It was...another book. Hidden in a secret compartment. Kazelia looks disappointed. “Another book? You’ve got an entire library, and yet you went ‘oh I know, I’ll stick something in my secret compartment because I’m just out of room for books now?’” Kazelia rolls her eyes, kicks the elven sage again for good measure and picks up the book to take a look at what the big deal is, since she’s standing right there. 

“No dont!” Azora shouts, but Kazelia has already flipped it open, too late, too late. You see, the sage was doing a better job than Kazelia had been giving him credit for. He had been napping the stars every night for a long time on his little world. Where they were. And...where they weren’t. This book was a book of absences, a chronicle of the spaces in the void. And as such it was an attempt to give shape to the shapeless, to map the nothingness that was and was not Mother void all at once. 

When this had happened the first time, Kazelia had found herself standing before Mother. This had been the moment when she had lost the stars, traded them for a piece of that great darkness that she could call her own. Her magic had grown here, moved past parlor tricks to that great and terrible darkness that had sat within her all that time. And then Azora had snatched the book from her hands before she learn more, had sent Kazelia flying away from that book and pinned her to a wall with invisible bonds of force. She had left Kazelia like that, arms and legs splayed out in a V shape above and below her. Then Azora had murdered the elf and wiped the minds of every member of Kazelia’s unit present there. She had left her sister alone in that place for a full nigjt, until her magic had worn off with the wan, pale sunrise on that dying world. 

Things might be a little different this time though. After all, Mother is already here and Kazelia’s heart and soul are different. Perhaps nothing happens when she touches that book. Or perhaps she relives that memory and she’s ready for Azora this time, conscious of herself in two different planes at once. Or perhaps she knows better than to pick it up at all this time and bows subserviently to her sister at the last moment instead. What do you think?