"Ah." His eyes are a watery blue shot through with a little hazel if she looks closely.

"May I give you weird superpowers in case that helps?"

"What a strange question. Weird superpowers. You don't sound foreign, but nor do you sound quite like I expect... it must have been a long time."

She tells him the current Scholomance-dimension year. She could say 2034, it's relevant to how she talks, but nobody in the Scholomance has commented on her diction so the difference probably isn't important and there's no point confusing the issue. 

"A small fraction of eternity..."

"I'm gonna get you out!!! And if I can't do that--and I will totally be able to do that--then I'll kill you."

"How pleasant to imagine."

Harsh but fair. "I was hoping that having some kind of stimulus other than horrible suffering would constitute at least a small improvement."

"It will punctuate the years."

She's not going to pretend to herself that this isn't kind of annoying but she also super can't blame him. He's been in here a lot longer than Arjun and also Arjun was a pleasant surprise in terms of ability to give a shit. "I do still want permission to give you--implausible abilities," she tries, since "weird superpowers" didn't land right. Ugh, Dad would be so much better at using the right words for this guy's time period. 

"I am not in a position to use any abilities, plausible or no."

"That is probably not true! Some of them affect eyesight."

"This I suppose I retain."

...He hasn't given her permission but he hasn't denied her permission either. And powers are good to have. And it's not like even the worst possible philosophical qualm about being part mal would make his situation worse, right now. 

She gives him an eyesight boost. 

"Ah, I will have ringside seats to the slaughter and the spectacles to appreciate them."

"No, no slaughter, one of the juniors this year had an affinity that let him take mana from mals he killed, and I'm handing that out. The food chain is currently facing a--" what's an appropriate reference for his time period "--tower of Babel situation."

"...the mals will all speak different languages," he says, sounding dry through the background strain.

"....Didn't God also knock the tower down?"

"Are you going to knock down my school?"

"No. It's lovely. You did a magnificent job with the library. The thing I am going to knock down is--wait. Was food chain not an idiom in your time." She's going to show Dad this interaction and he's going to fall over laughing. 

"I think perhaps I could piece it together from context, if I were a bit less distracted."

"We are killing them for their delicious mana instead of the other way around."

"Then you are little better than maleficaria yourselves. This I have had some time to contemplate."

"...What, were you a vegetarian? We're not killing people."

"Was I a what?"