Oh nature why hast thou abandoned thee?

Thales got dressed, he wore his new robe.

He had already washed his face and eaten breakfast. Berries and the like

He wanted to step outside to make a call but something strange happened.

Thales had been called somehow, how anyone even knew he had a Yìshí was beyond him.

But he heard the cries of the cicada.

"Hello? Whom am I speaking to?"

Thales considered the fact he may have embarrassingly called himself because he wasn't completely sure on how this worked.

He had no answer.

And then it hit him, literally.

He had a blade sticking out of his stomach.

How?

"How can I be pierced by a blade?"

"No a better question is how did my senses not pick up on anyone you'd have to be an eternal sage to sneak up on me, but this is evidently not one…"

"What the hell is going on??"

"It's like this person lacked a presence to the world"

Thales coughed.

He felt dizzy

"Poison too? But why and how?"

"Nothing is on my level to poison me and sneak up on me, these skills are too basic"

"Goddamn it" Thales shrieked while clutching his phone.

He finally heard a voice from the Yìshí.

"Yahoo, Thales Miray. Moshi Moshi. I've always wanted to say that I read it in a comic"

"Doesn't it just suck getting stabbed by basic weapons, doesn't it suck getting poisoned and being unable to heal it. Doesn't it suck Thalesss"

Thales heard a childish, high pitched voiced from his phone.

"Well I'm not a bad guy I don't kill humans, so this job was more of a special request, it was very hard to pull it off but man, I was paid a ton for it, money buys dreams Thaless! So save up, ok my fellow human"

"Now, I didn't stab you some woman I collaborated with did, she has innateness that lets her do nifty things like that, she is from an assassins guild but I told her not to kill you ok. By the way I'm an artist so even though you won't be one of my serial killings you have to be my first bodiless signature."

Thales couldn't comprehend the madness coming out the guys mocking voice and constant laughter.

"Hmm right now I am called the clown, but my epithet will go great better than the clown and the clown will become the clowns, now say hello to the big guy I like to call my friend"

"Here comes my part!"

Thales had already collapsed but he saw a sight for sore eyes.

A nearby dumpster had opened.

Out slithered out a boneless creature that resembled a jester, it just stood there in the dark with yellow eyes, smiling a wide grin. It waved at him. It looked long like a dangly man, with a white face and jesters hat. It was just smiling.

With the boneless jester, out rolled out a bowling ball of a man, he was a large man. The largest Thales had seen in his life.

He wore a little jester's hat too; he had a snout like nose and beady eyes, a perverted face also.

A round body

"He he surveillance went well"

"What kind of idiot goes to an alleyway though, you don't seem to be that tough" The fat clown mocked.

"Well a job is a job"

The clown uttered something, perhaps it was an incantation Thales had no idea what it was though it was beyond his comprehension.

((****** ****))

The last thing Thales saw was that perverted smile, the smile of a hideous degenerate, with a glint of madness in his eyes.

His awareness was fading he saw the Clowns walk into the wall as if the job was done they had no care for physics.

The last words he heard was from his phone

"Show me something interesting as a human one day, if you still are one bwahaha, if you survive, humans are resilient after all" The clown on the speaker the faceless clown laughed it was a maddening laugh.

Thales would remember that but would not understand it.

Thales shortly after that woke up somewhere; his consciousness came back to him.

He was in a temple of sorts, or maybe a church.

He scanned the room.

He saw people knocked out on the floor, there will, reaped from them but they looked alive.

He saw his friend and Brother William Blade was among them.

He saw a half drunken wine bottle half the size of him sprawled across the ground.

And another smashed to pieces.

He finally saw it, what he should have noticed from the start a scroll with writing on it in one hand and in his other hand a head detached from a body at his feet. "Who was this? What the hell is going on?"