i started a joke | zelda & fabius
Madness necessitated chaos.
Most nights, Zelda and the other seven where the cause of the chaos - not purely in creating a kind of monstrous, loud bedlam in the streets, but by upsetting the imposed lawful order of the world simply by spilling a little blood (how fragile man-made things such as law are).
But other nights – very few, nearly nonexistent, in number – the chaos was struck upon Zelda and the rest. Such as now, with broken bonds discarded on the floor like sacrificial animal bones and screaming quiet littering the Estate’s basement rather than screams. It hadn’t been her plan for the evening to chase her toy in a game of predator and prey (she had already won that above ground, in a subtler match of wits and bared legs), yet it was not an unwelcome twist. As an agent of chaos, Zelda as bound to enjoy it, after all.
Still, when she had found her victim’s absence rather than his body when she returned to where he had been restrained earlier, Zelda had been quick to text Fabius - Come to the basement. Now. - as an act of precaution. Her man was drugged and disoriented, would be lost amongst the nefarious winding halls of his prison, but he was large and strong and could have choked the life out of Zelda with just one hand. She waited in the barren, sterile hall next to the door until she heard Fabius, then reaching a hand out to grab above his elbow.
“He escaped.” The story was as short, and as simple, as that. Her voice was detached, even amused, but there was a feline tightness in the way Zelda held Fabius’ arm that proved she was aware of the severity of the situation. “Play hide and seek with me, Fabius.”