Absorbs TARDIS

'We must find a way to take this marvellous craft back with us, Stefan. The Doctor will play hard to retrieve it. Or rather, his young friends will on his behalf. Such is the way of things.‘ The Toymaker closed his eyes and began an incantation.

Stefan took a step back - there was always something frightening about his master doing this sort of trick.

The Toymaker‘s face seemed to shimmer, to dissolve, and was replaced by a head-shaped image of stars, planets and space.

Then the blue box he wanted so much began similarly to shimmer, growing indistinct around the edges and blurring.

At the centre of the box, what the Toymaker had referred to as a 'swirling vortex of energy‘ on previous occasions when he had performed this trick, manifested. Once, Stefan would have called it the work of demons, spirits of evil. Now he knew it was just the science of the Toymaker - the magicks of the Great Old Ones.

The vortex flowed outwards - it was as if the blue box were no longer a solid object, but a metallic liquid. It momentarily held its shape then, slowly, from the centre, poured upwards and into the Toymaker‘s visage, as if he was sucking the liquefied box into himself.

A moment later the Toymaker‘s face returned and he smiled at the space where the box, this TARDIS, had stood.

Gesturing expansively, he drew up his robes. The robot walked obediently into their folds and Stefan did likewise, feeling a momentary sickness as he travelled back out of time and space and into the eerie whiteness of the Toymaker‘s realm.

Recovering himself, he was about to return to another of the tasks set him by his master when he felt the Toymaker‘s hand on his shoulder.

Touch was rare - Stefan was either very popular today, or in severe trouble.

'Neither, my loyal one,‘ the Toymaker purred. 'But the casual brutality of the murder you committed on the space station was perhaps misjudged. We could have temporarily incapacitated and convinced the man he was seeing things. Now, I fear, the humans will begin games of their own, searching for a murderer.‘

'Master, surely they cannot find us here?‘

'No, but they have tools that will recognise the energies I used to transport the TARDIS and ourselves. It alert the Doctor.‘

***

Divided Loyalties, Chapter 9