Shepherd Errin took Yong, Dao and Mendes to his house where he said they wouldn’t be disturbed. He lit a few candles and bid his guests to take a seat around the kitchen table. While the preacher prepared some tea, Yong looked around. This house had barely been touched by the artillery fire that had left most of Apachin in ruins. The walls showed some cracks that had been repaired with filler, but apart from that there were no obvious signs of damage. A nicely carved bookshelf caught Yong’s eye. Instead of sitting down at the table he went over and looked at the covers of the books. There was, of course, the Bible, several actually, in different formats and conditions. He pulled out one that seemed particularly old, with a worn-out leather cover. He leafed through the pages. The paper was old and yellow, stained on some pages and the letters sometimes faded. There were illustrations too, in the style of traditional Chinese woodcarvings. He put back the book and looked at the titles of other volumes. There were other philosophical and religious works, among them teachings of Confucius or Lao Tzu, but also history books and books with fairy tales and legends from Earth-That-Was. Yong chose one of the latter and looked at the pictures inside again. He didn’t notice that Errin had stepped behind him.

“Funny you should look at that picture in particular”, the preacher murmured.

“Why?” Yong responded and took a closer look at the picture in front of him. It showed two men flying through the sky with wings. One of the men was plunging towards the sea underneath them, his wings burning.

“Well, that’s the story of Daedalus and Ikarus, an old Greek myth from Earth-That-Was. They crossed their king and build wings to escape, but Ikarus, he was flying too close to the sun. He got burned and died. A bit like you, without the dying of course. You crossed your masters, and you were flying a bit too close to a certain sun, and you got burned in a way. You paid a price.”

“You really know far too much about my past tha