//------------------------------//
// Worth every spell 
// Story: Lux Locus: Blue fings 'n Big humes 
// by The Psychopath 
//------------------------------//

After sending out messengers to the other barricades around the city, Twilight decided to be a more contributing factor for this sudden war. A wide cone of turbulent, purple magic engulfed the city in an ever widening chunk; devouring any puwandese caught within it and throwing them haphazardly all over the place. Twilight reveled in this chance to finally unleash her power after so long rather than needing to stay on the defensive. After the pillars blew up a camp set up by the blue monsters, Twilight summoned whips and crashed them into the ground at regular intervals between each other, tossing puwandese and their creations around like salad.

"I'm impressed with your control over mana," Killigan complemented. 

"Thank you," Twilight responded.

"But..."

A puwandese magus appeared on a roof corner, dancing and grunting his tribalistic songs. He gestured holding something with both hands and swung from right to left. In tandem, an outstretched arm of magic sweept across the landscape, 'cleaning' what remained of the debris around.

"WATCH OUT!" Twilight shouted.

The lavender alicorn erected a barrier to block the arm, and the magus visibly struggled trying to force his arms forward.

"I can't hold this for long!"

Killigan remained silent for a moment, then nodded. "You don't need to worry. While the tower geat haven't been deployed, some tower forweall have.

"Tower...forweall?" Twilight struggled.

The arm dissolved as suddenly as it appeared, and the magus fell from he roof to crash into the earth below. He had received multiple bullets to the back of his head. Killigan knelt down and analyzed the marks.

"It seems they brought in the geats equipped with prototype sniper helmets I designed and the weapons that Eriee designed. She does that position of head pillar craeft justice."

Twilight was released from the strain and gasped for air. "What in the world are these geats?"

"Elite pillars specialized in infiltration and assassination. Their armor is thinner and lighter than ours-" He tapped his shoulder plate. "-but provide the same amount of protection. It improves the wearer's agility and flexibility with no consequences to their body. As a consequence, it drains their mana exponentially."

"Then what were the others you mentioned?"

A group of the pushing contraptions burst through a partially collapsed wall and adjusted themselves to shoot at their targets, but were destroyed before they could do anything but pegasi carrying unicorns launching giant fireballs.

"I do like these explosions you've been creating, equine."

"Well--"

"Let's keep going. They probably have a chieftain somewhere leading them all."

The two continued through the burned streets, occasionally dodging falling rubble and debris from destroyed aircraft flailing about in a ball of fire to crash somewhere else. Pillars and Puwandese clashed about the environment, both having no need to falter in this war and wanting victory at all costs.

"Watch out!" Twilight shouted.

She used her magic to pull the giant biped back just before a giant puwandese smashed down into the cement. It was much larger than Killigan and bulkier to boot, but like all the blue monsters, it didn't think ahead.

"Wheht?" it grumbled. "Moy claw ehrm is steck in thehs 'ard steff."

Killigan shook his head in disappointment and rushed the beast, punching it once, then twice, and a final third time to finally kill it; Each blow creating a thunderous crack and powerful shock wave.

"That was one of the stupider puwandese well on its way to becoming a big 'un," Killigan explained.

"So, the bigger they  get, the stupider they get?"

Killigan shook his head. "The bigger they get, the stronger, smarter, and craftier they become, but it's only proportional to their base intelligence and strength."

"So," Twilight pondered. "Does this mean that most of them are complete idiots despite being gigantic?"

"Fortunately."

"Fascinating." Twilight started salivating and giggled maniacally. "I need a specimen for my studies."

Killigan stared at her in silence, occasionally moving his fingers during the awkward silence. Their attention was taken to a flight of stairs where a group of puwandese were gradually backing up whilst shooting at something in front of them. In a flash of blue light, they evaporated almost instantly, causing Twilight to scream briefly.

"What was that?!"

"Most likely a Sawol Vice with a mana discharger."

"Wh-what is that?"

"Uses the mana in your body as a weapon. It--"

"Not that; a sawol vice!"

Killigan chuckled. "Let's go that mass of debris built up like a hill should be our way forward. I have better things to do that explain the intricacies of mana with those not even liked to the realm of Mana Magis."

Twilight huffed in annoyance and followed suite. They were attacked multiple times by more of the blue monsters and those much larger, much like the one encountered previously. Unfortunately for the blue barbarians, they found themselves sniped by the tower geat, smashed by Twilight, and for one unfortunate soul: Backhanded by Killigan through the same building it tried to ambush him from.

Twilight instinctively raised a barrier for the two when they approached the mound. The puwandese had fortified the top with metal walls and slowly rotating, rapid firing turrets. Every successful hit dissolved Twilight's magic shield by a little bit, and she needed to focus to reform it.

"Hmmm. They laced the turret's chamber with mana bullets, and it looks like their effect is to weaken any spell nearby," Killigan noted.

"Then how do we stop it?!" Twilight strained.

The biped pushed against the underside of his jaw and started talking. "This is Killigan Ghor. We are a fortified mound of the puwandese with no heavy support. Their turrets are laced with mana dissipators."

"Stand by for tower forweall deployment. They have their own surprise for you."

"Surprise?"

Killian was cut off by the responder and looked at Twilight curiously. Four absolutely massive armored bipeds stomped from around the corner of nearby debris while carrying earth ponies. The giants' armor was extremely bulky and heavy, nigh four times that of the regular pillar scieldan armor and six times that of tower geat. Their helmets resembled towers with multiple 'murder holes' parallel to each other and separated by ramparts while the top of the helmets were completely flat.

"Prepare to launch!" one them said.

The earth ponies balled themselves up and were placed in the giants' right or left hand.

"Aim!"

They pulled back their arms, and Twilight could see their elbows and biceps glowing with a faint blue shimmer.

"Throw!"

"What?!" Twilight screamed.

The ponies were jettisoned, practically breaking the sound barrier once they were separated from the hands. The blurry balls of fur crashed into the towers and walls, ripping them asunder whilst not harming the ponies themselves. They proceeded to pummel the puwandese around them while the blue fings were still dazed and confused.

"Good work, towers. Now let us be continuing for--" Killigan was interrupted by a tower stopping him.

"I apologize for this apparent lack of respect, but we need to activate our actuators," she explained.

"Oh." He backed away. "Charge through the barricades."

The tower nodded and rejoined her comrades. Before Twilight could ask anything, the massive creatures' legs started to hiss loudly and expel faint traces of steam and gas.

"Let's go!" the tower commanded.

The four zipped up the hill with little effort and walked through the wall of scrap as though there were nothing. The bregu hummed and thought a loud.

"The first iteration of the actuators really do work as intended," he noted happily. "But...they produce too much noise and still have the backfire of straining the armor's leg pistons. I will need to consult with Eriee about this. Perhaps she can take care of the flaws...As long as she isn't still obsessed with building our titan vessel," he sighed despondently. 

"Titan?"

"Nothing that concerns you. Let's go. The other pillars have been encircling the base here, so we shouldn't have to rely on our wits and the chaotic nature of the puwandese."

Twilight's face puffed up. "You could be more polite, you know."

"Politeness on the field of battle is overrated!" the bregu joked.

Sure enough, a horde of pillars and the same giant mech from earlier were having a shootout, but neither party was making any leeway. Some pillars and puwandese had met in hand-to-hand combat and were more preoccupied with punching each other than the bullets whizzing past their heads. Many of the pillars chopped the puwandese apart with their swords -the glowan swol- sheathed in burning mana, but the armored giants weren't immune to losses and saw a few of their get cut down to size. Twilight looked at the giant mechs firing volley after volley of missiles at the fortified positions in the destroyed buildings and makeshift walls but not move forward.

"Why aren't you attacking them with those huge machines?" she asked.

"Because they aren't made for direct combat. Its intervention earlier was luck from a surprise attack. They aren't meant to fight like that. While the designs are somewhat stupid, they were made to carry multiple weapons with plentiful amounts of ammo whilst consuming as little fuel as possible."

"Now what?"

"Well, orbital bombardment is out of the question. Too much collateral damage, plus there's your people I need to think of. I wonder if--"

"WHEHT'S THEES 'N? TROYIN' TEH CRUMP MOY NEHW STUFFS? EY WON'T LET YEHS!"

The colossal puwandese ripped off one of the doors to his base and threw it at some puwandese further down the street, crushing them and taking an unaware pillar with it. The colossus bellowed in laughter.

"Now theht's hehw yeh crump sem humes."

His laughter was interrupted by Twilight approaching him angrily and looking up at him, straight into his eyes. "Listen here, brute," she started. "I want you to repair the damage you've done to my city, and then I want you gone. Am I clear?"

The big'un looked surprised and just stared at her blankly. Killigan put a hand to his helmet and sighed, creating a collective facepalming event by most of the pillars around. Yet, Twilight persisted glaring at the beast, but it responded -finally- by erupting in laughter, taking the others with it into the collective hilarity. Twilight's face puffed up in annoyance.

"Yehw hear theht? Theh toyny cahlerful thing wif a purple toof grehwin' eut its 'ead fings it cen ordeyr moy areynd." He knelt down, still gigantic in comparison to her, and smiled complacently. "Ere's wheht oy think: Yeh're genna geve me theht toof on yeh're 'ead, den geht royt in moy mouth ta--oof!"

A massive flash of purple light came out of Twilight's horn, impacting into the chest of the colossus and launching it several dozen feet in the air to crash through two buildings. While he did get stuck in the third; a sky scraper of one hundred and twenty floors, he was all that the structure needed to let go of the small molecular bindings still keeping it up. A thick cloud of smoke and debris once again swept through the streets, but the puwandese were fixated on where their leader had been punted to.

"There," Twilight wiped her forehooves clean. "I killed your boss. Now git before I do the same thing to you too!"

"Kill the big 'un, I see," Killigan noted when he walked next to Twilight.

"Yeah. If they're really so barbaric, once their leader is gone, they should run away screaming."

Killigan shook his head in disappointment. "You really don't know anything about the outside world."

"What?"

"There's now an empty spot in their hierarchy. Now they're going to try to get to the top of the food chain at all costs." He turned around and shouted to his comrades through the speaker in his helmet. "Prepare for puwandese power struggle!"

All the pillars locked themselves behind cover and aimed in every possible direction whilst the walkers knelt down and compacted into a 'box' shape. The blue creatures all cried war and started attacking and destroying everything around them all while declaring that they were the new big 'un. More pushers burst through the makeshift walls and started pounding on each other whilst others went still to attack the pillars hiding away. Luckily, the timely intervention of some pegasi and their unicorn compatriots managed to disperse the hordes, creating easy pickings for the geats further back to snipe in quick succession as well as the pillars themselves to shoot them all down. Killigan picked Twilight up and ran to the nearest cover where a few pillars and an earth pony from earlier were stowed.

"Where are the forweall that were with you?" the bregu asked the pony.

"Th-they rushed to the right of the complex and disappeared."

"Hm. I know what they're doing."

Loud, consecutive booms drowned out the yells of the puwandese. More explosions occurred in the reinforced camp. One pusher even lost control of its wheels and rolled through the walls to crash into a stone with puwandese around. The towers had grabbed twin, tri-barreled gatling cannons and were mowing down anything in their path. One of them wore gauntlets like Killigan and was pummeling everything into a pulp. Even the large puwandese had no chance.

"OY'M GENNA CRUMP YA FEYR THEHT!" a furious voice threatened.

The big 'un rushed from the debris and slammed through one of the towers, throwing him aside slightly. The big 'un had a massive scorch mark on his body, and his armor still burned red at the edges. 

"Yeh're genna pay fer that you are!"

He aimed his weapon at Twilight hiding behind cover and let loose a flurry of bullets of various caliber, tearing up anything he aimed at. Twilight couldn't hold her shield appropriately, and the aetgar of the pillars did little more than inconvenience the behemoth with bouts of pain as they penetrated his thick hide.

"Stehp that! Yeh're ruining moy moment!"

"Pillars, keep away from him. He'll crush you with his strength."

The big 'un bellowed in laughter. "That's royt oy will, now cem closehr so'z oy cen do jest theht!"

Twilight broke her shield and rolled to the right behind cover. Evaluating the distance of the creature and its guns, she created a boomerang spell that the big 'un ignored complete. It hit him in his left shoulder, cutting up his weapon slightly.

"Oy!" he shouted. "Theht's moy favorite! Stahp cuttin' it up!" He continued firing at the pillars and pony, but took the opportunity to pick up slabs of stone and concrete at his feet and lob them at the hiding humans.

"For Equestriaaaaaa!" several ponies shouted.

Ponies burst out from the sewers below, makeshift tools and farming equipment in hoof, intent on killing the giant. Whilst Killigan admired their bravery, Twilight did not. The big 'un laughed as he grabbed one by the head and threw it into another pony coming from his left.

"Ho ho ho! This is fun! Come 'ere, cahlered meat. Yeh're gonna get crumped!"

Some of the puwandese not affected by the brief power struggle started working in what was left of the camp, but they were immediately stopped by the towers present and a pillar vessel falling from the sky in flames that dumped its payload right before disappearing beyond a line of collapsed buildings. Containers crashed onto the puwandese constructs whilst the pillars themselves rolled upon landing, some even doing so into the puwandese themselves. The big 'un noticed and rushed towards them, using his weapon to punch multiple holes into their bodies, completely destroying their mana shield and their thick armor.

"Ha ha ha! There's neh eh thing theht oy can't destroy with moy mega rumblah!"

He continued catching and smacking the ponies against each other whilst pillars unloaded as much as they could into him.

"We need a magus," Killigan spoke into his helmet. "Yes. I'm well aware these creatures are magic users and I have a strong one with me, but we need more of them to fight this big 'un. It's much larger than the usual breed, and a direct blow to its chest plus the damages of a collapsing building on it failed to terminate." Killigan nodded and fumbled under his jaw again. "Towers, focus only on the big 'un."

Sniper fire from the geats were complimented by the gatling fire of the forweall still in the camp. The gauntlet wielders ran between their comrades and punched the giant, the thundering cracks deafening everyone around.

"Gaaaah!" the big 'un cried.

"Filthy creature. You won't acquire another planet from which to do your raids," a forweall said.

"Just because you 'ave those wehird boom 'ands dinnae mean yeh're genna kill me."

The giant punched the tower, but where heavy slabs of concrete his size were easily thrown, the tower barely even budged. The puwandese's face distorted to a mixture surprise and confusion.

"Yeh're royt dense ye'r." He covered his face when the other two towers shot at him with their gatling cannons.

Killigan looked to his side to see a robe wearing pillar -colors identical to his own foundation- approaching him quietly.

"I'm here, my bregu."

The bregu nodded and looked to Twilight. "Colorful equine."

"Hm?"

"I need you to use your magic against the puwandese big 'un again, but I need you to do so with my magus."

"Why."

"Because more mana in an individual spell can double its power as well as add some potentially interesting secondary traits," the magus explained.

"Okay then. If you think it'll work."

The magus clapped her gauntlets together, and a blue glow emanated from the forge lines. "It will," she confirmed.

The two jumped out of cover and aimed at the puwandese currently preoccupied by the towers attacking it.

"When you cast your spell," the magus started "I will add to it with my own mana. Ready?"

Twilight nodded and gathered magic from the atmosphere seeing as she drained herself severely as of late. When the lavender clouds were done gathering, her horn glowed a bright purple, and with a glare and bared teeth from the pony, was fired at the puwandese in a concentrated beam. The magus, preparing for just that moment, performed multiple hand gestures and joined her own spell with Twilight's. The beam of solid magic soon began to distorts as streaks of purple and blue mixed together and the solid pillar of magic separated into four, intertwining threads. It impacted the big 'un entirely, pushing him back a little, but he stood firm.

"Oy ain't...so easeh...teh kill!"

He pushed against the beams head on, intent on crumping those attacking him, but he wasn't able to ignore the damages being caused. His armor was melting away and his skin was growing darker and darker as the magic burned him. One of the towers punched him in the side of his leg, making the giant howl in pain and collapse to the floor. 

"Whe blue fings eh'r theh toughest of all!"

The magic, now unabated by the big 'un's stubborness, could destroy him with its raw force; and destroy him it did. The creature was flung backwards via multiple back flips to finally land -heavily- against the ground, its upper torso and head thoroughly melted.

Killigan stood up and sighed. "I do like a fight with the puwandese big 'uns. It always takes a bit of craftiness to kill them."

Twilight tried to say something, but every time she opened her mouth, nothing came. She was at a loss for words for these creatures that came from the stars.

"Now, if you'll excuse me, we have a larger infestation to deal with. With the loss of their big 'un, the power struggle will reach all of the blue fings and eventually creative multiple chieftains making camps on this planet."

"You mean it's not over?!"

Killigan stared blankly at Twilight through his helmet. "What, you thought it would be that easy? Just be thankful they aren't xith'kai."

"Wh...Wait!" Twilight called after the pillar. "If there's a war happening in Equestria, I know somepony who could help us!"

"'Somepony'? You equines have strange mannerisms in your speech, let alone talking a language similar to ours." He paused for a moment and hummed. "Maybe we should look into that," he mumbled under his breath.

"What?"

"Nothing. Now then, my fellow pillars, we have more puwandese to destroy. For humanity!"