Hamlet

Some battles faded into history, farms and towns and natural places reclaiming what had transpired there. Other battles scarred it, leaving only the wreckage and ruins of those who had bled and died there, forgotten weapons, a memory of suffering that could not be washed away.

"A pity this body is beyond any kind of recovery. Its powers would be useful." Alkyone said, the Haruspex crouched over an unmarked, pauper's grave, all that remained of a cold-hearted and cruel child who had misread the gravity of the situation and paid the price for it.

"I don't like this place, Mireya." Kaldri said, the younger Haruspex hiding her drawn features under a hood. "It's like legions of people died, and then their souls were...called back. That scale on that sort of resurrection is impossible, and yet I sense it. It makes my teeth ache, all the wasted energy on worthless souls. Like pouring good wine onto the ground."

"Fortunately for us, we are not here for those who died and then returned. They would serve no purpose anyway. Rabble, easily cut down by those star people. Those...Kobbers, and the people of our world who sided with them. We cannot swarm them with gnats and hope they are stung to death. If we are to survive, we must think larger. Look beyond the called-back, Kaldri. See what is still here."

"I will assume you don't mean these ruined constructs of metal..."

"Stop your roundabout challenges, Kaldri. It is tiresome." Alkyone said, drifting over from where she had studied the buried remains. "If you actually wish to prove something resembling worth, just tell us what you have found to begin with." 
 
"...the spark."

"Indeed. The spark." Mireya said, her face lighting up in brief pleasure. Now she didn't have to couch her two...'allies' into finding it so they could help her. That would go over badly no matter how well she did it, and she needed the three of them to stay on the same page, at least for now. "The pinnacle. The one who stood above them all."
  
"There's no body, Mireya. Revival requires a body."

"Not precisely."
  
"It's needed enough to make any other option pointless, Mireya. This land may bear a trace due to the nature of its death, but it's an echo, a pale shadow of what that...CREATURE was, what were they called, Augmented? Even IF we could revive it, it wouldn't stand against the Kobbers, and even IF we could revive it at full power, and we can't, you know what we've scryed of these events. The Kobbers would suspect further mind control immediately. So why is this not a waste of time?" 

"What did the first spells you learned at the hands of your teacher have in common, Alkyone?"

Silence descended on the night. Alkyone's dark brown eyes narrowed, clearly displeased at her lack of an immediate answer. When Kaldri's face lit up in realization, her face took on the expression of one who had tasted milk and found it sour. 

"...Yes, Of course. We can-!"

"Be careful, Kaldri. The direction you are going may not lead where you expect." 

"But what I can sense...we can draw it out, we can-!"

"They have fought numerous foes who brought all degrees of great force against them. It did not work, and we cannot make the same choices under the assumption they will work this time because of who we are." Mireya said, trying to keep the irritation out of her voice. She didn't want to be here. She wanted to do this by herself, but she couldn't. She wanted to go back to cursing this planet's peoples for their own sins and reaping the benefit of their hypocrisies, but she couldn't. But she seemed to be the only one here who recognized this: she'd already had to kill another Haruspex she'd attempted to work with because they'd immediately seen her choice of actions as weakness and tried to claim her powers for themselves. Kaldri and Alkyone were chomping at the bit to go back to mixing up the soul-curse known to the world as being a Therian, to try and ignore what the latest group of star people had brought. To ignore that the world had changed, and so they had to change. Personally, Mireya would have preferred if they'd gone and gotten themselves killed for their insistent pigheadedness, but she knew that if that happened, it'd be just a matter of time before the killers were knocking on her door as well. As a certain patriotic rock might have put it, they all had to hang together, or they would all hang separately. "This is not the answer. Rather, not the entire answer." 

"Then what is?"

Mireya told them.

It was rare for Haruspexes to wear expressions of shocked horror. In fact, Mireya suspected, she might be witnessing the first time such an expression had graced the features of her two companions in their entire 'adult' lives. 

"You're INSANE."

"I agree with Kaldri, as surprising as this is. This is madness. It will never work."

"If you have come up with another solution, I am quite willing to hear it."

Silence. Mireya counted off the seconds, suspecting ten or so would be enough to prove her point. She got it.

"This is not a path we cannot turn from once we start. At least not at first. And while this world is not under their accursed eye, we need to begin. Before what remains of that Augmented fades away completely." Mireya said. "Those that came before have left us the pieces. We extract them, we purify them, hone them to their finest edge...and then we use them. And the mongrel, and these Kobbers. And when it's done...they'll have done the work for us. Besides, Kaldri, Alkyone...

"Haven't you always wanted to shape better clay than the wastes of man?"

"We'll still need to bind it to those 'wastes'. It won't work otherwise."

"Not to worry." Mireya said, her voice liquid malice and without a trace of fear, the calm of the long-damned. "I have the perfect...shield for us."