I didn't come here to talk.

Ursula's father had come home earlier than usual that day. She was in the dining room finishing her homework when she heard the front door open. She put her pen down and looked up as her father walked in. It was 6 p.m.

"Have you showered yet?" He asked and was in some kind of rush.

"Why? Are we going somewhere?" She asked half expecting the answer to be no.

"As a matter fact we are." He smiled slyly

"Well yes, I was waiting for you to bring dinner." This was their daily routine. Her father had taught her how to cook and they made dinner in turns, though she ended up cooking more than he did. He usually arrived home around 8 p.m. "So where are we going?"

"We are having dinner with - a friend." He said and Ursula noted. "Are you done?" He asked pointing at her books.

"I finished right as you walked in, I'll put my books away and we can leave."

She grabbed her coat and joined her father under his umbrella as they walked to the car. It had been raining heavily throughout the day. She loved how the lights reflected off the road as they drove. They arrived about 45 minutes after they had left to a wealthy looking suburban district. Her father rang the bell and seemed to be nervous as he waited for the door to be answered.

"Coming..." a woman's voice called out from the other side as the door opened.

"Malik, you're here," she said smiling, "and you must be Ursula, I've heard so much about you." She moved to the side gesturing them to come in. She guided them to the dining room where dinner was waiting.

"John ... they're here come down." she called out, "he's a bit shy." She said towards Malik.

She was a tall slender woman, almost as tall her her father. She was dressed in a grey sleeveless calf length dress with buttons running from the neck to the stomach and a matching belt that became a bow at her waist. A classic beauty, Ursula thought to herself as she saw her sit down. After a few minutes a boy in grey shorts and a grey t-shirt walked in and sat down without saying a word. He was nearly as tall as his mother. He had jet black hair which was a contrast to his mother blond, they shared their green eyes. He had long pushed pack hair and a black smudge on the right of his face. He placed his hands on the table and there was a smudge on the back of his right hand as well like he had wiped his cheek with it.

"This is Malik and his daughter Ursula." he looked up at them and slightly nodded his head in acknowledgement. "I'm Carol and this is John," she then said to Ursula.

Carol then proceeded to serve the food. She had prepared kang pao chicken, fried rice and Chinese broccoli.

"The reason we organised this dinner was because there's something we wanted to tell both of you," Malik began

"You've been seeing each other, right?" Ursula said after her father paused which took both him and Carol by surprise. She turned to John who then shrugged and took a bite of his chicken.

"Well that's the half of it, we are thinking about getting married and we wanted to hear your opinions." he said nervously putting his fork down.

Ursula observed how nervous he was, "I think you deserve to be happy dad. It's been a long time since mom died and I think she'd want that too," she replied maturely looking at John.

"It's okay, I guess." he said and shrugged his shoulders again.

There was a short silence in the room as everyone was internalizing what ad happened.

"Well then Carol, there's something I'd like to ask you." Malik said getting on one knee.

"Sula! Earth to Ursula!" her dad said snapping his fingers on front of her eyes. She had been sitting in the reception area of the gallery for about 15 minutes waiting for him. "Good, you're back to the present, lets go in Takeshi-san is waiting for us." He said walking into the large room.

JOHN.

John drifted in and out of consciousness, he tried to open his yes but it was too dark to see anything. His whole body was in so much pain that he couldn't tell where he was and wasn't injured anymore. The pain seemed to pulsate through him that he felt as though he was floating through the air. He could sense the presence of two people on either side of him. Though unable to see them he could feel their frantic state. Mom? Dad? he thought to himself as he tried to open his eyes to get a better look

"Don't worry, everything will be fine," he heard a voice whisper to him. He felt comforted and at ease and the pain seemed to subside for a moment that he was able to see what was going on around him. The old man from earlier was standing to his right with the sleeves of his tunic folded. His arms were covered in blood. He didn't want to see that so he turned his head to the left. The girl placed light colored clothing next to his left arm and clasped her hands together as if in prayer and started chanting something. he felt himself drifting further and further away. He felt a sharp pain on his abdomen like he was on fire and thought to himself, so this is what death feels like.

He was surrounded by darkness as far as he could see. I'm not dead? He touched his stomach and he couldn't feel an injury. What's happening? He run his hands from head to toe and was wearing the suit from the night in the gallery. He tried to walk around, because he was uncertain whether he was in a small room or a vast space. The darkness was so thick he could feel it on his skin. It was as if he was inside heavy thick smoke and was wearing an invisible set of clothing. He could see a small spec of light in the distance. His first instinct was to run towards it. All living things crave the light when surrounded by impossible darkness, he thought. The more he ran the further the light seemed. He didn't feel fatigue which was strange because he was not an athletic person. Eventually the light begun to grown bigger and bigger and he came to what looked like the bottom of a cliff on a dark night.

The source of light was a big white moon, it was breathtaking. A man riding a dragon was standing in front of it and he felt a wave of familiarity. The giant painting, he thought to himself. He saw the man was raising his staff and was holding a glowing red blade on his other hand. A sense of dread washed over him making shivers run through his entire body. If this was the painting then he must be in that battle. The darkness around him begun to clear and a giants foot stomped next to him and men ran past him shouting war cries. They can't see me. He turned around to see where they were going. On the opposing side were great beasts whose eyes glowed red. He had never seen or imagined anything like this. I wanna draw.

These beasts were controlled by men who were riding them The darkness around him had almost cleared but the darkness around these men was clearly different, was it the numerous corpses in the battlefield or the feeling of war that brought about such darkness? he wondered as he looked at these beast tamers. They all wore untainted white robes. Besides the man on the dragon everything else was surrounded by darkness like a thick mist. The sound of horns and drums echoed throughout the entire battle field as the giants and the beasts collided. Cries of men and beasts alike resonated everywhere around him. While the giants held on to the beasts the men below them rushed past and started attacking the human army behind the beasts. It didn't look like they wanted to slay the beasts. The man and his dragon took flight and drew closer and spraying the human army with fire. The smell of burned flesh and blood filled the air making John want to vomit.

John now had a birds eye view. He could see for miles around him. In the far off distance he could see a great tower which had rotating spheres at the bottom. It was standing atop a huge hole surrounded by what looked like a dead city. Red smoke was rising moving in a spiral like it was being controlled. At the top the smoke was forming clouds and mixing in with regular clouds forming great bolts of lightning were hitting the top of the tower. The top of the tower was shaped like an octagon and 8 white robed figures were standing at each corner

At their feet glowed four different colors: Red, White, Blue and Green such that two similar colors were opposite each other in the octagon. In the middle of the octagon were four beasts, A huge fury elephant, a red wyvern, a giant eagle and a man whose lower half was that of a shark. The merman was in a big fishbowl and the water seemed to be boiling as he tried to break out. The other beasts were chained down and seemed to be in excruciating pain. Between these four beasts was a man dressed in white as well but the hem of his clothes was golden.

The eyes of all these people as well as the beasts were colored black. A ritual is taking place, John thought remembering all the movies he had watched, but this was live. The man on the dragon was now drawing closer and closer while the dragon occasionally spraying fire to the army below. They were men mindlessly defending this ritual. Lightning was hitting the beasts continuously. It looked like rain made entirely out of lightning. The man directed the dragon to fly higher and higher until he was hidden in the clouds. Lightning above the clouds revealed a shadow of the dragon and meteors began to fall from the sky but the tower and the artificial clouds were surrounded by a barrier. By now the giants were drawing closer and closer to the tower.

It seemed as though the plan was to destroy the rotating mechanism which was what maintained the barrier and have the tower destroyed by the meteorites. John had never imagined such cataclysmic magic existed but he knew now that he was watching the painting from within it. With a final blast four simultaneous bolts struck the beasts and the light from the beasts hit both glowing light in the octagons corners. A current from the wyvern hit the red ones, one from the eagle hit the white ones, the one from the merman hit the blue ones and the one from the mammoth hit the green ones. The beasts died and the white robes fell as if they were being held up by air. Bolts of these colors then hit the man at the center and his eyes glowed white as he started to chant. By now the giants were trying to enter the barrier to destroy the mechanism. The barrier suddenly dropped and the giants begun hitting with their clubs.

The ritual was complete. The man at the top of the tower stomped his foot and the earth shook knocking back the giants about 500 meters. He was clearly relishing his new power. He chanted some words and the red smoke from before started to rise again but instead of moving up it spread away from the tower making the giants stagger and the men die as they bled from their eyes. The barrier returned again preventing the few standing giants from approaching the tower. He hadn't noticed but the dark skies above him had stared to glow white. It was as if the moon had moved above him. The giants started to run from the tower and the man started to laugh as he looked down from where he was hovering.

He turned to look up and shielded his eyes to see where the light was coming from. He heard a dragon roar and as the clouds immediately above him were parted a bright red bolt of lightning hit the top of the barrier destroying the rotating mechanism. This was followed by another blue bolt that hit the man as well as the tower knocking him back. Though he was knocked back he managed to defend his body from that attack using the body of the mammoth. The man who was riding the dragon was now standing on the tower next to the wyvern. He was holding his red blade with both hands. The swordsman said something and gestured towards the battle field and the white robed man seemed to get angry as red mist started forming a shroud around him. The swordsman moved fast cutting off the left hand before he could even react. He then turned around and slashed up from his stomach to his chest before as white robed man jumped back and started healing himself.

"That wont work a second time!" he shouted but the swordsman had already made his move severing his head from his shoulders. He turned back as the head fell and said. "I didn't come here to talk."

Red mist started coming from his body and started descending down the tower as the dragon roared. The swordsman looked up and more meteorites had started to fall. He ran to the edge of the tower and jumped. The dragon swooped down and he made it onto its back. As he flew away the tower was struck and started to crumble, into the hole below.

The darkness begun to surround John again as he watched the man fly towards the moon with the dragon roaring in the distance. When he was completely engulfed, he opened his eyes and it was morning.