The 8-foot-tall Praying Mantises sliced up the remaining ants before turning their heads towards Damon’s house. They slowly move and surround the house in every direction. All of them, like clockwork, raised their scythes above their heads. All at once they slammed their claws into the ground, and the next second the house was cut up into millions of pieces. The rubble of the house covers the basement door trapping Damon inside.
“THE HELL JUST HAPPENED,” Damon yells inside his head as the whole basement shakes.
The mantises walk up to the remains of the house and use their blades to sift through the pieces as if they are looking for something. The scratches of the dozens of mantises all echo throughout Damon’s ears. One particular mantis moves apart some debris when it sees a handle on the floor. It taps on the basement door and hears that it's hollow inside. It would then stab its legs into the door to see what’s underneath.
“Fuck.” Damon mumbles under his breath as he sees the leg pierce through the door.
But before the mantis gets through a ‘portal’ opens up behind Damon. A hand concealed by a leather glove appears through the ‘portal’ grabs Damon by the collar of his shirt and pulls him backward through the ‘portal’. The next thing Damon saw was a world of darkness with the exception of a medieval-esque store. He walked up to the store and went inside.
“Hello?”
A man whose body is entirely covered by a black cloak stands up from behind the counter, and objects of a peculiar nature are littered across the store.
“Why hello there! I welcome you to my humble store, where we can provide anything you need to fulfill your destiny!” Though Damon cannot see his face through the black smoke engulfing the man's face beneath his hood. Damon responds.
“My Destiny?”
“Why yes your destiny! Well not really your destiny, cuz those are nonexistent. But the Slogan is great right?! And we have everything you can and can’t imagine!”
“What would I pay with? I don’t have anything of value to you.”
Damon cannot see his mouth but he could tell he was smiling from ear to ear. “Well, I’m glad you asked. You’re right you don’t have anything of value to me, well besides that little orb you have, but I don’t need it so hold onto it. But in the future, you will see I commonly do a little thing called gambling. I will give you some items that’ll help you survive and you’ll pay me back later!”
The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.
The merchant continues while holding up a vial with a purplish liquid “Let’s start with this little thing, I call it a gene stabilizer.”
“What does it do?” Damon asks
“Well it stabilizes your genes, dummy, it’s in the name!” The merchant laughs heartily.
“I’m just poking fun at you, what it does is improve you’re potential to the maximum your species can provide, which isn’t much really. It’s an expensive item, it’s quite wasted on you due to the frailness of your species, but you’ll need it so here you go.” He hands the vial to Damon
“What do I do with it?”
“Drink it silly”
Damon pops open the vial and drinks it in one big gulp. He doesn’t feel any different.
“Is something supposed to happen?”
“Not for you anyway, there’s not much to improve upon your weak genome.”
“Let's head on to the next item in question! Take this little bug egg!” The man hands Damon an amber-colored object that is shaped like a chicken's egg.
“You want me to raise a bug after all they’ve done to my home?!”
The merchant leans forward and replies “Exactly! And it’s not the same kind of bugs that raided your planet, this particular one is considered holy in many galaxies, unlike those filthy Harvesters.”
“Harvesters?” Damon says bewildered
“Huh? Oh yeah, your planet has never heard their names before, The Harvesters are what our universe calls them. They are a banded coalition of many different spacial-insects species, their goal is to destroy and drain the energy out of any planet they come across.”
“Where do they come from?”
“Well they come from everywhere, they are a coalition, not a singular species. Their members come from different corners of the universe.”
“And why us?”
“You just so happened to be in their path, and…oh!. I almost forgot! You also need to watch out for the Travelers and for nomads from inter galaxies.”
“Travelers?”
“You’ve been asking a lot of questions huh? Well, I’ll only answer a couple more. The travelers are a race of humanoid people that have adapted to living in the vacuum of space, they tend to travel with the Harvesters because of their common goal. To destroy planets! Both species feed off of destroyed planets and heavenly bodies. The nomads are just visitors from any other galaxy, they could be pirates watch out for them. And one more thing! You incubate the Scarab by bathing it in harvester blood, the purer the better!”
“The Scarab? Is that the name of this egg?”
“Yup yup yup! Well, I’m tired of answering questions so I’ll drop you off at a sanctuary now, it should be relatively safe there!”
“Wait! I have so much more to ask!” Damon yells
“HAHAHHAH TOO LATE! GOOD LUCK!”
The last thing Damon heard was the laughing of the mysterious merchant as everything faded from his vision before he passed out. An unknown amount of time later, Damon woke up to a bunny nibbling on his ear.
“Aaah dammit, scram you stupid rabbit!” Damon yelled as he swung his arms at the animal, causing it to flee.
“Where the hell am I? The sanctuary he said right?” The young man said as looked up at the giant pair of medieval gates that now looked over him alongside a whole kingdom to boot.