Sage looked down over Lionheart Town from the top of a mountain.

A small ring of these mountains surrounded Lionheart Town on three sides. The city was nestled up against this small mountain range, chosen for its defensible position. He smiled down at the view. From this vantage point, the many Dragoons, with their similar appearances, moving in and out of the huge ditches made it look quite like an anthill. He turned around and looked back at the construction project he was currently overseeing.

While the city was getting quite the makeover, the changes had not done much to improve its defenses. Sage didn’t want another to take Lionheart Town from him after all the work he’d put into improving it. The mountains bordering the city were going to be used as the foundation for an extra layer of defense. As the origin of Airships, Sage had to incorporate a defense against them. He also happened to have an unlimited supply of Steelsilk. They were currently building a fort upon each of the mountains that bordered Lionheart Town. Using those forts as an anchor, along with some expensive materials, they were essentially building a giant net to shield the city from the sky. With workers that could fly, it was quite simple for them to weave a giant web to shield the city.

Most likely, it wouldn’t add that much to the defenses of the city, but it would certainly be an impressive sight and add an extra layer of deterrence that was quite easy for them to construct and also didn’t require Spirit Stones to power like defensive arrays did. They could leave the net as a passive protection and only activate a formation when actually under attack. They were also building a large Airship Port upon the mountain closest to Lionheart Town, directing all the air traffic there. Having them landing wherever they wanted was very disruptive, and without any traffic rules it could even be dangerous. The Airship Port was at a higher elevation than the ‘skynet’ and had a very wide road with room for a huge flow of goods and traffic. It also created a convenient method to tax the transported goods just like the city gates, or a normal marine port would do.

The giant net wouldn’t stop any ‘bombing’ attacks, but he was hoping that sort of tactic wouldn’t catch on any time soon. On the other hand it would block Airships from landing, at least long enough for the Dragoons to respond to the threat. The anchor points of the net had Formations and a guard detail to protect them, so he equated the net as similar to the city’s walls. They would do little to stop a true threat, but they were a great deterrence against harassment or those who weren’t truly committed. A cheap defense against opportunists, basically.

A few months later.

A woman with snow white hair and piercing blue eyes strode into a large hall with a confident swagger. The flimsy blue dress she wore swished back and forth as she walked, the cut extremely revealing with slits up the side nearly to her waist and a swooping neckline that wouldn’t leave much to the imagination. Yet, it really didn’t show that much as she wore a set of tight white trousers and a long sleeved blouse beneath it. They were tight and thin enough to show off her muscle definition but still hid her skin.

She practically threw herself into a chair at the right hand of the head of the table. Her head turned to the left and smiled at the person sitting at the head, “Tell me how much you love me!”

The person she was talking to had long black hair, pulled back by a blue silk sash, and decidedly average facial features. He wore simple grey robes and would look just like any other commoner you might run into on the street if it weren’t for the splashes of blue silk around his hair and waist. Well, except for his brilliant golden eyes, “Haha, you know I care for you deeply!”

The woman’s icy blue eyes seemed to bore into the man’s skull, “Is that the best you can do?”

The man threw his hands up in fright and then lowered his head to the table, bowing to the girl, “Forgive me, Sister. You are the sun in the day, and the moon in the night. You are the most precious person to me!”

Her eyes narrowed and then she nodded, “Hmph. We’ve found what you were looking for!”

The man leapt up from his chair, “Really? You mean the…” he was interrupted by the woman’s nod and he started to rush from the room. Then he stopped and turned back around. She rolled her eyes at him, “In the receiving chamber.”

With all due haste, the man disappeared from the room.

“Idiot.”

Bursting into a room, that man with the golden eyes saw an iron bird cage and within it was the object of his desire. It shone with a glossy red light, a small creature the size of a cat, its unfeeling eyes locking onto him.

“Fire Weaver Mantis!”

Sage, with those golden eyes of his, exclaimed aloud and threw a pile of Spirit Stones to the Dragoon that had brought the cage in. There were larger rewards promised to the one that found the Fire Weaver Mantis, this was just his tip for the messenger. He couldn’t stop looking at the mantis in the cage, examining it for differences from the ones he’d created so many years ago. Back when he was a teenager, he’d been trapped beneath these mountains in an old mine. At the time he’d bred the Lang Clan’s ancestral insect, the Colossal Iron Mantis, with the local creatures he’d found in the cave. That resulting creature, he’d named the Fire Weaver Mantis and right in front of him they had found one of its descendants.

That day, about a century ago, he had been ambushed by killers wanting to finish wiping out the stragglers of the Lang Clan. At the time, his Fire Weaver Mantis had been killed in combat and the few eggs he carried were lost when he fell from the top of a cliff. He’d been heavily injured and captured a wild Silver Leaf Honeybee, using it to head to safety.

With the whole Lang Clan wiped out, none of the Colossal Iron Mantises had survived. As their ‘ancestral insect’ it was the bug that was passed down for generations because of its great capabilities. Their cultivation and fighting techniques were all based upon the mantis and more specifically helping them partner with the Colossal Iron Mantis. Being so weak at the time, Sage didn’t really appreciate it and incorporated the other nearby creatures into it to try and boost his chances of survival. Now that he had returned, he had hoped to find one of them that had possibly escaped and continued on in the wilds around Lionheart Town. He’d sent groups out to search and after many months there were no results. Yet somehow, they’d suddenly succeeded. They hadn’t found any of the Colossal Iron Mantises, but they instead found a descendant of the Fire Weaver Mantis. It must have been from the eggs he’d carried in his bag, or some of the wild ones he’d left behind in the cave after all his breeding experiments.

He laughed, rejoicing as he sent the cage into the Universe Ring and returned to the room where Ruanfu was waiting. Just as she’d thought, he was happy enough to praise her a few more times, even pouring her wine as he did, “Great Sister, only you could accomplish this task! Oh, and how is brother-in-law?”

Ruanfu had recently married the teen that looked like he was from another country, the blond Wanqian Lei that happened to be a variant beast, a Golden Thundereagle. Upon mentioning the event, she preened at Sage and smiled, “He’s quite obedient. I don’t think I’ll need a second husband for a few more years at least. Such a pretty boy.”

Like father, like daughter, I suppose.

Their relationship regarding seniority was extremely strange. King had been his partner, and Ruanfu was King’s daughter. Yet, Ruanfu’s essence had been infused into an egg that Sage later fused with. She was simultaneously junior and senior to him at the same time. After some time they finally decided to just treat each other as siblings, and that included the Tiankong Siblings. Ruanfu declared herself eldest, followed by Sage and then the other five. It was odd, but he already considered them family so there weren’t any problems.

While he was praising and teasing her at the same time, a messenger rushed into the room.

The messenger had a mohawk of brown hair, a beard and mustache made of fleshy tentacles, and had emerald green insect carapace from the knees and elbows down to the tips of his fingers and toes. The sides of his head also had that hard insect armor, that distinctive feature and the pair of wings on his back marking him as a Dragoon. The armored carapace over his chest and ribs were covered by the Dragoon’s armor, the dark silk bearing a large symbol on its chest. The wings on their back required modifying the Formation Armor to move the symbol to the chest. The messenger knelt down and saluted them. Then he held up a scroll which Sage snatched from his hands.

“The Chong Clan summons me?”