With the man disappeared, and all the guildchains registered, they marched onto the next floor.

They stood on a war torn battlefield, no walls, no apparent ceiling, the battlefield tinted red through the dark thunderous clouds.

“What the--” Garble sputtered, looking at the vast rocky expanse that spread out before them, seeming to be literally outside.

“We’re not outside,” Spike said, looking around. “But this is pretty impressive, right?”

“You can see around us where the walls wouldn’t let us get past, too far to jump,” Tabitha said, pointing to the distance. “So above that must be, I dunno, a special kind of wall? Something like that.

“I don’t think we should be worrying about that,” Smolder said, pointing ahead.

And ahead there were… ponies. But they also really weren’t ponies. They were ponies if someone had never seen a pony, and decided monsters were cooler too. They were a variety of slightly-less-pastel colors, with sharpened features, and sharpened lances mounted on their sides.

One of them held up a bugle, blowing on it, which caused the ponies in the front to charge forward.

"This is what Twilight looks like normally?!" Tabitha waved wildly at the oncoming horde for just an instant, drawing her shield high. "Hope she doesn't take it personally, but we have to fight."

Spike flexed his fingers around his staff. "Those aren't ponies, and even if they were, they'd be, uh, tower ponies. Magic, you know?"

Garble suddenly dissolved into laughter, slamming his blade down, lengthwise along the turf. "I get to cut up ponies? Maybe this tower isn't so bad!"

"Not cool." Smolder elbowed him lightly. "But we aren't gonna lose this!"

The head of the notpony army slammed into Tabitha’s shield lance first, pressing her back, and the rest washed around her, aiming to trample the rest of her party, who all began their own assault.

The chaotic battle commenced against the horde, a host of ponies with all manner of weapons came in a relentless assault. Axe wielding ponies, wizards, healers, there were all sorts. But each themselves was not a threat, as dangerous as they seemed, but together they exhausted the party.

And then the good ones came. A pony with sharp pointy bits on her hooves came in, red flowing mane, who fought both with skill and resilience that the other ponies lacked. The other ponies were single minded, but she would dart in and out. She would attack a flank, and after the counter she would be gone.

Tabitha panted as she parried another blow. “This does not seem to be ending anytime soon,” she managed between blows. “Are we doing it wrong? What are we missing?”

Spike’s eye caught another unusual pony. It was an older pony, white beard, who was casting a fireball at Spike, who let it hit him, and countered with a martyr powered smite. The stallion flew back, and as soon as he hit the ground, turned tail and ran. “I saw another guy who ran away!” Spike shouted. “What if they’re like… commanders or something?”

“The red mare keeps leaving though,” Garble complained. “How’re we gonna be able to do it!”

As if summoned by calling her out, the mare with the red mane came in fresh, flipping and trying to smack Smolder with her hooves, to which Smolder blocked both with her own daggers. “Well, we get another crack at ‘er.”

Garble and Sandra turned to the mare in a unified front, sword and staff raised in readiness. "Aiden, your fire is badly needed." The ponies did not seem fireproof, and that was her area of specialty summon. There was no lack of area to effect!

With a grand screech, the fire bird emerged from the air with wings folded tightly in, allowing it to fly like an arrow, just to throw out hot bits of flame and embers in a grand carpet of heat beneath it as it soared over the army.

"Focus fire," grunted Garble, meeting the fiery red maned warrior, spiked horseshoe connecting with the heavy blade, neither party willing to surrender. Until she did, falling against him.

Smolder wrenched free her dagger and knife. "She was setting me up. Thanks." Though she had gone far in the ways of culinarinism, she still was quite capable of a good backstab when the situation was right.

The battle never became easy. Each inch won was a victory well earned, but they had learned the most important part, to look for the champions of that army and to not allow them a chance to recover, a trick they couldn't always get off on the first… or sometimes third try… but they weren't giving up.

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They fell in an almost heap of sore muscles. Spike could dismiss the injuries of battle, but becoming tired was just a fact, and that battle… "Ugh!" groaned Smolder. "I thought that'd never end…"

"It was like the early horde floors, turned up to a hellish new level." Sandra sagged against a wall, heaving. "But… we did it…"

“Did you like it?” the voice of the man rang out unannounced.

The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

Spike huffed. “I liked it better when there were gimme floors.”

“It sounds like we’re looking better, then,” his voice rang out with mirth. “Good, good.”

“This doesn’t change anything,” Garble yelled, looking up to the disembodied voice. “We’re coming for you.”

“Two more floors,” the man said in a singsong voice. “Then you can get what you want.”

Another checkpoint appeared before them, none of the party moving to claim it just quite yet.

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Wind roared against them. Flying, an impossibility. The air was frigid and cold, almost as if they were actually a hundred plus stories in the air. They could feel the snow-touched ground beneath them, but above them, no ceiling. Not that they could see very fair in the blizzard that pushed at them with every step.

"So… less monsters." Garble took a slow step forward. "Us against some snow and wind and stuff?"

"Don't…" Smolder drew tighter on herself for warmth. "Don't act like this is suddenly easier. Part of me wishes I had something to stab instead. Are we even close?"

"Not a lot of ways to tell," admitted Spike. They had been pressing on into that endless blizzard for what felt like an eternity. "There has to be an end to it."

“A-a-ll the other floors like this had a trick to them,” Sandra said, shivering more than the dragons. “What’s the trick to this one?”

“There is no trick to surviving in a storm like this,” Tabitha said. “You just get to shelter.”

“We’d need to find shelter,” Spike said. “And we can’t actually see anything.”

They pressed on, the wind roaring, about until Sandra stumbled.

“Are you alright? You’re the worst dressed for this,” Smolder stood up over her, pulling her up.

Tabitha said nothing, breathing into her hands.

“I c-c…can go on. We have to get through this.” Sandra tried to stand up. “If-if we go back we just have to come back…”

“This isn’t good she does not look good, guys,” Smolder said, looking down at Sandra as she seemed a little more blue.

“No it’s fine.. Just… just need some more heat.” Sandra pulled herself up. “I can… I should... “ She whispered something, and the warmth bled into her core, and got hotter… and hotter.

Tabitha backed up, glad for the heat but… “Sandra! Aiden wasn’t doing hot and that’s why you sent him back. What if.”

Sandra turned and smiled, her clouded mind feeling much more clear. “Not if we go very, very quickly.” And she pulled herself up, gathering the flame mana, blasting fire forward, clearing the area directly ahead of her, heading into the area, now steaming.

The rest of the party picked up their pace, trying to follow and add any fire they could to the forward movement. "Snacks!" Smolder threw up a bundle of jerky she had for such occasions, landing in ready hands to chew on as quickly as they could, replenishing their magic supplies to keep the attack on the cold itself going.

Garble pointed with his great sword. "That way!" A smudge in the carpet of white, barely visible in the storm. "C'mon!"

Spike drew a sharp breath, recovering from the great breath he had just finished. "I'm… liking the heat, but this is not easy. That… better…" He paused to let out a new carpet of flame to clear the way and keep the temperature up.

"Just keep goin','' urged Smolder, sorting her supplies with one hand as she fanned out her flames in a grand arc to keep away the chill for just a moment longer. "No time fer thinking right now."

Sandra kept ahead of them, eventually settling on an aura of flames and heat, pressing straight through the storm best she could, with the Dragons trailing, and Tabitha trailing even further, as they pressed on. The smudge became a square which became what seemed to be a cottage in the distance. No light was on, but the party pressed on.

As it was in sight, Sandra’s light flickered. “I’m… I think I’m running out, guys.” And then abruptly, the flame magic was gone, and the walls of wind closed in on the party again.

Sandra hit the ground, the water and ice from the storm slamming into her, out of breath and weak, but not freezing yet.

Tabitha sprinted up from behind, immediately grabbing Sandra, hoisting her over her shoulder. “C’mon, it’s the last leg.”

The rest of the party panted and groaned, but pulled themselves onward. It was slow going again, but shortly the cottage was in view again, and the five of them stumbled into the structure.

Spike scurried ahead of the others, leaping at the door handle and hitting it with his entire body, the momentum carrying him around, twisting it as it began to fall outwards. "Woah!" He flopped from the ajar door, flopping into the snow.

"Thanks!" Tabitha rushed past him into the darkness. Dryer, quieter, and just a little warmer. "Perfect. C'mon, girl." She set Sandra's still form down, dusting off the snow that had already begun to gather. "Everyone in!"

The door slammed, knocked shut by Garble's anger kick, his sword coming down to keep the door closed, in case anyone tried to open it from the outside. "You know the worst part?"

Smolder hiked a brow. "What's the worst part?"

"We aren't done. We recall now, we gotta do all that again." He threw up his hands high. "This isn't a challenge I wanna keep trying."

Spike staggered with a big log, barely throwing it into the fireplace. It hit the guard and tumbled the rest of the way inside. "Alright, let's get some heat." He drew a sharp breath, but flames rushed over both his shoulders, the siblings setting fire to the log from both directions. "Uh, that works."

The party sat in mostly silence, all appreciating the warmth of the cabin. Spike idly mused laying on the ground, “What are we missing? The only thing we could see for… however far this places, is the cottage here. We were heading straight into the wind and everything.”

Smolder sat up. “Wait, why were we heading into the wind again?”

“Because the man at the top was making it hard for us,” Tabitha said. “We started with that hole in the ground, and we figured we had to go forward, not backwards.”

“Yeah but… what if there’s an actual source of the storm here?”

“If it were a big snow monster blowing wind we would have found it going straight into it.”

“But that’s not how all storms work, lots of storms have the magic at the center,” Smolder held up one finger.

“What, so we’ve been literally going in circles,” Garble cried.

“Well we haven’t been going anywhere productive,” Spike said, pulling himself up. “There were a lot of directions we could have gone, but we just kinda… went into the storm, not thinking about it. If the wind was circling around something it would be easy to feel like we didn’t know where we were going.”

“We have a landmark now,” Sandra said. “We could easily scout out which direction seems more promising.”

“I have more stuff to recover magic,” Smolder said, pulling out her traveling sack. “We just have to be able to wait it out, like in here?”

There were murmurs of approval from the rest of the party. “We rest up a little longer, then,” Tabitha said. “And we get ready to go out as a scouting party.”

"Ha, knew it!" came Garble's triumphant cry. His head poked in as he hefted a bag into view. "There's a pantry in here."

Smolder clapped her hands as she bounced to her feet. "The culinarian just got a recharge," she promised with all the threat of a sniper being given a fresh magazine. "Good lookin' out, Gar Gar."

"You need to stop callin' me that." Despite that, the two seemed in good spirits.`