Not once.

Traejan realized he had lifted his hand on his chest, high, close to his color bone, fingers outstretched to touch the cords of gold still hanging there. He looked down as his hand, pale fingers desperately clutched it. Kyso had made the rope for him, a twin of the one the old man had made for Kaelin – cold bright metal – slim, twisting cords of rosy yellow permanence; their bond.

He looked up, seeing Althea’s eyes were staring at his hand, his act.

“Why believe in the traditions of the high and mighty Consortia?” she’d told him more than once; left her’s dangling all over their home, least of all around her neck.

“The Consortia hasn’t come,” Kaelin had told him once, as they held each other in the dark. “Why should we be held to what the Consortia wants? We have to take care of ourselves.”

Kaelin…

He looked back at Althea; she was watching him, leaning forwards, hands on her knees. She was Consortia. She was judging him; he could see it in her eyes.

“You’re still wearing your marriage bond,” Althea offered softly.

“Yes,” he told her reluctantly. “There’s nothing wrong with that, is there?”

“No…” she replied, shaking her head. “No.”

She sat up straight, pushed her hair away from her eyes.

“Did you see anything else?” She raised her eyebrows. “Well?”

He took in, a slow, deep breath – let it out.

“Not from below, I– we did see other mechs. They came.” he told her, pointing up. “From the sky.”

He and Kaelin had managed to reach the edge of the ruins, up above on a rocky height, trying to figure out where to run, where would be the safest place. The defenses hadn’t worked at all, had entirely disappeared in the fields of overturned earth, and they were kilometers from truly safe ground. Then the wind came up again, and they saw it – descending – down of the clouds. Kaelin stared up with him.

“Describe it. Please.”

He remembered, holding her hand, for the last time, a tight grip as he, they stared up at the colossal thing, eyes smarting in the wind blowing down at them.

“It was huge,” he told her, still terrified by the memory. “Vast… like a city. Maybe it was a city – once – before. We had floating cities… I remember them, but I hadn't seen one since– but this thing – it wasn’t that anymore. It was–”

She was watching intently him now, rapt, eyes wide, lips slightly opened.

“Yes, Continue.”

“It blocked out the sky, glowed with thousands of lights,” he continued, caught up as well, with the memory. “The sound, so loud, so deep, I could feel it vibrating in my bones.

It had flyers circling it,” dozens at least, miniscule by comparison.

The pounding, pounding sound was all around them. He pulled Kaelin away. They stumbled, struggled over the spongy ground. Traejan could feel his breath quicken as he relived the terror.

“I ran,” he told Althea breathing hard, as if he as still running, still being chased by that thing. “I ran. We ran. I though I was going to die, I thought it was going to take us.”

“You saw a corpore,” she told him, voice still low, intense. She leaned back in her chair, eyes narrowed. “It’s the primary physical expression of a Macro – its hand, or its eyes – a piece of its body. It must have been called. What happened to you, to all of you, must have been planned well in advance.”

The mechs had known…

“Of course it knew we were there, it was a trap all along,” Traejan relaxed, relieved someone finally believed him.

“And yet,” Althea reminded him, “here you are. You alone survived.”

He looked down, feeling the guilt again. Why had the things taken everyone else but him – why?

“What happened to Kaelin?”