The Necromancer's Stone; Liane

"Hi!  I'm sorry but I already have cookies."
"Seriously?  Do I look like a girl scout to you?"
The tall, fiery haired woman in the doorway looked her over and then for a moment a sort of recognition dawned on her face.  Then her face returned to its usual pleasantly crazed expression.
"No.  You look like a girl who once convinced me to keep a stuffed animal I forgot I had.  Hello again little red haired friend.  How's school?"
"I'm pretty good, but I need your help."
She straightened up instantly.  Something in her clicked the second she realized she was needed.  It was almost an instinctive reaction really.
"Lets get a drink.  I know this tavern."
"Yes, I know a better one."

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"So, I'm quite curious.  You never struck me as particularly needing for anything.  Why would you come for a washed out mage like me when you probably have a school full of friends who could help you out with just about anything."  She paused for a moment.  "This isn't some kind of adventure is it?  I swore off adventures five years ago.  There didn't seem to be any point any more."
Thalia glanced over the rim of her mug.  She'd opted in favor of a mere ginger ale; so that she could better pay attention to Liane's half-drunken ramblings.  Katie had, inadvertently, taught her how much you could learn from a person when they were under the influence.  Then it had been the knowledge that Katie secretly still had the hots for her.  But Liane had always managed to prove herself surprising than Katie had.
"It was the animal you made me keep.  I tracked down the manufacturer, questioned the supplier, and even found the man who was running the carnival booth it was won at on the day I got it.  Turns out it was pretty traumatic for the poor guy; it seems I burned him pretty bad when I lost.  Then he told me about the man who was with me."  She knocked over her own mug, full of a much stronger, and darker, sort of ale.  Liane bent in and shook her finger at Thalia.  "But you already know who he was, don't you?  You recognized his handwriting.  I'm not stupid, I could tell.  But you never told me who you were; not really.  You said you were a student, and I know that you paid a lot more than I'd asked for.  But then I realized what connected it all together."  Thalia could smell the alcohol on her breath.  But that wasn't what was making her so intent.
"I looked in a mirror and I saw you.  A bit shorter, and not quite as well proportioned as you are, I'm infinitely jealous by the way.  You're the girl I had; the one Than adopted to spite me.  He thought he was so clever; raising my own daughter to kill me.  But it turns out you're better than that.  You've got a fire he never could have predicted, eh?"  Then Liane fell off her stool, giggling like mad.  "My daughter, asking me to help her with an adventure.  Real piece of work, the universe; one second you're doing fine the next, BAM!"  She snapped, causing the wooden stool she had been sitting on seconds earlier to melt like a candle.  "Its all over."  She was quiet for a moment.  Then she held out her hand and Thalia helped her back up.
Liane stared off towards the door.  She didn't seem to be looking at anything in particular, but her eyes were flicking back and forth like she was tracking something.
"Have you ever seen the Pale; the woman in the void?"  Thalia nodded, thinking of the pupilless specter that lurked in the non-space that could be seen in the mid-point of a Tesser jump.
"I've seen her.  And I heard her.  Hal said that she says something different to everyone."
Liane nodded, the simple motion exaggerated by her inebriated state.  Her eyes were still focused on some invisible target, and her hands had begun to quiver.
"When the wolf howls, join flame and frost to wind and earth, infuse them with blood and ask God his blessing."  Her feet began to burn and her entire body was engulfed in flame.  "That's right child, I know your secret.  Such a pity neither of us have the skill to perform, nor the genius to decipher its exact means.  Its just a line in a book to you, and even though I know it to be destiny, its not mine.  I performed my purpose.  I birthed my daughter.  I followed the bidding of the Pale.  You are too late, little Reaper."
"No" A pair of blades, each curved and etched in blood and kraj, sprouted from Liane's chest.  "MY book, was very specific on when you should die."  The blades withdrew.  Thalia's mother fell to the ground, a spontaneous gust of wind extinguishing the fires that had been raging around her.  She was still choking on her final breaths when the voice resumed.
"Liane, the first Ashwalker of the Pantheon.  Dies in the Fuzzy Librarian, at precisely two forty-nine AM, on the nineteenth day of the first month of the Six thousand, two hundred and twenty-eighth year of the Empire.  Stabbed through the heart by Zink's Cleiden.  Her daughter, Thalia, is present; as is..oh &^*(."
"You!"  Thalia's stupor was broken as she heard Hal's voice coming from the back door.  "You killed my parents!"