PokèDruids [PkmnWattys2016]

Backstabbed!

"Eros? EROS? Where are you?" The voice belonged to no other than Sicily.

Greeting this was a voice that belonged to Hank, shouting "SHUT UP FLYGON I'M TRYING TO SLEEP!"

Cerci remarked to Eros, "Well, she has been acting strange lately. I'd get going just in case she tries to check in here."

With that, Eros nodded shyly and left for his room, avoiding Sicily and getting back to sleep. Sicily walked into Eros' room much later and woke him up, detailing a dream she had where he was in grave danger. Eros couldn't give a fuck if he tried and told her to go back to sleep, which she did (but as Eros found out, her stories. Never. End. So he lose some sleep.)

The next day, and to everybody's surprise, Xerxes and Dusk returned to the fort. While discussing their adventures in full and mentioning the suspicious man named the Marquis de Magus (which Cerci took note of) and their encounter with Giratina, they had also spoken about how they had partied for a few days at the music festival before blowing out and returning home exhausted. At this time, everybody else made the effort to detail their stories as well, with Sicily and Eros speaking of their encounter with Zekrom. Hank and Cerci continued this by talking about the witch hunt and bragging to Eros that they could destroy the statue and he couldn't.

Piecing together the current situation, it seemed as if more enemies were made than progress, as only two of the groups had obtained a humanity stone. With Zekrom, Keldeo, the Marquis de Magus, the witch hunters and whoever else will bother to get in their ways against them, restoring Equilibrium seemed grim at best.

Nothing exceptional happened for the rest of the day, as everybody either spent it working to restore the fort or practice their abilities. Eros would create his magical missiles and fire them at rocks, as well as attempt to make them shrink or grow. Sicily would work on her Dragon Breath, while developing the ability to use other moves, such as Sonic Boom and Earthquake (she would sometimes travel far from the fort to practice this, as she wished to avoid damaging it). Hank would drill his Pikachu on its attacks, although everybody hated how the thunderclap of his moves would nearly deafen everybody as Surge released the move Thunder over and over. Xerxes had been practicing pilfering small objects from Eros, to which Sicily would receive the blame. Cerci would work on installing the humanity stones into equilibrium, which gave everybody an odd feeling as the device activated for the first time. Aside from this, she also worked on Eros' request (which is secret). Finally, Dusk went about patrolling the fort, attacking any Pokemon who dared intrude.

All was going fine for a few more days, save for Sicily's behavior, until Dusk appeared before Cerci with odd news: "Cerci, I bring news.
A child has arrived here.
She says you know her."

At this time, Cerci was working on restoring the second humanity stone and implanting it into the Equilibrium. She had a single dim light at her side, which was enough to illuminate far into the room. The glyphs on the ground, forming a general circular pattern all around 10 holes in the ground, glowed ever so slightly, giving one a sense of internal balance and peace as they drew near. Cerci looked up to reply, "Who is it? I wasn't expecting anybody." Dirt and dust covered her face, as the device was truly ancient.

"'Tis a girl today.
I know not what she seeks here.
We did not speak, lady."

"Ugh. Fine, I'll go see who it is. Maybe scare her off. Can't be anything but trouble." Cerci left promptly, extinguishing her light and headed for the small flight of stairs leaving the area.

Cerci eventually made it to the catwalk above the bolted gates, looking over the trim to find a couple of children and a woman standing outside the gates. Irritated by Dusk's inability to count outside of poetry, she shouted from atop the catwalk, "Who's there?"