Neptune rode into Roth Logos on a private cargo barge owned by a Third Stratum Wayfinder that went by the name of Virtue. After several hours of haggling with the Candidate in Second Stratum city of Vel Talin, Neptune had relented and shook hands on an obscene price for his unlawful transportation downward. No questions asked, no authorities flagged. Those were the conditions, but as plainly illegal as they were, Neptune had hitched rides on the ships of several Wayfinders that had agreed to smuggle around for a third the price.

Through Neptune’s hours of haggling, he came to understand that even Warden-given names have little correlation to a Candidate’s true self. Virtue was a rotten, two-century old merchant who had no qualms harboring a probable heretic like Neptune, but simply wanted the best coin out of it that he good.

So it was that Neptune found himself in a shipping container piled with new-issue mechanoid body shells, no windows, and no knowledge of how the journey was going outside. Virtue could be delivering him straight to the arms of the Inquisition and Neptune wouldn’t have known until they’d arrived.

But Virtue had brought him to Roth Logos as promised, Neptune had paid him, and slunk off through the massive cargo docks and into the city without another word.

Roth Logos was a pillar city, a construction quite common in the Lower Strata where the Wardens tended to play more with gravitational fields. The city was built with its buildings protruding a full 360 degrees around the gravitational pillar it was built around. The pillar extended from one end of a massive cavern to the other, the outer edges of the cavern having their gravity fields flipped such that buildings could be built inward and meet with those in the center. Somewhere in the middle of those buildings that connected the pillar to the outer walls of the cavern, the orientation of gravity had to switch entirely, and the architecture had to adapt to that. For the fresh Candidates of the First Stratum, arriving at a place like this must be a startling puzzle for the mind.

Neptune had more than accustomed himself to the manipulation of gravity, however. The Seraph Rameil had personally taught him a variety of even more confusing techniques than those governing Roth Logos.

When he arrived at the hotel in which his associate Aspentas had arranged his stay, he found his room had already been booked. It would have been wonderful if Aspentas had been on top of Neptune’s transportation downward as well, but some things just couldn’t be organized without attracting unwanted attention.

There was, of course, a message left in the suite when he entered – a mental engraving placed above Neptune’s bed, fitted such that only Neptune’s mind (or that of an exceptionally sensitive sorcerer) would be able to perceive it.

The packages have passed Warden Apollyon’s examination. The Logos Tel tribe guides them to Roth Logos now. You are to await them here. I trust you can stay out of trouble until then. Prophet bless, and Hail Divinitas.

“Ah, Penty. Never been one for heartfelt words.”

It must have been decades since they last spoke. Neptune and Aspentas had first met each other in the Second Stratum, though neither had even heard of the Apocrypha at that time. Neptune could only wonder at how many centuries had passed since those early days, when the both of them had first been delivered into the Overseen, slowly climbing their way through the Culling Strata, as the first three Strata were called. They had both been so human then.

Once they passed into the Fourth Stratum, the world and their minds opened up entirely, and nothing was ever the same. The barrier between the Third and Fourth Strata did something to the mind – if there was a point at which Neptune could confidently say he lost his humanity, that was it. He hardly remembered anything before it.

Neptune had brought nothing save for the overpriced body he wore. The body’s craftsman had been one of the best in the Fourth Stratum, and had managed to make a genetically perfect copy of a face that was definitely not Neptune’s. All the Candidates in the Culling Strata were mostly organic still, and Neptune had to blend in, but he sure as hell wasn’t going to bring his own face to show. If the Inquisition somehow tracked him down, any ties to the real Neptune could endanger his original body, tucked unconscious into a public stasis field in the Sixth Stratum city of Monrivat.

Aside from the face, the body was as mechanoid as was plausibly deniable for a Candidate of the Culling Strata. That meant full steel across the body, cognitive breaching device right forearm, three compact incendiary missiles dormant in his left. He had hydraulic muscle support in the legs, optical implants showing readouts of the whole body-system mainframe, and neurosynaptic accelerators improving reaction time, along with a hundred other technologies running their code through his organs.

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

The Apocrypha hadn’t agreed to buy him such an expensive item. Neptune had paid for it out of his own pocket, as a little gift to himself.

And because he understood how important the two packages were to the Apocrypha’s future. If they had passed Apollyon’s test and entered the Overseen, that meant everything was going to change. It was farther than the Apocrypha had gotten in a millennium. This body was for the future of the Apocrypha, and the Overseen itself.

Neptune went to the window, looking out across Roth Logos. It was always night time in the massive cavern, and the city was lit up brilliantly to match. Above him, Neptune’s hotel connected around the 50th floor to a building rising up from the outer side of the cavern. Ahead of him, the buildings rolled back around the pillar until they disappeared entirely. Air traffic flowed up and down the pillar outside Neptune’s window, and along the cavern wall in the sky above. Neptune estimated the population to be just under a million, maybe. A quaint place, considering the metropolitan monstrosities he had grown used to in the Upper Strata.

The air ruptured apart where Neptune’s head had just been. The window pane in front of him broke in the bullet’s wake, spitting mundane glass onto his face.

Neptune’s body-system mainframe calculated his reaction time as .003 seconds. Thank Divinitas for those neurosynaptic accelerators.

A rifle round, tungsten carbide if the optical analysis was to be trusted. Housekeeping would be questioning him about the hole in the back wall.

Neptune’s optical implants had immediately analyzed the trajectory of the shot and suggested several possible locations of its origin, with an 80 percent likelihood of the rifle round having been slingshotted around the gravitational field of the pillar, thereby letting the shooter remain safely out of sight.

Damnit. How had they found him?

Neptune spun as Glass shattered behind him. A portal exploded into existence where the round had struck the wall. A Cognitive Targeting round, Neptune realized – expensive things, but capable of detonating into a rift when triggered.

Neptune flung himself to the side as a hail of Amorphic tracer-rounds punched through the rift, shattering more of the suite’s windows and leaving thin trails of cracked air in their wake. A single one of those in him and Neptune would black out from the Glass they produced.

With a quick hand sign and the harmonizing mental command, Neptune summoned a defensive ward between him and the portal. Invisible, but sensed easily enough to anyone attuned to Amorphium.

A tall, silver mechanoid in a sweeping blood-red cloak emerged. An Inquisition Witch Hunter.

“Candidate Ouranos.”

Neptune’s alias. The one the room had been registered under, and the one he had given Virtue. Had that slimy Wayfinder betrayed him? He supposed it didn’t matter now. At least the Inquisition hadn’t figured out who Ouranos really was.

“You are wanted for treasonous entry into the Culling Strata. The Axioma makes it very clear that none save the Wayfinders Guild are to descend through the Overseen. For this transgression, you will come before the Celestial Court, or you will die by my hand.”

The Witch Hunter sounded almost bored, sliding a smoking, long-barreled revolver back into a shoulder rig as he spoke. He had evidently noticed the mental ward between him and Neptune. It would take quite a few bullets to penetrate that.

“Based on your approach, I doubt you feel like bringing me back for trial, do you?”

“It matters not, Ouranos. Either way, you will face the Archwarden’s justice.”

Several other silver mechanoids filed out of the portal behind the Witch Hunter. Neptune’s stomach dropped.

Puppets. They were all a head shorter than the Witch Hunter himself, but built thick and durable, each carrying a thin black sword with the Archwarden’s crescent moon emblazoned on the handguard. Not Amorphic weapons, but still dangerous. Each blade would be energized to the point of volatility, able to cut through flesh or mundane steel like butter.

That wasn’t even the worst of it. The Witch Hunter’s consciousness would be split between each of the puppets, maintaining perfect mental communication at all times. They could coordinate attacks with silent, deadly efficiency, and Neptune wouldn’t suspect a thing.

Maintaining a conscious hold over that many bodies at once was incredibly strenuous as well, meaning this Witch Hunter had climbed to the Fifth or Sixth Stratum at least. Neptune’s original body might have been able to match him, but this one?

Even with its enhancements, the body still lacked the exceptionally honed Amorphic cortex of Neptune’s original.

But why was a Witch Hunter of that level in such a low Stratum? No time to think about that.

It was definitely time to run.