"I can teleport us to the Teapot whenever," Carbon said.

"Can you also tell us where it is and who has it?" Kara asked.

"If we are to negotiate for the borrowing of the Teapot, it would be nice to know who we will negotiate with," Rachel added.

"I told you, it's with Elendar," Carbon said.

"None of us know who that is, Carbon," I said.

"The Queen of the Dark Elves?"

"This is the first time I'm hearing about Dark Elves on this planet," I said.

"This is also the first time I'm hearing about Dark Elves," Kara added.

"Hoo boy, I gotta start from the beginning, don't I?" Carbon said. "No wonder you kids didn't react when you heard my name... Alright, well. I've told this story before, and I know how to tell it again. Do you know why elves don't rule the world, despite being immortal and having forever to gain XP and hone their skills?"

"They don't want to," I said.

"Well, that is true, but that's not the real reason," Carbon said. "The real reason is because elves aren't fully immortal. With the exception of their first twenty years, they don't remember anything that happened more than twenty years ago, unless they wrote it down. Important events are remembered, but their skills, even if they continue to practice them, start to stagnate as they reach their natural equilibrium, as they begin to lose XP to the mists of time at the same rate they earn new XP."

"And you are fully immortal," I said.

"I sure am," Carbon said. "I don't forget stuff. I don't lose XP over time. I will live forever, and I will have all that time to keep pushing my skills higher and higher. And a few thousand years ago, before the elves became what they are today, I was still old as hell and had a ton of power. Now, I'm gonna let you kids in on a little secret: I don't have a grand plan, or a goal, or anything. I just hang out in the world, walking around, meeting new people, and sometimes doing favors. Sometimes I spend a few years living in the wilderness. Sometimes I spend a few decades living in a palace with some friends. And sometimes, some young elves come to me with a challenge: the creation of a new elemental affinity."

"Bullshit," Kara and Rachel said at the same time.

"Oh?" Carbon asked. "In that case, where do you think the nature element came from, and why every full-blooded elf born in the last five thousand years has it as their primary affinity?"

"I've never heard of the nature element," Volex said.

"You might be overestimating just how familiar a bunch of round-ears are with elf shit," I said. "The only one of us who's any kind of outdoorsy and went exploring is Volex, and she's... well. You've met. Anyway. What the hell is the nature element?"

"It's pretty simple, really," Carbon said. "It's just a filter over the void element. An affinity for the nature element gives you access to all elemental magics, just like void does... but nature does not give you access to void-specific powers, and in return makes your more 'natural' elemental magics a bit stronger. Still not quite as strong as the bonus from having a primary affinity for the element in question, but it's still nice to have."

"That... does sound a lot more doable," I admitted. "So it wasn't creating a whole new thing with a whole new set of options, it was more just a modification of an existing thing?"

"Yep!" Carbon said. "Of course, at the time, I didn't think this would be a problem. These young elves came to me with their idea of making a nature element, and giving every elf alive the chance to make it their primary affinity, and once we hashed out what a nature affinity would do, I thought it sounded reasonable. They wanted every elf to have the option of using all four base elements, which brings a lot of quality-of-life stuff. The problem arose when I realized, a little while later, that I'd been a figure of spiritual reverence in elf culture for a while, and that these young elves were in fact the leaders of a fast-growing cult, who told the story as tricking the great void witch into bending her powers towards good, and letting them cast out from society the void-aligned among them. Because... okay, I'm gonna be honest, I've spent the last five thousand years living with the fact that elf society hates void magic and everyone who uses it, but I have never completely figured out why."

"Elves hate void magic?" Rachel asked.

"I figured their religion would be different, but..." Kara trailed off. "Void preserve us..."

"My best guess," Carbon continued, "is that void users in my day were wizards and witches and warlocks, weaving grand sorceries for their own designs, most of which were objectively stupid. The Teapot of Eternity was a very mild example of the stupid shit that wizards got up to back then. The Bay of Kotor only exists because some wizard had beef with another wizard who lived right about in the middle of where the Bay is now."

"It doesn't look very circular," Volex pointed out.

"It's had five thousand years to weather into something more naturalistic," Carbon said. "Plus, the elves did some landscaping to make it stop looking so ugly. Anyhow, my best guess is that these elves correctly reckoned that void-using wizards were constantly doing stupid shit that killed people and ruined their lives, but they decided that the solution was to replace void with an element that couldn't do anything very complicated, and also start a never-ending witch hunt for anyone in their society who's born with a void affinity."

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"Hang on," I said. "Elves with a void affinity... they're the Dark Elves you're talking about. Aren't they?"

"They are," Carbon said, nodding. "Yep, these days there's six flavors of elf, one for each element. Double-natures are High Elves, nature-voids are Dark Elves."

"What are nature-winds called?" Rachel asked.

"Orcs."

"Well, shit, that makes as much sense as anything else," I said. "Okay, so, you did something that seemed innocent five thousand years ago that you then later realized had terrible consequences, and now you're working to correct those consequences?"

"More or less, yeah," Carbon said, nodding. "Originally, I'd teamed up with a band of humans, dragons, and dark elves who thought that the solution was to have the elves driven back onto one continent, where they could live in peace without void users and everyone else could live in peace without elves. That... didn't really work out too well in the end, though. Most of the immortals I was working with died in the war. The rest of them died later. There were no dark elves left outside the elven lands- for the few that survived refused to risk bringing any other kind of elf into the world. And then... a thousand years later, the elven lands saw the exodus of a separatist movement, bringing elves back onto this continent, where they've been for the past two thousand years."

"Fucking hell," I said. "So, what've you been doing about it in the meantime?"

"Well, at first I didn't notice," Carbon admitted. "Once I did, though, I set up a big spell over the whole elven territory on this continent, watching and waiting for any babies born with a void affinity. When they were born, I teleported them away, bringing them to a hidden sanctuary where they could grow up safe from persecution, and where, one day, there could begin a proper dark elf society." Carbon sighed heavily. "Well. It shouldn't surprise you to learn that a society with no void affinities and low birth rates might take a while to produce enough void-affinity kids to make a stable breeding population. It did surprise me, because sometimes I forget that most elves aren't huge sluts like me, but I kept at it, and finally, two hundred years ago, I rescued the last dark elf we needed, and there was finally enough genetic diversity to go on indefinitely through the generations without breeding partners sharing any great great grandparents. Success! Partially!"

"This sanctuary was tucked away somewhere nobody would see it, wasn't it?" I asked. "Maybe even underground?"

"It was," Carbon said, nodding.

"And you convinced the dark elves to sit tight, develop their magics, and not breed until there were enough of them born outside their sanctuary to do so sustainably," I said.

"In point of fact, as soon as I realized how long it was going to take to get a breeding population of dark elves together, which was one year into raising the first baby, I started putting them into suspended animation until there were finally enough for the breeding population, which is also about how many there'd need to be for any kind of proper socialization," Carbon said.

"And your planning of their sanctuary failed to account for the fact you'd need a food supply for more than... how many elves were there when the breeding started?" I asked. "Thirty two or so?"

"In fact, I planned the gardens to feed two hundred dark elves," Carbon said. "There were, after the last birthing cycle- because they sync up their children's births to ensure all of them grow up with children their own age to play with- precisely one thousand, one hundred, and seventy two dark elves in that cavern, and while expanding the gardens was filling the gap in keeping them all fed, we needed a more permanent solution. So, we sought out a lost artifact, learned it was in the possession of the dwarves-"

"There are dwarves?" I asked.

"Earth-affinity elves," Carbon said.

"Oh."

"And then, after a lot of planning and social engineering and careful preparation... we stole it. We stole an ancient, powerful void artifact that the dwarves kept locked away in a vault under holy quarantine, and now we use it to keep everyone fed," Carbon said.

"Question," Volex said.

"What is it?" Carbon asked.

"If you needed the Teapot of Eternity, which was made when you were five thousand years younger and less skilled, why couldn't you just make your own?" Volex asked.

"Well, for one, that'd require rebuilding all of the necessary infrastructure and facilities that went into making the Seed of Infinity that powers the whole thing," Carbon said. "That would take longer than just finding the Teapot and stealing it from some dickheads who weren't even using it. Two, the dark elves don't even want that infrastructure. They just want to live in safety and security, and would also like to go outside every once in a while without it being a big deal."

"I see, I see," I said, nodding. "...So, Carbon, just to recap, correct me if I'm wrong about anything."

"Go on."

"You're a subby wizard of tremendous power who likes to make friends and do whatever spells they tell you to, but you also feel responsible for the spells you cast on people's behalf," I said.

"Exactly," Carbon said, nodding. "See, you get me!"

"Meanwhile, we are a polycule who intend to stage a coup and install one of our own as the Duke of Nukem, and will take as much support as we can get, especially if it means being able to bring about huge, beneficial changes as a direct and obvious result of our reign, since that'll solidify our power and legitimacy," I said. "And you... have just about finished up with your latest project, which is helping the dark elves build a new future."

"I'd consider myself done, honestly," Carbon said. "They've got food, they've got a breeding population, and the next steps are their business, not mine. I'm not actually in charge of them. They've got their own leadership."

"Look, just humor me here, okay?" I said.

"Yes, Mommy."

"...I don't like that."

"Dammit. Mistress?"

"Master is preferable, and also stop being kinky for two minutes and listen. You are going to join our polycule. You are going to be one of Duke Kara Nukem's court wizards. And first, you are going to teleport us to the dark elves, where we will strike a deal, and build a better future for them all."

"Are you going to give me a collar to wear?"

"Only if you're good."

"Explain this deal to me," Kara said.

"Oh, you know, nothing fancy," I said, grinning at her. "We're just gonna make friends."