The Acalica stood still. It had stopped inside what had been a high-school just a week ago and now stood in the heart of the courtyard where students once ate lunch. In this same courtyard students had once talked about fantasy novels and video-games. A decade ago they eagerly chatted about a boy wizard, and a small Hobbit who journeyed across Middle-Earth. Now some of those very same people had survived encounters with monsters out of the darkest corners of mythology. In the exact courtyard where the Acalica stood, preparing itself for its final stand by absorbing power from the environment, a young group of non-humans worked with local witches to put an end to an imperialistic pack of werewolves in the days before myth stepped out of books and into Times Square. On November 8th 2010 the same group of non-humans in the same small corner of the courtyard openly discussed how to best deal with a wyvern one of them managed to trap in the local forest.

While it waited for the non-human who had detected it and began to silently and relentlessly hunted it down, it began to concentrate. It was angry, tired, and knew that the creature who was stalking it wouldn’t rest until one of them was dead. The Acalica wanted to end this drawn-out battle. And so it gathered energy from the sky above it. Storing it internally, while converting some of it into electrical energy.

On June 15th 2016, at about 9 in the afternoon, the strongest of the group of non-humans who had once been active in the courtyard created a “clone” of himself which was an illusion. At about 9:01 that same non-human, tutored in magic by legendary figures like the Witch of the Woods, sent his pseudo-clone out to the courtyard. The Acalica, in rage and in determination used all of his energy on internally stabilizing a single bolt of deadly lightning. When it felt ready it hurled the bolt of lightning at what it believed was its opponent. The Acalica was happy to have the bolt outside of its body, because stabilizing and containing the sheer electrical energy of a bolt of lightning is extraordinarily difficult, even for an Acalica. The bolt hit, passed through the illusion, and the illusion began to walk towards the Acalica. Which was terrifying. The Acalica (still ignorant to the fact that it had been deceived) had seen low-level gods at the very least have to take a knee if they were directly hit by Acalica lightning. The Acalica might have been pleased to know (under different circumstances, anyway) that had the real non-human been hit by the lightning, he would have been forced to stop moving for a second and absorb the lightning directly. For now, the Acalica was terrified and had begun running away under realizing that its opponent was the real deal. It didn’t get very far.

The spirit managed to get a few yards away before the real non-human lunged at it, his form an awkward fusion of “human” and “dragon”. The non-human was impossibly fast, lunging at least the length of half the courtyard in less than a nanosecond, evidently capable of moving at a speed comparable to the speed of sound. It was in fact faster than the speed of sound, which the Acalica discovered, as the sound caught up to it and in a local sonic boom destroyed the hearing of the Acalica. The dragon then rose his hand up and transformed it. It would have been beautiful to watch, if overseen by anyone who wasn’t about to die at the hands/claws of a silent dragon. The armor the dragon wore in his human form seemed to expand too quickly and shattered as the “hand” expanded and seemingly spontaneously grow a set of thick scales the color of lava. Each fingernail extended and gained a wicked looking point at the end. The transformation was quick too, happening in an instant, and an instant later the claw was brought down, slicing the throat, and face, of the Acalica. The Acalica only felt pain for an instant.
“Acalica. Down.” The dragon would say as he got up and walked away, speaking to a communicator built into his shirt collar. “I need a new gauntlet. Left hand.” He added, after a few seconds of individually moving each of his “fingers” on his left claw. “Heading home. I’ll have a full mission report for you tomorrow.” He said and then stopped speaking.

A/N: An Acalica is a Bolivian spirit. They typically appear as old men. They were thought to have powers and magic related to weather manipulation. In the universe I am creating these beings are especially hated, as they are thought to be responsible for the horrific natural disasters that occurred in rural parts of the world and claimed millions of lives, and kept emergency response crews from reaching people in need of supplies and rescue. In one specific incident in the mountains of Washington state, one is thought to be responsible for a series of landslides and forest fires which claimed hundreds of thousands of lives, and is known to be responsible for the death of an entire response team and news crew, thanks to a landslide it caused which killed all 15 people involved. The one that was just killed was not the same one responsible for that attack. It was a younger one who had immigrated to the United States due to the Bolivian government rapidly gaining the means to destroy spirits with both technology and the assistance of other local creatures. It had been informed that North Carolina had plenty of places it could appear and destroy. The creature that told it this didn’t let it know that Northern Oak, the place it had chosen was defended by 15 exceptional non-humans and was already well on its way to becoming a sanctuary for peaceful non-humans.

This is a small scale battle. It took about an hour to write. One of these days I am going to write and upload a large-scale battle, featuring multiple characters. I hope you’ll let me know what you think of that story, and of this one!