"Before we go," I said. "Would you like me to move the portal and Presence?"

We were still one hundred and fifty meters away from the base of the hive, and only just within the area that the wisps were defending. I would prefer that they have it closer so they could guard my portal entrance on this side.

"Yes, move it up to ten meters from the first cells," the archwisp said. "We will enchant the area around it so that no heat can come from it to affect the hive."

The ground that the presence was resting on was ice, so I began physically pushing it towards the hive, using my power to provide more traction for my feet on the ice.

"You intended to give access to my people," the archwisp said, hovering to keep up with me. "But how are they going to earn Fortress Coins to access the services of your Fortress?"

A good question, and thankfully one that I was happy to delegate. I wrote up a quest for the archwisp for it to come up with quests for its people that would benefit my Fortress and my people. I added sub-goals for the quest to speak to each of the leaders in my Fortress and sent the quest.

I made a second quest, with the recipients being the leaders of my Fortress, for them to talk to the archwisp and gave them access to the inputs and outputs of the presence here to do so. The archwisp's sub-goals should now direct it to the presence where it could request to speak to any of the leaders who would get a ping for their attention from the presence.

"You expect me to do the work to get my people to work for you?" The archwisp asked.

"Yes," I said. "Entirely for the benefit of your people. You expect me to do the work to help your people when I have other things I need to be doing, and you have a strong motivation to do it?"

"And if I refuse the quest?" The archwisp asked.

"Then your people will miss out while you get the benefits of having access to my Fortress," I said. "That seems selfish on your part to me, and if I were your people I would be upset at it, but it is entirely your choice. I will encourage it as strongly as I can, as the more people working to make everyone's lives better the better everyone's lives will be, but I won't force your cooperation."

The escort that had been orbiting around the archwisp had stopped their spinning at some point in the conversation, and had begun bobbing up and down. The archwisp was silent the rest of the way to placing the presence nearer to the hive, floating in front of where it wanted me to stop.

"You are forcing my cooperation, now that my people have heard of the possibilities they wish to at least try them," the archwisp said. "My people will benefit if we can find a way to benefit your people. I will accept your quest."

"I'll leave you to work it out, then," I said. "I have to go stop the snow man progenitor before he destroys the plains of the neutral realm."

"Go," the archwisp said. "A warning for you, you were being stalked by a large pack of Launchers before you came within the defences of the hive. They are waiting out there and will attack you when the terrain favours them."

I nodded my thanks to it and headed off to the north, my guide hovering after me. Once we got away from the hive it hovered down to settle into the hand that I held in front of me ready for it.

It guided me in the exact direction we needed to go by pulling on my hand and we set off to the north.

"If you knew where the snow man progenitor was you could have led me to him first," I said.

"Needed permission," the wisp said. "And the archwisp gave me the exact location on the front line, and the location of the base where he will run after you confront him."

Twenty minutes of running later we reached the border of the plains biome in the winter realm and the ground went from ice to snow covered soil. The snow was in drifts that ranged from one and a half meters to two meters deep, just high enough to block my vision for any distance.

I had my power soaked out in front of me and began clearing the snow in a path in front of me. There were several dozen voids in the snow, ten centimeters wide by a meter long, spread out to the edges of my detection range. They started moving towards the path I was cutting out of the snow as I ran down it, and they were able to keep pace with me at thirty kilometers an hour.

It only took a few seconds into the snow before the first one attacked, coming out of the snow to my right without a trace. It looked like a smaller snow worm with the same rings of sharp teeth. I turned out of the way of its attack and it sank into the snow on my left, disappearing without leaving a hole. There was a wave of attacks one after another, but I was easily able to see them coming with my power and avoid them.

"The ice cats were intelligent enough for you to speak to, how about these?" I asked.

"They can speak," the wisp said. "But they won't talk to me. They shout down any attempts I make."

I continued running, dodging a new attack every second or so. They weren't making any progress in their attacks, but they weren't giving up, and it was slowing me down. They were beginning to annoy me.

"Please tell them that if they continue to try to attack me they will die," I said.

I didn't much care if they all died, but it seemed fair to at least give warning to anything capable of hearing it. I summoned my sword directly to my hand and picked up my speed again.

Every time one of the launchers came out of the snow I cut its head off with a single simple swipe. Without having to constantly dodge I got my speed back up to thirty five kilometers an hour, making real progress. The launchers continued to attack, though some stopped to eat the ones I'd killed, until eventually there were none within my detection range. I had killed fifty three of them before they decided to leave me alone, or they'd all died.

Ten minutes after the last launcher had died I ran into a group of full sized snow worms. I had to jump over the body of one of them, and another lunged at me when I landed, but I easily left them behind me.

It was quiet for the next twenty minutes, and I was taking breaks in maximum time dilation to chat with Chantelle and the members of my army. The only interesting thing to happen in the twenty minutes of the run was my running over a large void to my power. It was a little bit under ten meters across and inconvenient to go around, so I decided to go right over the top of it.

When I was halfway across the void two sides of an enormous mouth began to close from in front and behind me. I brought out my sword again and dashed forward hard, slicing down to cut an exit in the toothed wall in front of me. I ducked my shoulder down and burst through and out into the snow again, covered in green slime. I put my sword away, cleaned myself up, and continued running, clearing a path ahead of me.

At the end of the twenty minutes I got a shock as I came out of a high point in the snow to see the Instructor standing on the snow twenty meters ahead of me. I immediately summoned and threw two blades at him, one from each hand, one aimed at his heart, and one at his brain. As soon as he saw me he teleported to the side, frowning at me as the two blades whistled past him and disappeared into the distance.

"Stop that," the Instructor said. "Being stabbed through the heart hurts, and dying, while being inconvenient, won't stop me now."

The Instructor was teleporting constantly to keep ahead of me, and varying the distances enough that it would be hard to hit him with a blade.

"I see that you're still running around on your own," the Instructor said.

"I have my army," I said. "This is just the fastest way for us to travel. And I took my army against your army. They were too busy destroying the plains to fight us properly."

"Thirteen people isn't an army," the Instructor said. "At best it's a strike force."

"I will match my thirteen against any army you send to fight us in a straight up fight," I said.

"And that is why my army is destroying the plains," the Instructor said. "Your 'army' is too specialised, it lacks the flexibility to stop anything. On another topic, I was surprised that you didn't rescue the Head Priest of Summer. You chased after Chantelle readily enough."

"John was a guest," I said. "He was free to leave at any time, and as I recall you can only teleport those that are willing, so it was obviously his choice."

The Instructor was trying to steer me away from the snow man progenitor but my guide kept tugging me back on target. The Instructor finally teleported away just as we were coming up to a drift of snow I couldn't see over. I cleared a path through it and nearly stumbled. The snow had been cleared from that point forward and as we came out into the clear area there was a line of thirty small ice projectile launchers with five large ice projectile launchers mixed into them. And they were all pointed towards me.

Behind the line there was a three meter tall snow man who was in the middle of forming another normal sized snow man. The Instructor was standing next to him and gave me a wave just before they both disappeared.