A soft humming left Airy's sealed lips as she hovered in place, her fingers fiddling to pass the time as she observed the ministers reading through the papers, trying to understand her designs and instructions while Sombra and Radiant eagerly explained all the advanced design details that probably went over their heads, so fascinated at the prospect of actual flying ships: A dream of flight was now within reach of the regular earth and crystal ponies, no longer limited to creatures with wings or the ability to cast magic to create said wings (or any other means of flight).

After a satisfying experience of breaking Glint Hoof's body and mind, her focus had been to research his soul and how the cutie marks connected to it magically: a truly fascinating experience, watching as foreign magic attached and detached in symbiotic relationship with a pony soul. She was still wondering whenever it was natural or artificial in creation, yet so far she hadn't had the chance to examine the souls of non-ponies to determine if they had the potential to evolve into cutie mark bearing species or if it was pony-only phenomenon.

She'd have plenty of time and test subjects in the future of course: the airships would most likely travel all around the world, bringing plenty of travelling foreign tourists to simply... disappear into thin air.

Airy's daydreams were interrupted as Princess Amore cleared her throat, causing everyone's attention to turn towards their benevolent ruler as she spoke in a soft tone "You have truly performed a service far beyond our expectations, Airy" she spoke, pausing for a moment before first gesturing to Radiant and Sombra, then at the gathered ministers "As my students have vouched for the solid designs and safety of the magics behind it and my ministers have come to accept the costs of the project, it is my joy to announce that I accept your designs and authorize the construction of the first airship in the known history" Princess Amore finished speaking, watching as everyone in the throne room started clapping their hooves together in celebration.

Airy didn't say a word, merely smiling in reply as the ministers started talking logistics of the construction of their newest grand project...

"So sloppy" Airy spoke, watching as the eight smiling guards around the relic vault saluted at her, their eyes glowing pink under her charm spell while she observed the mechanics of the vault. Her studies had given her a great understanding of what she was seeing, identifying the magics that prevented teleportation, strengthened the walls, ceiling and the floor of the vault, the complicated locking systems and so much more... yet like the fools they were, they had left an Achilles' heel for anyone to exploit in the most ironic place of all: the lock itself.

Technically speaking, there was a hole going right through where the key was inserted, yet the two sides (the outside and the inside) were separated by a plate of metal made of eight pieces that when locked would block anything from moving through the hole. On both sides of the door, there were four locks (eight in total) that required their own key to turn internal mechanics where each lock would withdraw a piece out of the way, similarly to how one would crank a music box to charge it.

The trap of course was in those eight locks, with alarms and defenses attached right into them: first one would have to push the central key and turn it just right (the Octahedron shaped lock would make it difficult to forge a fake key, as it needed to be the same shape too) before unlocking the outer locks all at the same time, then push the central key deeper and unlock the real door locks on the inner side.

The reason there was a hole going through was so that if the door was locked with the keybearer still inside, they would only need to insert the key from that side and unlock the door immediately: no need to deal with the eight locks on the outside... quite ingenious, were it not for the fact that the hole was the Achilles' heel.

Since the guards all held fake keys (which would melt and seal the locks if inserted), all she'd need to do was push the pieces in the middle and slightly expand the hole so she could fly through it: nothing a little space warping couldn't do. She couldn't destroy the metal plates outright because that would cause the entire vault to seal itself, yet only when she had she unlocked the outer side of the middle lock was when she could push them aside and hold them there with magic while she went in and out with no one the wiser.

She didn't have the key to the middle keyhole of course, which was why her newest creation came quite handy: a prism diamond with golden edge and tip was quite useful, using magic to unlock any lock she desired: it would be able to unlock the inner side from here, yet she used magic to limit it to only unlocking the outer side: no need to alarm anyone of her break-in after all.

She decided to give her tool an ironic name: The Key of Unfettered Entrance.

Airy smiled as the lock gave a soft click, before withdrawing her skeleton key and observing the hole, pushing her magic to widen the gap while also moving the metal pieces out of the way. A way was clear, yet only after a careful check-in to make sure that she hadn't tripped anything did she have the nerve to cross to the other side.

The vault was quite different from the book vault, walls on both sides holding identical holes of equal size as artifacts both large and small were place within, with no glass or metal to separate them from anyone observing them: they weren't even linked to any alarms, all ready for anyone to simply grab and steal them. Of course, half of them were in broken state, while most of the other half were of no real worth to her as she fly past them.

And there against the back wall, her prices stood next to each other: one hole containing the two crystalline world tree seed while the other held the more interesting artifact: a golden medallion with an eye on the bottom and stars above it.

Airy happily hummed to herself as her prizes responded to her magic, following her as she flew through the vault back to the door and crossing back through the keyhole, before turning around and waiting for the seeds and the relic to pass through the hole before cancelling her magic: observing as the keyhole shrank to it's proper size and the metal pieces slid back into their place, with outer lock giving a soft click as it returned to a locked state.

The guards of course remembered nothing as she left, after making sure to hide herself and her prizes from sights of anyone who could even potentially see them of course. As she flew across the city to her workshop, her gaze idly swept over the empty streets before slipping inside her workshop and making her way to her hidden workshop with no one the wiser. She wasn't stupid of course, so she slipped the Time Twirler and one of the seeds inside a chest she had stolen from Glint's home, locking it and activating the built-in traps (her own design, of course: Glint Hoof had no prepared traps on the chest, just a flimsy lock a child could break) before flying to the large pot filled with fresh soil, making sure to plant the crystal into the hole in the middle before covering it soil.

All in all, her first grand heist felt.. underwhelming. Sure, she had spend great deal of effort preparing to make sure it went perfectly, yet once she was done it felt so... empty. The guards fell to her magic like a snap of her fingers (quite literally), the vault was breached with no alarms (impressive magic yet naively designed) and she had escaped with nothing happening (she had idly hoped that Princess Amore would have made a surprise inspection, just for the excitement of avoiding her).

Guess reality wasn't as exciting as the movies and games make it to be...

As Airy ate her breakfast, she barely paid attention to Princess Amore discussing the vault break-in she committed three days prior: they had learned about it just this morning when the guards had done the monthly inventory and found a couple of items missing. Thunder was going to perform an extensive investigation on his end with the guards, while Princess Amore and her students would perform a full examination of the vault to determine how it was broken into and how they avoided all the alarms.

Airy wasn't concerned: she knew exactly that there would be no signs of any kind for them to pick on: magic might leave a sign of being used but it didn't leave identifiable marks on who cast it or what kind of magic (beyond the obvious ones, like dark magic): relics especially were among the most undetectable means of magic usage, so by her calculations the magical traces from the relics and her own magic would have already decayed to near-undetectable levels: easy to mistake for background magic from their own search spells.

Of course, Airy had faked an passive interest on what was stolen: Princess Amore had reluctantly told her about the Time Twirler and the world tree seeds, which Airy had 'dismissed' as beneath her concern by talking how magical plants were most often not worth the trouble unless they had special properties (which caused Radiant to comment that the world trees were important, only for Airy to reply that they merely stored magic: they didn't heal or curse ponies nor grant special abilities or stuff like eternal youth or immortality, thus beneath the effort for someone like her to grow) while also dismissing the theft of Time Twirler as idiotic, noting how only idiots tampered with time.

Airy had of course lied and said she fully believed they'd find the culprits by end of the week because there was only a short list of individuals who could afford magical artifacts (which she explained as obvious conclusion, as there were only four actual magic users in the Crystal Empire having breakfast together and none of them had done it) and also bribe the guards, thus slightly easing their minds and dismissing any subconscious ideas that she might have anything to do with it.

After the breakfast, Airy continued pretending to be busy by working on the mechanical designs of the clocks, observing the results of her earlier experiments and calculating, designing and redesigning the clockwork parts just right so that she could begin the next round of tests while ponies in charge of the airship project occasionally visited to either get clarification on some issues (meaning they were pretty poor at reading the blueprints) or to showcase the prototype parts from the blacksmiths (which more often than not had manufacturing errors here and there: creating delicate and precise runic patterns was something they hadn't done much, so they had to get help from the ponies who engraved jewelry of the nobles).

Which meant that the forge master had to admit that while his students were starting to get far better at metal work than usually required of them, they were still far too sloppy for the standards of the project and thus required far more hands-on training (or hooves-on training, as they called it) from him personally... but back to her trivial little clocks.

So far, she had managed to narrow down the synchronization issue to 73 minutes between the slowest and the fastest clocks: magic wasn't the exactly precise measurement like science, especially because the days and nights weren't the full 24 hours they should be: the sun and the moon rose and fell at the whims of the twin Alicorns after all... Still, she was confident that she could get it to proper time within the next few days: after that, she could scale it up and down to any scale she required: from smallest wrist watches to the largest of clock towers.

As the dinner came, she continued pretending to care about the lack of process Princess Amore and her three little fools had made in getting answers as to how, when and who had broken into the artifact fault: Glimmer supported her husband, while Radiant and Sombra wore frowns on their faces while they were deep within their thoughts: Airy had to say, she expected them to somehow find some clue despite her careful approach... yet reality really wasn't like the silly cartoons, where they'd magically get all the answers.

Airy blinked as her daydreams ended, before she glanced at the papers in front of her.

The blueprints seemed perfect as she gazed at the perfect replication of the hourglass from Bravely Default: she had owned a real replica back in her previous life... a lot of replicas in fact from different games, comics, cartoons and movies... anyway, her perfect memory let her replicate the blueprints for it exactly, now all she'd need to do was create the enchantments she wanted to and then hide them inside the frame: only idiots left runes visible for anyone to either copy, counter or sabotage.

Airy refocused her thoughts as she waved her hand, watching as the ink dried up before moving the designs on the side and brought up a new paper, before starting to consider her next project while idly flying in circles around the empty paper.

She needed to create plans for her future mechanical army; while she could craft from flesh anything she desired, she was smart enough to know from media that monsters stupid enough would be worthless to her, while those smart enough could learn to rebel against her, especially if she tried to enslave their minds and someone found a way to free them from her command. Individuals would be fine, as she could reason and bribe them with anything they'd come to desire... though considering she would be creating them either as protectors, rulers or doomsday backups, she was quite sure that as long as she gave them maternal love, they'd never betray her.

Of course, she'd need to prepare tools to destroy them should she be wrong but... well, that was a matter for another day.

Machines in the meanwhile could be hardwired with absolute loyalty to her; no need to worry about some spell about freeing it or sappy hero convincing them to betray her, when they'd be build to enjoy doing her bidding... and if they did rebel, she'd have a good way to analyze how it happened, before adjusting her other machines to be immune... or mass destroy her own army with a snap of her hand.

After all, if some sappy pony in the future thought that 'simple police/labor machines' deserved 'freedom that every sentient being enjoys' and tried to liberate them, she could create false flag operation to destroy her machines and blame it all on the ponies, blaming them for genocide of an entire sentient race. Either they'd drown their guilt in rum and rope or they'd feel no guilt at all, at which she could point to as sign they wanted to destroy the machines.

Now, what would she replicate... it needed to be humanoid, since her side project was to turn the races of this world into human-like (or at least humanoid), so animal shaped robots would have no place in her future. It had to be more complex than mere mindless golems but it couldn't be too complex, since these would be working as both workers and a police force, meaning a lot of potential civilian exposure and most likely, some unicorn would try to examine and copy her designs.

She considered many potential humanoids that she knew of... the infernals from warcraft and atronachs from elder scrolls were too simple, yet they could be used in false flag operations as 'interdimensional demons' and 'elemental forces' respectively, while the Protoss purifiers were far too advanced to unleash on this primitive world... she might use them as 'alien conquerors' in a thousand years from now, but they would need time to build and grow their forces... Maybe she should send an experimental drone to the moon and build an armada on the dark side of the moon?

She was getting off-track... though speaking of demons, she could replicate the demons from dragon age, if she created a pet realm within the dream realm to house them. Of course she'd need to make sure Princess Luna wouldn't be able to tear it apart and exterminate them, so she'd need to place that as a long-term plan... she was certain she could convince Princess Luna to allow her to create a shared dream within a dream realm, held together by people falling asleep while others woke up: a continuous dream that never ended.

Anyway, they would be magic-made-manifest, not machines she required... yet so many of the machine armies she knew were either too advanced or based purely on science, while others were too primitive for her to use. It would be so easy if she could create a spell to turn people into obedient...

Airy blinked as she stopped flying in circles, her thoughts focusing together as she realized her answers. The old sonic the hedgehog cartoon and the comic version made by Archie featured a device which could turn organics into mindless enslaved machines, while a major plot was to reverse engineer it to reverse the 'Roboticization' process... she might research if that was possible later, yet both the cartoon and the comic featured machines created by Eggman (or Robotnik, as he was called in them) that were both human-like and purely factory-made machines.

The Swat-Bots... They were perfect for her plans.

Airy waved her hand as the quill flew through the air, dipping into the ink and beginning to draw the basic design for her machines: roughly six feet in height, a dome shaped head with antenna on top (a distraction), a single red visor to give 180 degree viewpoint with heat scanners, fins on both arms (to disguise a communicator on right one), retractable wrist-blasters to stun people... maybe she'd even add the flashlight-in-the-finger, certainly more efficient than separate ones.

The designs also left her with plenty of room to add any further gadgets she wanted. While the prototype of course could be made of iron and wood, she had full plans to create future versions from steel and and other strong metals, though she couldn't trust these primitive ponies to figure it out... she'd need to outsource it from other nations (if they had any) or trust her own machines to experiment and recreate it (thank you high school history and physics lessons)... she'd check if this world had any steel first, after all her world did have Damascus steel in middle ages and there were plenty of history of people making blades from meteorite metals.

Airy smiled at the finished design, before writing a note on the side to color the first mass produced versions with white painted metal and gold visors: everyone always viewed white and gold as 'good', while she'd save the black and red version for later, maybe as 'night' variation to cause grief between the twin sisters of Equestria.

With the node written, she summoned another empty paper and began designing the internal parts of the swat-bots: she had a lot of work to do.

Within the northern Equestria, it was quite interesting to witness the contrasts the line marking the border between the frozen north and the warmer south, a vibrant forest continuing as far as the eye could see before abruptly stopping as the frozen ground and snow began. Deep within the forest, a cliff facing south looked quite ordinary to the naked eye, yet within a cave hidden by a glamour was the temporary base of a particularly nasty cannibalistic cult, led by a charismatic leader who did not believe a single word of the nonsense he spouted to his followers.

Yet for all the talk he did, he was poor at explaining to his own son exactly where the cave was.

"Are you certain this is the right place? this is the fourth cliff side we've inspected" a feminine voice spoke, belonging to a smaller figure hidden beneath a black cloak, walking behind her larger companion who was levitating a chest next to him, his hood off and malformed antlers glowing slightly. The male deer did not say a word, merely angrily stomped the ground while throwing a glare at his companion, returned the glare in return from beneath her hood.

"My father was clear on his instructions. If you hadn't spilled the beer all over it, we would have found it by now; maybe if I put some fawn into you, wife, you'd stop drinking that vile stuff and actually hit your targets" the deer spoke, stopping and turning towards his companion who angrily threw her hood back, revealing an equally pale looking doe beneath it "And maybe if you could cast spells above novice tier, we'd be living like royalty instead of doing labor for your weak father" The doe angrily replied, voice full of anger as the deer's jaw tensed, teeth grinding as he glared at his wife for a moment.

A silence hung in the air for a moment, with the couple continuing to glare each other for a moment before the doe smirked at her companion, eyes turning playful as she whispered soft enough for her husband to hear.

"Coward"

An angry yell left the deer's throat as the chest fell on the ground, before he jumped towards the doe, slamming into her and pushing her onto the ground with a yelp of pain. A brief struggle began, before the doe found herself pressed against the ground, with her husband's weight pinning her in place as he angrily panted into her ear "Maybe I should make good of that threat right here and now, so you'd stop whining like fawn and grow up" he whispered as his wife stopped struggling beneath him... before she proceeded to rub her rear against his crotch "Please, do it" she moaned softly.

A familiar foreplay dance between them; pretend to be angry and then proceed to have angry sex... too bad it wasn't meant to be, as they were interrupted by a soft coughing nearby.

Both of them froze for a moment, mood ruined as they turned to face towards the cliff side that just moments ago did not have a cave entrance with two guards awkwardly standing there, looking at the couple who were moments away from following with their plans of wild public sex and (to them) even more exciting chance of getting pregnant.

With a disappointed sigh, the deer got off his wife, glaring at the guards as the chest levitated back to his side while the doe picked herself up, adjusting her cloak while brushing off the dirty "We'll continue this later" her husband whispered to her ear, before leading the way as they walked past the awkward feeling guards into the cave. A sound of metal clashing echoed through the tunnel as they walked, before they reached the end as it opened to a wide, brightly lit cavern.

The pair paused for a moment, glancing to the side where a group led by Snow Antler were training with shields and swords mounted onto their hooves, exchanging blows while training to block. Snow Antler wasn't wielding weapons or shield, rather he was using his antlers (covered with metal) against three cultists, who deflected his blows with their shields and countered with their swords. After a moment of observing the training, they turned their attention to where the cult leader was standing, waving his hoof at them.

"Here, I hope you're happy with this, father" the cloaked deer said, placing the chest on top of the map on the table as the cult leader opened it, smiling as he saw what was within "Yes, it is: you and your wife have done quite well stealing this from those old farts at the temple" he replied, before closing the chest and lifting it off the table, placing it on the ground next to him "Now then, you'll be happy to know my dear that your new bow has arrived" he spoke to the doe, who smiled in return "Finally, a proper bow. So, where will we be attacking?" she asked, before leaning forwards to observe the map with her husband, who was equally curious.

The cult leader smiled as he replied "Why, the famous Crystal Empire of course.... now let me tell you the plan" he spoke, before gesturing the different parts of the city map as he began telling them of his grand design of revenge....

Author's Note

So, you've reached chapter 20, which is 21 / 75 of the story. Yes, there will be 54 more chapters, including interludes.... so anyway, feel free to keep commenting.