This is very close to being done! I just have to kill this bastard off nastily, too.
Outskirts of Salt Lake City
Republic of Deseret
2455 AD
Salt Lake City was burning. Finally.
The invasion was behind schedule again, which meant that Commanding Warmage Copper Firebrand of the Crystal Expanse was behind schedule again, and he for one was getting tired of it. The last desperate holdouts had been routed, though, so the Universal Dominion could at least get on with teaching its new human chattel why resistance was, as the ancient saying had it, futile.
Hopefully that’ll get the Supreme Archmage off my ass, he thought peevishly as his retinue bustled about him. This part of the city was being kept unburned, if only because he had to live somewhere until a proper wizard’s tower could be built. The original plan was to use the Tabernacle itself, but it was now a pile of broken wood and antique aluminum — with two of Firebrand’s best regiments underneath it. Two more had been so savaged in that particular skirmish that the Supreme Archmage ordered the survivors to be put down.
The fighting had gotten a little out of hand, after that. Firebrand didn’t like being forced to cull his own troops, and was absolutely tired of the Desereters’ bullshit by then. (He was also tired of the new Supreme Archmage’s increasingly intrusive oversight, but he was too self-disciplined to even think those thoughts.) Letting the remaining Dominion forces off the leash for a few hours might have almost counterproductive, but it certainly made him feel better.
“Might have almost counterproductive”? I think a been is missing.
Yup!