'Oh.' Arin blinked.
Then, ever so slowly, he settled back into his chair.
The noise had faded into silence, and the room had stopped quivering. The only sign that remained of the disturbance was the swaying of the hanging lamps.
'Looks like this senior like to make an entrance,' he remarked.
'That, she does. It does not matter, Arin. I will not be introducing you to any of the others until you develop a better understanding of the way Rin behaves,' said the white-haired man. 'Let's return to what we were talking about earlier.'
'Right.' Arin leaned back, carefully rotating his injured shoulder. 'You were about to tell me why you haven't done anything about Lullwater.'
'Was I, now?'
'You absolutely were!'
The man chuckled softly. 'I suppose you're right.' Pausing to take another sip – how hadn't that cup run out by now!? – he sighed. 'You spoke of my decision to leave the capital decades ago. Of my voluntary exile – the supposed sudden whim of an eccentric nobleman.'
Arin nodded. Then, he froze.
Decades ago?
'Hang on,' he interjected. 'When Layla spoke of you, it was of the things she had learned from the last outsider. The one who had come by before that psycho tool-wielding guy – she obviously wouldn't remember him during the repeated day. That had been about three years ago, and it sounded like the traveler told them you'd only just left the capital city. What do you mean, decades ago?'
The white-haired man paused. 'Did you think that revolting man did what he did to Lullwater sometime in the last three years?' he asked. 'Sometime between the visit of that last outsider, and your visit just yesterday?'
'Arin, the curse of that tool has been triggered by others before you. You were not the first to have inadvertently forced the villagers to relive the fateful day of their deaths.'
'At the same time, you were made aware that the village only ever sees a rare few outsiders. As you were told, only four in Layla's entire lifetime.'
'Hm, right,' Arin nodded again. 'I got that.'
His sleep-deprived brain was suddenly feeling particularly fuzzy.
The man sighed. 'Have some tea, Arin.'
He offered him a cup off the desk once again. This time, Arin decided he might as well take a sip, the cup's previous status as an inkpot be damned.
The taste of its contents was comfortingly familiar – that of an ordinary cup of tea he remembered drinking on rainy evenings back home. Almost as soon as he'd had a mouthful, Arin felt his mind clear up. Even the persistent ache on the right side of his torso diminished by quite a bit.
Seeing him sit up straighter, the white-haired man continued what he was saying.
'We spoke earlier of how the villagers' souls exist in stasis while the tool lies untriggered. They have no awareness of the passage of time.'
'When you woke them up, they believed they were living within that one day. Layla told you of the previous outsider coming by three years ago, because that had occurred three years prior to that specific day. To her, and to the other villagers, news of me leaving the capital is a recent development.'
'But Arin, it has been nearly twenty-eight years since I first came here. And it has been a quarter-century's time since Lullwater suffered its dismal fate.'
…
Oh.
'Oh.' Arin suddenly felt sluggish again.
Twenty-five years since Lullwater was ruined.
Since all the villagers…
…since Layla, had been killed…
He shook his head, quickly downing another sip of tea.
'Thanks for clearing that up,' he finally said. 'But that makes it seem even worse; for you to have done nothing for them after all this time.'
'And I was getting to explaining why,' the white-haired man said with a smile. 'I cannot help them because my talent has been limited by a rule. Further, I may not contact, nor seek the aid of any individual I once knew as a nobleman. This goes both ways, of course.
'Contrary to what is believed – what people at large were made to believe – my exile wasn't voluntary.'
The man's words resonated profoundly, laden with heavy implication.
Arin took in a deep breath. He looked up to meet his eyes. Then,
'Uh, sorry. I have no idea what most of that meant.'
The white-haired man blinked.
'I've been wondering for a while now,' Arin continued, 'what, exactly, you mean when you say 'talent'. And it being limited by a 'rule'? What's that? A law, but with magic?'
The man leaned forward. A talent,' he said. 'The facet of magic you develop on the basis of your soul's affinity.'
Arin continued giving him a blank look.
'Is it called something different where you come from?' The man delicately furrowed his brows.
It took Arin a second to process what the white-haired man was asking. 'Like, your illusion thing?' he asked. 'Layla's fire? Is that what you mean by a 'facet of magic'?'
He shrugged a shoulder. 'We don't have that in my world.'
For the first time since Arin had known him (which, admittedly, was not very long), the white-haired man looked truly stumped. He had dropped his gentle smile, his expressionless face making him look even more like a pristine sculpture than usual.
'No magic? Then how do you… do… things. How does your world function at all?' he finally asked. His voice was steady, but his tone held a curious trace of something that was part fascination, part revulsion.
It was almost like Arin had said something absurd, like they didn't have skin in his world, and people routinely walked around as bloody musculoskeletal systems.
Arin shrugged again. 'Science. Machines. Things we make with our hands and brains, I guess,' he said uncertainly.
The man leaned forward, clasping his hands on his lap. 'And what of your souls?' he asked.
Arin had to stop himself from shrugging a third time. 'Most people don't really believe in those. Not like you can see or measure a soul in any way, right?'
The man before him opened his mouth, then shut it again.
'Incredible,' he said, almost as if to himself. Slowly, a brilliant smile spread across his striking face.
'Incredible!'