"So?"

"I can't tell you much. As in, I am literally magically prevented from even forming the intention of telling you stuff."

"—wait, seriously? How does that work, how does the spell know what you're supposed to be allowed to say—"

He shrugs and taps the clear stone attached to his earring.

"—is the enchantment on the stone? So you could take it off?"

"The stone continually renews an enchantment on me, as I understand it."

"I mean that's how enchantments work in general but maybe if they specified that they might mean something else?"

"And I can't form an intention to remove the enchantment either and I must try to stop anyone from trying to remove it or dispel it and if I lose it anyway then I'm not allowed back at the Guild and if I tell anyone anything they're also obligated to hunt me down and destroy me completely."

"...that's thorough. But wait, isn't a dangling earring—" He pauses. Squints. "It's not actually the earring, is it. That's just to draw the attention."

"That would be a smart thing for them to do."

"Fucking Hel, man, are you not even allowed to acknowledge that?"

He smiles pleasantly.

"Gods that sounds stifling." Even if it's fascinating, he wants to stare at it.

"It's not so bad most of the time."

"Until you have to interact with anyone out of the Guild. —you can talk to people about the Guild in the Guild, yes?"

He laughs. "Yeah, I can."

"Freyja on ice skates, man. Well, can you not just tell me what you can tell me?"

"...I can't say anything related to where the Guild's located, I can't tell you about anyone else who's in the Guild, I can't even actually confirm one way or another whether Alph is in it."

"Skills? Personal growth? Bounties?" he suggests, fishing for anything at all.

"I've got Triple Attack!" he says brightly. "And Double Strafe, and my cloaking is better than Alph's was when you left the Academy. Oh, I can make poison out of thin air." It turns out that most other people take a lot longer than him to be able to do that and they've been calling him a prodigy just like they do Vallynn but saying that apparently counts as talking about his guildmates. Except it's fine if Vallynn already knew in advance that that's meant to be badass? This enchantment is trippy.

"...like an actual liquid? Or just make weapons you're wielding be magically poisonous?"

He cups his hands together and a clear odourless liquid starts appearing there out of nowhere. Then he drinks it and starts to lick his hands clean.

"...are you doing that on purpose?"