It was a normal day. Wake up. Roll out of bed. Smooth down my brown hair to try and not look too much like a twenty-one-year-old hobo before walking to class. Then I would respond to any calls of Jeff coming from various friend. Muddle my way through sleep-inducing classes. Before slinking back to my apartment to consider doing homework before thinking wiser of it and switching to video games. It was when I was booting up my computer that it happened. I had reached down for the power button when I was violently thrown across the room, slamming into the wall cursing as I painfully sprawled on the ground. What the hell was that?

I looked around my now chaotic room with a myriad of books and clothes now thrown around. I cursed, noticing my computer had been sent flying as well. The exposed circuit board was hinting at the large sum that was about to come out of my budget for the year.

I took a few more looks around at the chaos that used to be my mostly neet room before deciding my battered body need at least a drink before I decided to deal with this mess. Luckily my keys and wallet were still easy enough to find as I grabbed them and headed outside.

As soon as I stepped outdoors, all thoughts of my poor room were driven from my head. The typical blue sky stretching off infinitely that one expected to see was now slashed down the middle by an imposing black structure. Its monolithic size seemed to extend well past any human site range as it towered above the earth.

Well, I supposed my question of what caused such a ruckus early was answered. A small bump for something that size should be considered a miracle considering what tiny meteorites do. I must have been stuck staring for quite a while because my best friend and room-mate Matt pushed me saying.

"Hey man, want to stop staring and check it out?"

His impish grin already told me he was going with or without me. Not that I was going to let a chance like this go by. My curiosity was more than enough to override my common sense. And hey, if some aliens were going to walk out and vaporize us with the size of that pillar, we didn't stand much of a chance no matter how far we ran.

We quickly jumped in my car and started heading towards the pillar. Once we got on the highway, I turned to Matt and said,

"Hey, do you even know how far this thing is? I'm hoping not to have to drive halfway across the country to get to it."

He just shrugged and responded,

"Who knows? Let's see if we get any closer. Drive an hour or two, and we don't see any changes we'll head back."

That sounded good enough to me, and I quickly floored it figuring any police would have more important things then speeding tickets on their mind.

There was surprisingly little traffic on the road as I flew towards what I was now calling the black monolith. At first, I had little hope of it being close enough for us to actually reach, but within half an hour it started filling the sky. The black slash down the middle now expanding left and right till all you could see was a massive wall of black rising in front of you. We arrived at the base within an hour.

Once we made it to the monolith I realized that massive did not even begin to describe it. It seemingly extended infinitely in every direction. Just plain featureless black rock filling whatever used to be their before. Walking up to it, we realized it was a structure made of tightly interlocking black blocks each one about 3 foot by 3 foot and all were perfectly square.

I reached out to touch one of them. Yet as soon as my finger touched, a voice defended my ears, expelling all my other sense with a repeating voice that said.

"Welcome to the Tower of Test!"

The messaging repeated in my mind over and over overwhelming as my mind cried out in pain from the deluge of sound until eventually, I passed out from the pain.

With a groan, I woke up to my head, sending out surges of pain like I had spent the entire previous day drinking. I quickly looked around, trying to observe my surrondings. Yet I couldn't pierce the suffocating darkness that smothered my surroundings. Where the fuck was I? The last thing I remembered was touching that weird wall. I stumbled around with no sense of direction until I eventually ran into a wall. Realizing it was the only guide I had is this pitch darkness I soon began following it.

It made numerous turns, and yet I could sense no changes to my environment. I had no idea how long I had walked my sense of time seemingly sucked away along with the rest of my senses by the absolute void of this place. Each step became a challenge now as doubts floated through my head. Where was I even going? And for what? Wouldn't it just be better to stay here and wait for a rescue?

Yet something within me compelled me to keep walking. Surely this tunnel couldn't be infinite. I just wanted one glimmer of light. It was days, or at least it seemed that way when finally a change happened. A flash of light started to flood the passage I could begin to barely make out my surroundings. I was following what seemed a black marble path in a large passage.

I hadn't realised early, but as the light grew brighter and brighter, I realized just how big the tunnel was. I had been hugging one wall assuming the other was close by. But instead, the other wall was a couple of football fields away. It was making me wonder why anyone would make a simple tunnel so large.

As the light continued to brighten, the tunnel slowly changed. Sand started to be littered across the black stone, and a faint sound almost like a chant started to swell up. It good louder as I kept walking until finally, I stumbled into what seemed to be an arena. The circular floor of sand was surrounded on all sides by massive stands filled with beings.

At first I thought I had found humans, but on closer look, I realized they were something diffrent. They had no eyes or ears, or any facial features other than a large mouth with which they all chanted one word perfectly in sync.

"FIGHT, FIGHT, FIGHT, FIGHT, FIGHT"

The roar of the chant was defining though it was filled with no emotion. Delivered in a perfectly monotone voice. Almost as if I was being cheered on by hundreds of thousands of robots. I quickly tried to control my breathing, hoping to stop myself from completely freaking out. It worked to some extent until I was suddenly hit with a sword and shield knocking me to the ground.

As soon as I struggled back to my feet, the chant became even louder as I looked up at one of them approaching me with similar armament.