Wearing:
Imperial Chitin
Equipped with:
Armed With: Synthetic Crystal Lightsaber
Earlier...
Two to Three weeks.
That's how long it had been since her wife went missing. Presumed dead. Max the modified B1 that had brought back her gear was still in repairs, the damage he had sustained requiring
extremely delicate repairs that simply couldn't be rushed.
Xiphos, rather than collapse and cry and shake in grief, had instead embarked on a Frank Castle-esque murder-spree of Maw and Final Dawn assets. Their supply vessels kept getting seized, patrol craft kept getting pursued and intercepted, and the crew aboard taken prisoner, tortured and slaughtered. Xiphos had commanded the Cult, in her deep rage, to find some way to torture Mawites or Mawite aligned Sith so badly they would renounce their faith, and to torture final dawn so horribly they would do the same. She had more success with the latter than the former, who were immediately killed
slowly as soon as they renounced their faith in The Final Dawn.
Anybody even suspected of working for them was investigated. If evidence, even circumstantial evidence turned up, they were hunted ruthlessly. Authorities found suspected Maw spies flayed beyond recognition. Final Dawn Officers were blown up in their shuttles, or found dismembered in their lavatories.
Xiphos had not forgotten to multitask however, in her unremitting fury.
Every effort was being made by her spies to track down
Ingrid L'lerim
, not just because Xiphos didn't trust an Eternal Empire
not run by Ingrid, but because Ingrid was the one who had let House Io stay and operate in their space, and while House Io had more than lived up to their end, providing Advanced weapons and ships in exchange, the one acting as Regent was a do-gooder, some kind of entity that wasn't even from this plain of existence. Ingrid's daughter. She had battled the Bryn'adul in the Netherworld once with her future wife to defend a territory controlled by
Eina L'lerim-Vandiir
's people.
Xiphos wasn't holding her breath that in any way that act would be endearing to the Regent. Going here was a matter of necessity. She had
enough problems with out some Puritan Daughter deciding to stick a knife in her factions back for the sake of her Goddess or the approval of factions that worshipped her Goddess to the point of insanity.
Xiphos had been shut in her quarters on The Colossus of Shadows since Panatha, coordinating intel operations. The House's numbers had swelled somewhat in evacuating Thousands of Epicanthix, only too happy to avoid ending up under the Watchful Eyes of the Government Ingrid had run. Epicanthix were warriors, so it had been a natural fit. They were screening for potential spies in the new wave of refugees that had come from Panatha, albeit discretely.
Isolated mostly in her tank, coordinating operations and research from a desk, without even the twisted companionship of her homicidal spouse, Xiphos had begun to come unglued from the stress.
The moments she was free of the tank, her walk was stiff, hesitant. Growing stiffer. She had broken her own body on Tython teleporting those nukes to the Avatar's reactor section.
Those moments she was free of the tanks, free of the slime of Bacta, she spent it trotting around her apartment aimlessly, trying to remember what it was like to be happy. She found herself staring at the shrine The Battalion had worshipped The Brain Demon from, saw it's half melted purple wax candles. Xiphos had listened to her pray to the abomination nightly. Sometimes she had been nearer to the shrine, and heard The Brain Demon's whispers.
Tython had forced a reassessment of the monstrosity. It had intervened directly on the ground and in space, given time for her forces to properly withdraw, or else they would have taken more casualties. They might have lost both battlegroups. They might have lost the entire ground invasion force.
Could it tell her where to find her beloved Elaine? Or not?
Xiphos was torn over what to do. Part of her coming here, to this day of remembrance, was as much to get her away from the temptation of going to the shrine as it was to assess and observe Eina. If possible, approach.
House Io was not listed anywhere amongst the fallen in memoriam. She had showed up in disguise, the armor doing its work in suppressing pain. She couldn't be here for long. She would try not to be here for long.
She wore an old alternative armor no one living would recognize, concealing her features, a built in vocabulator altering her voice, her deep dark blue,
Synthetic Crystal Lightsaber hanging from her belt. She went by the name "Lady Crownwraithe" in this disguise, an EE mercenary.
She noticed Eina at last. She looked uncomfortable, though she made a magnificent show of burying it under cold reality. It got the heretic thinking maybe she wasn't all that enthusiastic about her position.
Xiphos, being Xiphos, decided to be bold, and walked up to her, keeping a respectable distance as she came to a stop in front of her bodyguards.
"Empress-Regent." Xiphos said quietly with a slight bow, knowing it was highly unlikely Eina would not have at least some inkling of who was actually speaking to her...it's not like she could hide such a bloodstained aura anyway. Not with her current gear.
"My apologies for not being able to evacuate more of the Eternal Empire's citizens at Panatha. But we were badly outnumbered. It was all we could do just to keep the defensive perimeters up. But I assure you, every effort was made to ensure those evac ships were as crammed as possible." Xiphos said in slightly vague language that obscured just where and from whom the ships had come.
"All efforts are being made by concerned parties on my end to locate Empress L'lerim. As soon as we know something, you will." Xiphos added just as quietly. There was none of her usual liveliness or swagger. Just an exhausted, burned out woman in a suit.
Trinity Harris
Felmorante L'lerim
Kyrel Ren
's actions, the planet was already dead before the Eternal Empire even used their own superweapon. It had to be used to save the entire Unknown Region. That effort was successful, the region was saved.
Adenn Kyramud
, and the Empire lost its empress,
