"I'll need a little more to go on than that," Kara said. "Make friends is rather vague."

"Take it up with Lucifer Morningstar herself, if it bothers you so much," I said with a shrug. "She didn't just give me a nudge when I asked her for help. She gave me an eight word prophecy that I've only just now realized is such."

"Oooh, a prophecy from Lucy?" Carbon asked. "Spill the beans."

"Make friends, touch grass, and spread your wings," Rachel recited. "Volex is the only one here with wings, though."

"Ah, but what kind of prophecy uses a term to only mean one thing?" I asked. "Yes, 'spread your wings' had us on the lookout for a girl with wings, and Volex has led us here, but, do also bear in mind that we flew out here to the middle of nowhere in a winged aircraft! And since the instructions were in reverse order, the next step was for me to touch grass, such as that lemongrass I harvested at Carbon's behest."

"Huh, so that's why your hands smell funny," Carbon said. "You should probably wash them."

"In a minute," I said. "And now that I've touched grass, it's time I made friends, plural. Carbon's one friend, but the dark elves... well, there's a thousand of them to befriend, aren't there?"

"How are you going to befriend them?" Kara asked.

"C'mon, you're smarter than this," I said. "How do you think our little polycule is going to make friends with the dark elves?"

"...By sleeping with their leader?" Kara suggested.

"Well, I mean, that wouldn't hurt, but besides that."

"...Oh. Oh! Oh, I see what you mean, now," Kara suggested, nodding.

"I do not," Rachel said. "Lucy, please tell me you do not intend for us to sleep with every dark elf?"

"Don't worry, Rach," Kara said. "It's a much better idea than that. Alright, I'm on-board now. Lucy, follow my lead. Rachel and Volex... Iunno, stand in the back and don't screw this up. Don't help make any half-elves until I'm sure it won't cause a diplomatic incident."

"I'll try my hardest," Rachel said dryly.

"Aww, I always get the hard jobs," Volex whined, pouting.

"It's cause we know you're good enough to handle 'em," I said, reaching over and affectionately tousling her hair, making her- and I swear to God this happened- purr like a kitten. "Anyhow. I think we're ready to go now. Carbon? You got all your shit?"

"Yep, I'm ready," she said, standing up and dusting off the back of her skirt. "Next stop, the Dark Gardens!"

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Teleportation, at least when Carbon did it, was instant and unnoticeable. One moment we stood in a small forest clearing, the next moment we stood in a less small stone chamber, with one other person in here with us, sitting in a chair.

She shot upright immediately, and it took me a moment to realize that, yep, I was looking at a dark elf alright. She was of medium height and slender build, with pointed ears, delicate features, bone white hair, and dark grey skin. She wore a simple, long, and loose, seemingly-untailored white dress, and no shoes; given the floors were smooth stone tile, that wasn't terribly unreasonable, but... still, something seemed off, here.

"Elendar?" Carbon asked, tilting her head to the side as she took in the elf. "Shouldn't you be in the central hall?"

"I lost the last election," Elendar, apparently, answered, shrugging her shoulders. "Queen Selva reigns now, may she bring us peace and prosperity. Who are these outsiders? Is that a dragon?"

"Hi, I'm Volex!" my pet thirty year old dragongirl bimbo said. "I'm supposed to stand in the back and not help make any half-elves until Kara says so."

"Volex is a master alchemist and very beautiful by our reckoning," Kara said diplomatically, sweeping forward to block Volex from view. "We treasure her deeply, despite her relative lack of social graces. I am Kara Nukem, bastard daughter of Ariel Nukem and legitimate claimant to the title of Duke Nukem. We're here to speak to Queen Selva and propose a mutually-beneficial arrangement."

"I see, I see," Elendar said, nodding. "Well, if Carbon trusts you... This way, please."

She opened the door and led us out of what I could only assume was the inbound teleportation chamber, and into a stone hallway that could stand to have a bit more lighting, before finally, we emerged into a larger chamber.

A hundred or so dark elves walked this way and that, going about their business. A few dozen children played in a large, central patch of grass, watched over and occasionally joined by a handful of smiling adults. In the outer ring of stone, stone benches were arranged at regular intervals, some bearing one dark elf reading a book or playing with a stone to hone some skill or other, while others bore two, or even three dark elves, often being openly affectionate with each other.

All of them wore identical dresses to Elendar, which fit their less-identical bodies near-equally poorly, and I found my curiosity getting the better of me.

"So, how do the people of the Dark Gardens make their clothes?" I asked.

"...I could have sworn the first question you'd ask would be why we're all betas," Elendar confessed.

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"I grew up in the Grand Temple, and these three have been staying there for a while," Kara supplied. "We're all pretty used to being surrounded by betas. But, now that you mention it... I mean, I guess I am pretty curious about the fact there aren't any alphas or omegas outside our group."

"I mentioned that the elves on this continent are a separatist group, yeah?" Carbon said. "Well, elf gender politics aren't that different from human gender politics, and that separatist group was a beta separatist group. I'm the only elf on this continent without a dick."

"Ahhh," I said. "And two betas will only ever make more betas, so when you started taking void-affinity babies from the elves of this continent, who are all betas..."

"All of the dark elves are betas, too," Carbon said, nodding. "They know, intellectually, what alphas and omegas are, and what betas are in relation to those. But culturally, the elves on this continent have more or less abandoned the concept of gender. And the dark elves just straight-up lost that concept!"

"If the elves of this content are beta separatists, who sought to live without alphas and omegas," I began carefully.

"We in the Dark Gardens hold no such ambitions," Elendar said. "For now, we simply acknowledge it as a fact that there are no alphas or omegas in the Gardens. Only betas. Now, I believe you asked about how we make clothing?"

"I did, yes," I said, nodding. "It looks to me like everyone's wearing identical pieces of clothing, which don't really fit anyone particularly well."

"That is because we are," Elendar said. "We produce our clothing in a vat, using a mold of stone and glass, upon which cultured microorganisms deposit globs of a silk-like protein, until, in a week's time, the dress is ready, and taken off the mold."

"I don't suppose that you'd be interested in, say... other ways of making clothing, would you?" I asked.

"Now there's the Lucy I know," Rachel said approvingly.

"Perhaps, if they were better," Elendar said. "Why, what do you have to offer us?"

"A demonstration, if you can take me to the place you make silk."

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The first step of the process was to get the pseudo-silk out of the vat and into a thread-like arrangement. Which is a lie, because that was actually two steps, and required two separate setups- one vat of silk-yeast solution and some stone cylinders as a substrate, and one spinning machine that took a bundle of silk-covered stone cylinders, and produced clean stone cylinders along with spools of strong silk thread.

At this point, a debate over colors emerged, which Elendar settled by stating that she personally preferred white clothing, and would also like us to hurry the hell up.

The second step of the process was one I'd already done before, and still had the machinery to do, tucked away in my void space. I'd refined the process plenty in the past two months, of course, but it was still fundamentally the same thing.

The second step of the process was to take my big circular knitting machine out of my void space, load it up with white silk thread, and knit for Elendar a luxurious, silky, and stretchy tank top, requiring only a few minutes with shears and a sewing machine to affix hem tape and straps.

Elendar stripped naked in the process of trying it on- confirming to all of us that, yes, that loose white dress really is the only thing these elves wear- and hummed appreciatively once it was on, slowly running her hands up and down her sides, feeling the texture of the knit beneath her fingers.

"Well, Archmage Morningstar," Elendar said, nodding at me. "You were right, your method is better. My tits look amazing in this."

Elendar was fairly middle-of-the-road for a beta- sure, hers were bigger than Rachel's, and certainly they were noticeable, but when one had been sharing a bed with Kara for nearly two months and Volex for two weeks, and had also looked at Carbon earlier today... I mean, yes, they looked nice, I'm not disputing that. I did think she was hot. But, they weren't as impressive as I'd grown accustomed to. Which was probably my fault for associating with tittymonsters, but frankly I refuse to apologize for liking big boobs. As a transgender lesbian, it is my God-given right to enjoy the fattest of mommy milkers.

"I'm very interested in anything else you might have to teach us," Elendar continued. "I may be able to help you make a stronger case to Queen Selva, if you do?"

"You know what, sure, absolutely," I said. "We'll need a bit more organic matter to make rubber, and some sulfur to vulcanize it, but I can absolutely whip you up a pair of boots like mine."

"...Do your feet not simply look like that?" Elendar asked, confused.

"No, these are footwear," I said. "It'll be important in the event a dark elf ever wants to walk around outside on the surface."

"I can go get the rubber and the sulfur for them, if you wanna watch 'em and make sure they don't do anything dumb?" Carbon suggested.

"Fair enough," Elendar said. "Go quickly, Honored Mother."

Carbon left the room, and I pulled out a smaller knitting machine, for making stockings. Elendar liked white, so fuck it, I might as well go all-in on making her an outfit that was just a palette swap of mine. Would this make everyone on the surface who looked at her think she had an air affinity, despite that not even remotely being the case? Probably. Was that a minor problem that we could also just deal with later? Also probably.

Once I got the stockings finished off, I put the knitting machines away and pulled out my power loom, loading it up with silk thread- Elendar allowed her dress to be rendered down into more thread- and got to weaving a fuckload of silk fabric. If this plan worked out, our friendship with the drow was going to make us obscenely wealthy.

Carbon returned with rubber and sulfur, and I finally had something relevant to discuss with my client once more. Well. 'Finally.' She'd been gone for three minutes.

"Now, would you like your boots to be as close to looking like mine as possible, or would you prefer a different style?" I asked.

"We may as well make them similar to yours," Elendar said. "Do bear in mind my feet are smaller than yours, though."

"Of course, of course," I said, nodding. "Now, if you could take a seat and let me hold up your foot..."

I first made a pair of fabric-lined insoles, before attaching those, very firmly and securely, to a pair of much bigger, beefier, and stompier outsoles, and finally, I cut, sewed, and attached the cloth uppers that held the sole onto the foot in the first place, using a bunch of spare buckles from my void space to replicate the decoration of my own boots.

We had enough fabric left for an overcoat like mine, and since Elendar did like the texture of silk on her skin, it took no convincing at all for her to let me take the extra time to make that last piece- I wasn't going to be able to make a hat like mine out of silk, no matter how hard I tried, unfortunately.

Finally, at long last, Elendar was decked out in strappy, stompy knee boots that even had white rubber soles- God bless Volex's alchemical skills- a pair of stretchy white thigh-highs, and a very stretchy white spaghetti-strap minidress that hugged her figure like a jealous lover.

"Alright," Elendar said, twisting and turning this way and that, examining herself carefully. "I think we're ready to see the Queen."