Shades of Yesterday

"Hah! Good work, lad." Tarin Gazin said. "I thought we were goners for sure."

"Are we alive?" Alyssa said, taking her hands away from her face. "What happened?"

Luna walked over to the Traveller and looked him in the eye. "Who are you?" she said.

"I... don't remember." the Traveller whispered. "But I know this place. I was here before. Long ago. I..."

Suddenly he screamed and clutched his head. Veins bulged out of his neck as he roared at the top of his lungs, staggering back and forth. "It's trying to escape!! It's trying to burst out of me!!! Help me!!! AAAAAAAAAAARGH!!!"

"He's in pain!" Alyssa said, helpfully.

"What should we do?!" Tarin said. "You're a witch, right girl? What should we do?"

"I am not a witch." Luna said with annoyance. "I am a sorceress in training. There is a very large difference. And I certainly have no experience dealing with this sort of thing. Just... stay back. Who knows what could happen?"

"What about that woman we saw just now?" Tarin barked. "Who the hell was she?!"

The Traveller, still screaming, had begun to float several feet into the air, as pulsing red energy surrounded his body. His physical features had started to distend and shift in disturbing ways. Then the red energy grew brighter, and a beam of red light lanced the ground in front of him, tearing up the earth and leaving a crater several miles long. The ground shook, knocking Tarin, Luna and Alyssa off their feet.

"Whoa!" Alyssa cried. "This is dangerous!"

"Damn!" Luna swore. "Where is Master Vigoro when we need him?"

"We must flee!" Tarin cursed. "Staying here is dangerous! He has gone berserk!"

"HeLp mE!!!" the Traveller roared, turning his head towards them. "SoMEthINg is HaPPeniNG to ME?!!"

"Oh no!" Alyssa said. "I've got to do something!"

"Stay away, you little fool!" Luna yelled as Alyssa climbed up and ran toward the traveller. Another lance of red energy rocked the earth, but Alyssa kept running, leaped into the air, bounced off a flying boulder that had been uprooted by the blast, and flew forward to hug the Traveller in mid-air.

Something strange happened. There they hung, floating above the quaking earth, as something glowing and ethereal began to materialize in Alyssa's place. Tarin and Luna watched in confusion as the woman they had seen earlier, the woman with the blood-red hair, hugged the Traveller - or was she Alyssa? The two seemed to be one and the same.

"My dear Siegfried." whispered the woman with the blood-red hair. "You have been through so much."

"Oh, Lyndis." the Traveller sobbed. "I saw all of it. All of it destroyed..."

"Shh." the woman said. "You must live now. You must live for all our sakes. And for the sake of your new friends."

"But I want you, Lyndis." the Traveller said. "What will I do without you? The Universe is meaningless without you. You were my sunlight, my hope, my faith and my religion. What will I do now?"

Instead of an answer, the woman began to sing an odd lullaby-sounding song in another language.

1. Lyndis is able to calm the Traveller.
2. She fails and the Traveller starts blowing more stuff up.

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