A stampede of monsters of various forms, shapes, and sizes rushed towards the armies, all of them breaking off of the colossus like fighters from a space ship. The blizzard's strength was intensifying even further. In a way, it was imitating a roar by a gigantic beast. An extension of the colossus, perhaps?
Several sabre tyrants and gigantic creatures made up of random assortments of tentacles or wings, claws or fangs, ran across the snowy plains, kicking up the resting white until they rammed into the first line of deer and ponies. Stone crushed the occasional beast and the ballista pierced through several, but it wasn't significant enough to diminish their numbers in a significant manner. For the ponies, while the shields held the smaller creatures at bay and the spears impaled the jumpers, the sword wielders jumped out from between them to give a clean slice. The sword wielders and spear ponies then spun around, back-to-back so as to have an equally alternating line of sword-wielder and spear-thruster. The pegasi in the air used swords and whips damage the wings of the flyers and keep them off balance while the 'artillery' holding the unicorns let fly various colored spells ranging from damaging beams to paralyzing dodecahedrons clamping through the monsters' bodies.
The deer did not move when the monsters approached them. Instead, windigos flew up from the ice and froze the monsters in place, leaving the barmephants to walk through their two-dimensional, black door of reality and shatter the ice statues. One would expect ghosts to be untouchable by the black snow, and indeed they were, but how long would it last?
"So...This is war in person?" Stelimus whispered to himself. "This isn't...what I was expecting. It's far different in person..." He looked down to see his father standing next to the strange ice construct, then to his aunt and uncle far on the other side. "But, the dream..."
Copper looked on to her mother and father and grimaced. She didn't like this. She just wanted to take them away from this place, but what would be the point? She knew they wouldn't escape the black snow, and nopony south of the tundra knew anything about it nor how to fight it.
The colossus stood in place and watched everyone fighting it. Stelimus wondered if the creature was taking amusement from the display before it or if it was waiting for something. A call or a sign. Perhaps it needed the armies to be whittled down enough for it not to be harmed? Regardless of the situation, it was still sending out hordes from its own body, then new creatures came through to charge at the reindeer using ghosts. These creatures had a single, large green eye shaped like a large triangle occupying most of their blackened bodies. They stood upon three, needle-esque legs and possessed two, extremely large arms. When they approached the line, two windigos charged towards these new enemies. Unfortunately, for whatever reason, the triangle eye glowed a deep green and engulfed the arms which they used to punch the ghosts into literal dust.
"What?!" Anglacite roared. "It was never capable of doing that!"
A soldier approached his king and saluted. "Should I activate it now, my god-king?"
"No. Send in the troops. We'll use it when too many monsters swarm the field."
The battle was certainly lasting, as two hours later, no one was making any progress. Bodies littered the land at various distances and both ponies a deer forces were being whittled down due to fatigue and casualties. One pony, completely exhausted from the battle, approached Shining Armor, who was preparing to strike from the third line.
"We can't...we can't keep going like this."
"Well we can't stop now, soldier. We're all here and there will be no reinforcements."
"We should have called the princesses!" the soldier cried.
Shining slapped with the back of his hoof. "Stow away that talk, soldier! You are a proud crystal pony of the Crystal Kingdom, under the supervision of both your prince and princess! We will not fail in this battle, and you will have many tales to tell your grandchildren after this is all over."
Another enormous wave of creatures flew from behind the black, swirling vortex surrounding the battlefield.
"They've got reinforcements!" the soldier shouted.
Before most of the creatures could do anything, another horde come from the left of the armies and slammed into the colossus' reinforcements.
"The hunters?!" Shining shouted.
Clyde was riding a corrupted Sabre Tyrant and leading the head of the riders into the battle. The gigantic skeletal beasts Grimliss added to his brother's army seemed to be amusing themselves with crushing everything approaching them but still had the sense to avoid the creatures being ridden. Clyde and several other hunters jumped from their mounts to slam into the creatures below them, impaling dagger, sword, and spear into their bodies while the now-trained mounts assisted their riders in battle. Even amongst this massacre, ponies and deer were still trying their best to recover the wounded on the battlefield. Many of them did not make it. Stelimus and Copper both wanted to help everyone out, but they were too petrified by terror. The mind was willing but the body was not.
Anglacite took a deep breath and exhaled. He straightened himself out and said "It's time" to his soldiers.
Three of them approached the machine and connected their antlers to the crystals. Frost essence poured into it in cascades and the ice crystals reacted. They stopped rotating and shot towards the spherical core, gluing onto it and folding upwards like flower petals ready to open and flood the world with their beauty. The machine started humming ominously, the sound getting louder and louder until a vortex of ice and snow burst forth from it, shredding the wall of black snow around the battlefield and expanding across the tundra. Almost the entirety of the field was now clean of black snow abomination, yet the colossus still remained immobile. The ice construct slowly melted while the core and crystals receded into the 'base' where they rested.
Anglacite stepped forward and glared at the creature. "What do you want?" he wondered.
The colossus finally started moving forward, stomping away at the lands before it. The pony and deer armies all charged forward, stupidly, unaware that the creature was stretching out its arms.
"GET BACK YOU FOOLS!" Grimliss bellowed.
More monsters flew out from its body. These were giants, nearly five times the height of a pony standing upright, and they were just as warped as their brethren. Tripedal or bipedal with various different extensions serving as appendages, such as claws or crab pincers. They smashed, sliced, and crushed everything near them before the leaf constructs and undead creations could hold them down. The leaf construct was unaffected by their attacks and preferred to 'grab' their limbs, extending the veins on their surface into the body of the creatures and draining them dry.
"It's time," Cadence said.
She used her magic to pull the curtain off the creation of hers and show its horrid beauty. It was a gigantic cannon. The barrel was made of a golden metal and had rings of bolted iron placed onto it. Behind it was a small spot where the Crystal Heart floated, and behind that was yet another lens attached to a small podium where Cadance took her seat. The whole creation rested atop a cage of wood with the giant wheels noticed earlier. The alicorn held onto the large, pony-sized lens and focused her magic.
The dark magic Sombra was known for engulfed the lens, darkening it. The magic slowly expanded around the heart which reacted to the magic by blasting its own beam of heart magic, mixing and corrupted the bubble of protection and focusing it through the second lens. A loud thunderclap followed by what sounded like the buzzing of hundreds of wasps filled the air. A beam of corrupt magic hit the colossus, forcing it to stumble and causing it to wail in pain. Cadence hung onto the lens and panted. It was exhausting to summon that magic.
"You hurt it!" one of the soldiers yelled. "Again!"
"Again!" everypony around shouted.
"You almost have it!" the same soldier insisted.
The colossus looked towards the source of its pain and noticed the cannon on the hill. It started to actually make some semblance of running to reach the cannon. A few of the remaining unicorns on the ground tried to block it with joined barriers, but it was no use. Shining and a few other ponies tried to hinder its movements by stabbing its ankles, but it ignored them and tossed them aside with a loud stomp. Grimliss and Effervescence redirected their troops and monsters to try and intercept it in time. Seeing as it wouldn't work, they tried to reach it in time, all while Anglacite only watched on, bemused by the circumstances.
"Stop the abomination!" several captains shouted.
Their attempts at stopping the colossus weren't much better, but it all went silent when its giant hand descended onto the canon and crushed it into shards. Before that happened, however, Cadance managed to throw the heart to safety. The colossus stomped the ground behind it in anger then raised both of its hands, balled them into fists, and pummeled the wreck over and over again, all while taking in several ponies and nearby, approaching deer into the vacuum of its strikes. A final, downwards punch broke through the hill of snow and rock, quite literally obliterating everything and anything that could have been there.
Both Grimliss and Stelimus looked at Copper instinctively. The mare had a saddened frown etched onto her face and her lips trembled.
"Not again..." she wheezed.