Interlude Five

"It is well known among the Brotherhood of Evil Angels that when the Master visits a witch's Sabbath, he emerges from a blue box," Five read aloud, the timbre of his voice at odds with the quietude of the antique shop nestled on a cobblestone street in York. He sat at a dust-laden writing desk tucked in the back of the dimly lit store, a bastion of the past amidst the rows of once-loved objects.

The journal lay open on the desk, its pages splayed like the wings of a bird too long in captivity. Its leather cover was a map of creases, each line a route through time marred by the touch of inquisitive, sometimes greedy, hands. The paper was tinged with the brown hue of tea-stained linen, and the ink, faded to a soft charcoal grey, was still legible under the warm glow of an oil lamp flickering gently by Five's side.

The scent of old books and aged wood permeated the air, the kind of smell that spoke of secrets and stories. It merged with the smell of rain that had begun to tap against the shop's leaded windows, a comforting rhythm in an ocean of silence.

It was alleged to be the personal chronicle of Reverend Nathaniel Crowe, a name shrouded in the kind of whispered reverence and fear usually reserved for a Puritan witch hunter of the late 17th century. The man was an enigma, cloaked in the garb of piety and the macabre dedication of one who claimed communion with both the divine and the diabolical—or at least that was what the shopkeeper had said.

Five took that with a grain of salt. After all, it was part of a sales pitch.

Before being assigned this quest, he knew little about the history of the occult, particularly concerning hunters. It was not something one could learn trapped in a government-sponsored lab. What he had learned since pleased him little.

Being different, he hardly liked learning about all the horrible things that humans had done to those who were different.

As Five hovered his hands over the open pages, the faintest energy pulsed against his palms—a dull echo of the past that resonated with his modest psychometric talents. It was as if the very fibers of the paper were impregnated with the essence of its author, a subtle but unmistakable presence that tethered the tome to its time of origin. There was a quality to this resonance that spoke of authenticity, a genuine artifact of a bygone epoch, not the clever trickery of a modern forger's hand.

The ink itself seemed to hold the remnants of Crowe's zeal, its once-bold strokes now tempered by the march of time into a frail and wavering script. And yet, the energy it held was anything but frail; it hummed with the convictions of a man who walked the earth with a heavy burden—the burden of his relentless pursuit of those he deemed in league with the shadows.

Of course, it could have belonged to some other, less reputable zealot from the same time period. But that made little difference to Five.

It was the mention of the Blue Box that convinced Five that even if it was a fake, it was one with relevant information.

He vividly remembered the Blue Box. He also remembered Ten's screams when the foolish boy tried to peer into it.

There was a drawing of the Blue Box alongside the text, but it was a crude rendition, more a product of fearful imagination than an accurate representation. It was boxy and angular, with exaggerated, almost comical proportions. It bore an ominous, heavy door, suggestive of the gates of Hell rather than any earthly construct. The lines were jagged, etched with a trembling hand, imbuing the image with a sense of foreboding. Its colour, even faded by time, was a sinister midnight blue that seemed to drink in the light around it, as if the ink itself were made from crushed cobalt and the blackness of a starless night.

Crowe's confession that none of the accused witches he had questioned—tortured, in truth—had actually witnessed such an apparition was tucked away in a footnote, almost as an afterthought. They spoke of it in whispers, passing down terrified rumours that morphed with every retelling. The Blue Box in his journal was thus born out of a cacophony of rumours and the fevered imaginations of those who believed they saw the devil's chariot in every shadow.

The witch hunter had embellished the margins with flame-like filigree, suggesting the Box was surrounded by the fires of perdition. He described it as a "cabinet of souls" from whence the devil would emerge to hold court over his unsavoury congregation. To his mind, steeped in religious fervour and the fight against unseen evil, this Blue Box was no mere container but a portal to the netherworld, a conduit for sin to enter the world of men.

In the sketch, dark figures bowed and cowered before it, their forms smudged and distorted, as if to capture the essence of their eternal damnation. For Crowe, and perhaps his contemporaries who might have glimpsed this illustration, the Blue Box was a tangible representation of the battle between good and evil, a vessel of demonic arrival that could only have been conjured by the darkest of magics.

The truth of the Blue Box was more mundane at first glance and more disturbing upon further reflection. From what Five remembered, it was a structure that at a casual look appeared almost modern, almost of human make. Its blue was neither vibrant nor faded into obscurity, but a peculiar in-between that unsettled the eye. The door, marked by faded gold lettering that read "Police Public Call Box," seemed all too commonplace.

And yet, there was a deep-seated wrongness about it. The ordinary colors and shapes seemed off in a way that Five couldn't pinpoint—the more he tried to remember, the more elusive the details became. It was as if his mind was instinctively shielding itself from a memory too harmful to fully grasp, leaving behind only a haunting fascination.

So when he saw something quite like it on the second night he was in York—during a rerun of "Doctor Who," a sci-fi show on television—the shock was palpable.

The next thing he did was to acquire as many episodes as possible. This was a benefit of his cover: a wealthy young man taking a year off from college to explore the old country. The hotel he stayed in while he amassed bits and pieces of occult memorabilia was more than accommodating. You could ask, and they would provide—anything money could buy.

After all, it was the hotel that provided both the list and direction to all sorts of curious little shops, much like this one.

The VHS tapes still waited for him back at his hotel room. He was tempted to ignore his actual work to delve into them, but he knew better. Rin was not one to disappoint.

And the small lizard, crawling under his clothes, was a subtle reminder that even if he was continents away, he was never beyond Rin's reach.

But it was comforting. If he was in danger, he knew that Rin would save him, or at least avenge him.

With a sigh, he closed the journal. "I'll take this one as well," he informed the shop assistant, who had been waiting with quiet anticipation.

"An excellent choice, sir," the assistant replied with a practiced smile, one that betrayed neither interest nor surprise at the selection.

Five could have reached out with his mind and plucked the very thoughts and emotions from the shopkeeper's head, but he simply didn't care to. He didn't bother to register any details; they all seemed to blur together in his memory, insignificant in the grand scheme of his mission.

He stood, and his gaze inadvertently caught a peculiar mirror positioned against the far wall. It was a full-length body mirror, framed in what appeared to be an amalgamation of bones and roots intricately woven together, each node and joint meticulously crafted to form a macabre lattice. The glass itself was old, tinged with the sepia tones of age, and as he moved, the reflection within wavered, as if underwater.

This, too, was a familiar sight for him, but he took a moment to admire his reflection.

A handsome young man in a very expensive suit stared back at him. Five had really taken a shine to clothes after being allowed to choose for himself. He appreciated how they concealed what he felt was wrong with his body.

And since starting this quest, he found that he enjoyed the formality of expensive menswear even more. The cut of the suit accentuated his broad shoulders and the firm, flat chest he worked so hard to achieve.

It had taken a lot of work to sculpt his body into the version he always knew it should be, but it was worth every moment for the satisfaction it brought him.

Five had always known himself to be male, but his body had disagreed. When he had confided this to Rin, he was given a choice.

Rin offered to shape him into the person he always knew himself to be, or he could learn to do it himself.

Biofeedback was one of the foundational lessons. To master the external, one must first command the internal. Five believed this was why witches were subjected to the trial by water. Any psychic with even a modicum of training could regulate their breath for an impressively long duration.

Of course, it was one thing to modulate one's heart rate, to slow down or speed up metabolism, and another thing entirely to set hormones into motion by sheer will. Reshaping flesh as if it were clay was a much grander feat.

The downside to such mastery was a complete awareness of his body. Clothes might conceal, but he was acutely aware of what he lacked between his legs. No matter. Though he might not possess the skill now, with enough practice, he was confident he would succeed even in this.

"I'll be taking the mirror, too," Five declared. It wasn't an item directly linked to his primary quest, but Rin would be pleased with it. Five could sense that the object bore a long history of occult significance, and he knew Rin could craft wonders from such things.