the Gods, but Mephisto and Baal are ancient demons whose powers are unfathomable. Together they have the power to eradicate the Gods and rule Khanduras."

Vurstha shuddered once more. "Demons that can overthrow the Gods?" She let go of the breath that she had been unconsciously holding.

Yipo nodded once more. "These are powerful creatures whose existence threaten the sanctity of the realms. The Gods have tried destroying them, to no avail. No magic that they possess is capable of destroying their essence."

The sorceress touched her amulet. It was humming, vibrating with an intense energy. It was as if it were singing out to her. "So they turn to me? Why me?"

"Not you." The priest pointed at her amulet. "Your amulet. The Starfire amulet." He paused. "It is the only magic in the realms that can even come close to destroying those demons."

"And I am the only one who can harness that energy."

"Yes, because the energy is tied to your soul, as it was tied to your mother's. The energy in your amulet is potent but virtually untapped as of now. What you have used to quell those shades back in the tavern is but just a tiny fraction of what it is capable of." Yipo shook his head. "Once you master the use of your amulet, you will the power to destroy even the..." He stopped suddenly.

"Gods?" Vurstha smirked.

"Blasphemy." Yipo scolded. "Don't even think of doing that. You will need all the help they can give you to learn the use of your amulet."

The sorceress smiled. "And so I will. How shall I find the demons once I have mastered that art?"

Yipo pointed towards the eastern horizon where the sun had begun to rise. "To the East. You will need to head towards the Eastern Realms."

Vurstha looked in the direction that he was pointing and saw that the morning sun had begun casting its brilliance upon the realms in all directions. Deep within her, she knew that it would be up to her and her journey to the East to ensure that it would do so for many more centuries to come.

The Fallacious Paradigm of Security

Most people are probably uncomfortable with the fact that their every activity can be monitored and logged with unerring precision. I'm no exception. However, I feel that the issue of privacy being compromised at the expense of security has been somewhat overhyped by detractors. If my vote were to count, I would choose security over privacy. A world that utilises pervasive technology to combat terrorism and other malicious activities which take away lives and cause hurt indiscriminately is, in my opinion, a more livable place than one in which we have maximum privacy and anonymity but live in constant fear of being blown to bits by fanatics.

Technology that allows seeing through walls serves two primary purposes when it comes to increasing overall security in daily life. Firstly, the deterrence factor cannot be overstated. Knowing that a high percentage of their unethical activities can be easily witnessed by other people would likely reduce the speed of reprobates carrying out such plans. With sufficient ubiquity, this technology can cut down the situational advantage that such people currently possess.

The second purpose pertains to actual security enforcement. This technology would allow enforcement agents to better conduct counter-terrorist and related activities. For example, based on intelligence reports, they would be able to quietly perform scans of areas that that have been marked as high-risk zones. Results from these scans can then be processed visually or electronically to quickly support crack-down operations.

Having said all these though, it is perhaps inevitable in time to come that the advent of this technology results in the progression of peer technology such as scan-blocking and scan-muddling. It is thus likely that this will result in a low-privacy and low-security world subsequently in which common folk are subject to pervasive and intrusive identity scans while bad-hats employ counter-technology to slip through such scans.

The bottomline is that the extent of technology does not matter more than how it is applied. The latter in turn depends on the degree of progression of human ethics and actualisation of the human spirit. A world in which technology and human ethics progress at disproportionate rates teeters on the edge of destruction.