He snorts, and busies himself with a long draw from his tankard. "A week ago, if you'd asked me what I thought of applying the lost secrets of golem construction to an Earth Elemental, I'd have thought you even more insane than you have to be for your magic. But now..." He sighs. "If you'd found an ordinary golem, I'd have been ecstatic. But one tied up in Elven wizardry, a relic of our failed partnership with the Elgi of that floating rock of the Great Ocean..." He waves a hand at nothing in particular. "Five Runes, you say. I'd travel to the end of the world to see something with five Runes in it. But five Runes carved into the soul of an Elemental? I can't even look upon it. I wouldn't know where to start on reverse-engineering it. It's not an opportunity, it's a reminder of how far we've fallen, that even I cannot begin to comprehend what my Ancestors built here."
"Are you giving up, then?"
"Of course not," he says, giving you a withering look. "I'll spend the rest of my life trying to make sense of the damned thing, assuming we all survive today. I'm just well aware that I'll fail."
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