“There is some secret process by which the spheres actually were made. No doubt, it’s a hideously complex one or others would have done it over the centuries. What is known is that each sphere is irrevocably bound to a specific Protege, probably because it holds his essence or can regenerate it as needed. Inscribed on each sphere is a set of injunctions. These are written in the language of the universe and thus command its obedience. Each describes a constraint.”
“Constraint?” Daryl echoed.
“Think of it this way,” Rin explained in a pedagogical tone. “You’ve read stories about deals with the devil, or genies granting wishes, right?”
Daryl nodded.
“If somebody makes a wish for immortality, there always is a catch. They still grow old, eventually living on as little more than an animated pile of dust. Or they get murdered and end up a disembodied head or zombified corpse. Or they suffer an eternity of torment or madness or solitude. As clever as the wisher tries to be, their opponent is trickier.”
“How could it be otherwise? The wisher has no experience with such things, but his adversary has plenty.” Rin thought for a second. “Kind of like when you and I have sex.” She smiled. “There is no substitute for familiarity, but the wisher still can try. The more wishes he has, the better his odds of avoiding traps despite the disparity in experience. However, to do so requires exercising every ounce of ingenuity.”
Daryl still looked confused, so Rin took another tack.
“Think of it like the law. Why are contracts so complicated? Because each clause plugs a hole. Maybe a bad experience with a previous contract informed the new one, or maybe a clever lawyer sought to anticipate future problems. Either way, the contract grows long with caveats. The problem is that the more detailed and complex the caveats, the greater the danger of missing something or creating an unanticipated loophole.”
“The sphere is a sort of contract. There is no devil or djinn seeking to deceive its holder, nor does the universe bear the holder malice for his presumption. The universe is without feeling, let alone malice. But over countless eons, anything bad that could happen will happen, either through the agency of others or by accident. If an immortal man is thrown into a volcano, he may burn for years, feeling every moment of it. If he is entombed, he may be trapped for centuries, unable to move.”
“For some reason, there is a constraint on the number of rules as well. Amon is said to have crafted spheres with 2, 4, 8, and 16 injunctions. The first few had 2, and Amon’s own is thought to have had 4. Only later did he learn to craft 8, and eventually the Queen’s 16. It is likely that each sphere must have twice as many injunctions as the next smaller one. Of course, ‘larger’ just refers to the number. Physically, they’re all the same size.”
Daryl was enraptured with the idea and wondered what sort of traps existed and how to avoid them. “So what are the injunctions like?”
Rin gave him a puzzled look. “You do know that I’m just talking about the protections, right?”
He said nothing, and she shook her head slowly. “‘Injunction’ describes their nature, while ‘protection’ describes their effect. Most of the time, we just care about the effect, but the question of where they came from necessarily demands a discussion of their nature. Hence the terminology. I thought it would be obvious. What did you imagine I was talking about all this time?”
Before Daryl could answer, she waved her hand. “Actually, never mind. I don’t care. Do you understand now?”
He nodded, and she was about to get up when a question broke the silence.
“Do you know them?”
Daryl expected a torrent of abuse, but Rin just smiled. “As I told you, I am an agent of the gods and know them all. Such knowledge is essential to my purpose.”
“What are they?” He knew he was pushing it, but Daryl couldn’t resist. And she did seem to be in a forthcoming mood.
Rin’s eyebrows furrowed. “I told you two of them a while back. But I should warn you about something. I only can loosely translate the protections into any given language, and those translations are both misleading and inaccurate. Bear in mind that each carries a grand and complex fabric of rules and meaning. I’m just giving you an extreme summary.”
Daryl nodded understanding, and she continued.
“If you recall, all Proteges must have two basic protections. If any did not, they died long ago. ‘I cannot be harmed’ protects from physical damage, and ‘I cannot degrade’ protects against aging, disease, cancer, senility, and most other biological failings. Without those, nobody would last long. What others do you think the Fours have?”
It took a few seconds for Daryl to realize the question wasn’t rhetorical, and a few more before he ventured a guess. “I cannot be killed?”
This met with an approving smile from Rin. “That is a good try, but no. The injunctions are not based on what we want, but what the universe can offer. Amon combined them as best he could to effect his purpose. Most of the protections prevent death under certain circumstances. But ‘I cannot be harmed’ is probably the closest thing to yours. I told you that the translations are incomplete.”
Before continuing, she seemed to have a thought. “You wouldn’t want something like ‘I cannot be killed,’ though. It would leave you open to paralysis, mutilation, and all sorts of other horrible eventualities. These would require many additional protections. A Four doesn’t have that luxury. Fortunately, the basic protections already cover a lot.”
“‘I cannot be harmed’ protects against assault, basic burning, and so on. No physical harm may be effected on the person of the Protege, but there are limits. Mind you, ‘harm’ is a rough translation, and quite ambiguous in your language. What is harm to one may be help to another, as they say.”
“Basic burning?” Daryl asked. “Is there any other kind?”
“Well, I dropped one Protege into a lava pit and he didn’t come out. Did it work? Probably. There’s a more precise protection, ‘I cannot be dissolved,’ which protects against chemical and physical burns. I doubt lava would have worked on somebody who had it. But maybe that’s limited too.”
“You don’t know?”
Rin shrugged. “Nobody knows. Sometimes, you just have to try things. But, to my earlier point, the Fours all have one additional protection in common: ‘I cannot be defiled.’ It protects against poisoning, as well as certain improbable scenarios.”
“But improbable means they eventually will happen,” Daryl noted.
Rin gave a mischievous smile. “Especially if I make them happen.”
“Many Fours have ‘I cannot be deprived’ as their last protection. It protects against starvation, dehydration, and asphyxiation. Of course, this doesn’t keep those things from being unpleasant or troublesome — just from doing damage. Basically, the Protege cannot perish from want of some basic need.”
“What if …” Daryl began.
“You can’t stop them up,” Rin interjected, anticipating the question. “‘I cannot be harmed’ would protect against their bowels exploding, and ‘I cannot degrade’ would protect against kidney failure or other organ issues. If there was sepsis, ‘I cannot be defiled’ may come into play as well. Of course, it still would hurt like hell.”
“However, that wouldn’t be an issue if they had ‘I cannot be tormented,’ which protects against pain. I won’t go into more detail, because these are the only protections you’re likely to encounter. Almost all Fours have ‘I cannot be deprived’ or ‘I cannot be tormented.’”
“Almost?”
“Except Vivvett and a couple of others. Fortunately that didn’t prove a problem,” Rin mused. “This time.”
“What determines which protection a Four has?” Daryl wondered.
Rin looked at him. “If given the choice, I imagine that somebody who fears death would choose ‘I cannot be deprived,’ while someone more worried about suffering would choose ‘I cannot be tormented.’ There’s little doubt that Amon improved his knowledge of the protections over time. Maybe the later spheres reflected this.”
Something puzzled Daryl. “Why poisoning?” he finally asked, after a few moments of consideration. “It seems an unlikely threat. Aren’t there more important things to protect against?”
“I can see why you would think that in modern times, though with pollution it actually may be of greater benefit now. In the old days, spells and poisons were a major concern. People believed they could be poisoned from afar by a witch. It may appear silly to you, but people lived in real fear of such things.”
“Why didn’t some Fours have both ‘I cannot be tormented’ and ‘I cannot be deprived?’” Rin continued, shrugging. “Starvation was a danger, but a manageable one. Food could be procured through theft or violence if need be, and the other protections would facilitate that. But poisoning was a horror which could not be foreseen or prevented, and over which there was no control.”
“If somebody was coward enough to fear pain and pick ‘I cannot be tormented,’ they would use their remaining protection against the more terrifying peril, even if it was less realistic. It may be that this was the type of person who employed poison as well, and thus was all too familiar with its efficacy.”
“There also is the possibility that the combination simply wouldn’t have worked. Protections could not be mixed arbitrarily. Their symbols had to be combined in a special way, to allow for a special extra symbol.”
Daryl considered this for a moment. “An additional protection?”
“In a way. It spoke of the sphere itself. It was this symbol which collapsed the sphere’s interior to a point, leaving only a shell. Translated into your language, it roughly says,”
In solitude I dwell,
bound to myself,
closed upon myself,
protected from myself,
confined within myself.
None can sunder
what cannot be.
Daryl raised an eyebrow. “Roughly? That sounds pretty polished.”
Rin laughed. “You’re not as stupid as you seem.”
The unexpected, if backhanded, compliment put Daryl at a loss for words, until she added, “Well, you couldn’t possibly be.”
“But yes, you’re right. I didn’t just translate that. When I learn a new language, I study it thoroughly, especially its boundaries and limitations. Once I fully have mastered it, and only then, I translate the final symbol. It is the most important.”
“Why?” The others seemed pretty damned important to Daryl, at least if any of this was real. He figured it only was a matter of time before one of his questions set Rin off, and he wanted to learn as much as possible before then.
To his surprise, she patiently explained.
“It was the final symbol which sealed the sphere and imposed a greater, impossible symmetry. Without it, there only was an inscribed ball filled with something. Pretty, and possibly disgusting, depending what that something was. But also useless. The last symbol, achieved by precisely arranging the others, admitted a special ritual to finalize the sphere. The translation is accurate. The sphere seals itself. It is self-referential, the only way anything in this universe can be special or permanent. The sphere’s seal is itself. There is nothing external or separate which may break it. Nor will it degrade with time. The spheres are perfect.”
“You sound impressed by them.” Daryl knew that he was.
“Only a fool wouldn’t be. They are the most perfect objects in the universe, the most durable.”
“And you want to destroy them?” Of all people, Daryl could understand the need. But he wondered whether anyone could bring themselves to do such a thing. Would he feel the same when the time came to destroy Rin?
She snorted. “I take it back. You are a complete idiot. I already told you, they can’t be destroyed. They cannot be unbound or deactivated or defeated.”
“Then how …,” Daryl began, puzzled.
“The spheres continue to exist, as must their holders. All I may do is try to find a loophole in each of them and encumber the owner. I play the devil, the djinn, the lawyer. I find a threat they did not anticipate, and I use it against them. I render them harmless to the universe around them, to the degree such a thing is possible. I remove the unnatural, that the natural may follow its due course, unmolested and undefiled. The spheres do not belong in this world and neither do their holders.”
There was fervor in these last words, but Daryl expected no less from a self-proclaimed “agent of the gods.” He examined the sphere on the table. It was so beautiful. Why hadn’t he thought to hold it while she spoke? As he reached for it, Rin laughed.
“I hope you paid attention to the people I mentioned in the story. At some point, we’ll have to destroy them all.”
Daryl said nothing and stared at her with a dazed expression.
Rin snatched the sphere back and shoved it in her pocket. “Well, at least the ones that are left.”
“And where did that one come from?” he asked, pointing at Rin’s pocket.
Rin gave him a look of utter disbelief.
“That should be obvious. It belongs to Vivvett.”
The discussion of the sphere and its attributes throw up a lot of interesting concepts! You could fall down quite the rabbit-hole with self-reference, alone.