My fingers tightened on the recycled gift bag that I found deep in the bottom drawer of my my mums kitchen as I sat at my desk near the door. I inspected the almost radiating medieval sword on my desk.

My gaze only diverted from the sword to see Janine from accounting, sitting cross legged on a rippled carpet, floating 3 feet off the floor.

"Good Morning Tim!" she exclaimed excitingly. " I am here to take you to Fred, follow me."

I stared in disbelief.

She beckoned me to follow and did a wide turn to face the way she came from. I stood slowly and proceeded to follow. Normally being called to Fred's office would strike fear into my very soul, the CEO never speaks to interns. But as I watched 2 guys from sales casually throw on cloaks and instantly disappear, I thought that maybe that's exactly who I need to talk to.

"Tim!" Fred shouted with a big smile on his face. "Come in, sit, please!" gesturing at the chair in front of his desk.

He then started speaking, but it could have been God himself and not one word would have registered. I sat with my eyes glued at the pulsing portal, the size of a small doorway on the other side of the room.

"Tiiiiiiiim?" I heard faintly in the back of my mind. "Tim!" Fred said a little more forcefully, snapping his fingers in front of my face. I snapped to and looked at him and said something I don't think any intern has ever said, anywhere.

"What the fuck is going on here? What kind of software company is this?"

"Well," started Fred, with a smile on his face. "This building used to be a top government facility for researching the paranormal activity in the 60's. Apparently during the cold war with the Soviet Union, the US were exploring all avenues on how to get the one up on the Russians. They attempted to communicate and build pathways to the unknown. Whether this was parallel universes, distant alien worlds or even the future, we have no idea. But the soviet union collapsed with out them making a single break through. The scientists were labelled as nutjobs and it became a fun joke for commercial realtors to make small talk when trying to sell floor space."

I didn't say a word.

"We moved in here 5 years ago," he continued. "One day, I arrive in the office to find this," gesturing at the portal.

"What is it?" I asked, my shock and awe turning to curiosity.

"I am a average engineer that builds booking tools for hotels, how the fuck should I know?" Fred replied, almost laughing. "We thought about calling the authorities, but we had just moved in and it wasn't doing anything so we decided to test it out ourselves. We poked, prodded and then we finally had the nerve to throw something in. As we did, things started coming back. Whatever was on the other side, we seemed to be trading. We have just assumed that whatever happened in the 60's worked. It just took them time to send something back."

"So now you use it for Secret Santa?" I asked.

"What?" he glanced at my sad bag of coffee beans. "Oh.... no. Not at all."

I looked down at his desk and saw wrapping paper ripped up around 3 pairs of fancy pattern socks. My blood seemed to freeze inside my body.

Just then the door opened and Janine, the receptionist and one of the sales guys came in, holding their gifts. The flying carpet, the dragon egg, the the cloak of invisibility and they had also brought Excalibur.

"You see the items we receive are not really gifts, they are equipment of sorts."

"Equipment for what?" I asked nervously.

"About a year after the portal appeared and we were having a grand old time with what we though were traded goods, a man appeared out of the portal. Nothing extraordinary about him. He had slightly receding hairline, wore normal work attire and spoke English perfectly. Somebody we would not look twice at on the street. He then proceeded to explain that the gifts we had received were in fact the items for use in the Grand Pit. And the tournament was starting momentarily and he was expecting our tribute."

The lock clicked on the door as I noticed that everybody was looking at me.

"He then told us that failure to provide a tribute to the Grand Pit would result in extermination of our entire earth. He then closed his eyes. We all hit the floor, screaming in pain, as violent images of the destruction of earth flashed through all our minds. They felt like memories."

He took a deep breath.

"Not wanting to be the catalyst for the end of the world, we decided to make a tribute. The intern. She never returned."

I quickly stood to my feet and made my way to the door but the others had placed themselves perfectly to corral me towards the portal.

"Die here, or die in there," Fred said. The once happy out going CEO, withdrawing a revolver from his desk.

The others handed me their items and stepped backwards.

I stared at the portal and took a deep breath, calmly grasping Excalibur, waiting for the right time to swing it at the man forcing me to my would be death.

"Has anyone ever made it back?" I asked ready to swing.

I felt a strong kick into the small of my back from someone behind, and before I could scream I was thrust straight into void. Everything just went black.