Dip liked having kids around.
Shiloh, her daughter, wasn't really around anymore-- and even then, it'd been some time since she was a child. When Dip got the opportunity to trade a weapon for some stones to revive, she went to work. She'd made a beautiful halberd, toiled away at it for weeks, and in return, recieved three gemstones.
She had also, incidentally, made the mistake of mentioning this to Vivilene, who had also not been a child in many years. And... well, it was hard to say no to that face.
They sat around Dip's forge. The humanoid lifted herself up and offered a hand. A piece of her stone cleaved off her palm. "Here," she said. "Just focus your magic on it."
Vivilene jittered with excitement. She quite liked children, too, though she'd never exactly wanted to raise one herself. It seemed like a good compromise to help Serendipity with something like this-- and Vivilene did also quite like being helpful.
She took the shard of quartz into her hands, turning it over in the rough pads. "Just... like any other spell?" She asked. Dip shrugged at her and offered a nod. She tried, though nothing quite happened.
Her eyes flicked up towards the blacksmith. "Just give it another try," she told Vivilene. "Magic's fickle, yeah?"
Vivilene shifted on the spot, her hooves scratching against the cave floor. "It's hot," she complained briefly, as an excuse. There was a forge nearby which certainly didn't help her concentrate, sure, but like Serendipity had said, magic was just fickle sometimes.
And, today, it was being especially fickle.
The cervitaur's eyebrow twitched as her magic failed to summon again. Her pale eyes flitted up from the stone, to Dip, and back down to the stone again.
"You can't watch me do it," she said.
"... alright," Dip said, turning her back to Vivilene and folding her arms. The hybrid watched her do it with wide, deer-in-headlight eyes, before looking back to the stone in her hands.
There was a burst of magic that settled uncomfortably in her belly, but it got the job done, at least. The sunset quartz fell into the ground and took root, swelling into a small, growing into a small chrysalis. "Oh! Ahh, I did it," she said proudly. "Ahh, do you need anything else?"
When Dip shook her head, Vivilene nodded and turned. "Um, have fun. I hope they're nice."
Well, at least that was that.
She liked Vivilene, but it definitely felt a little stifling to accommodate her, sometimes. Dip's eyes drifted down towards the satchel of gemstones and, from it, picked out the first. It shouldn't be too hard-- every other time Dip had given life to something, it'd gone alright.
The magic drew out of her stone and into the dead one. She knew, immediately, something wasn't quite right. It was draining, more than she'd felt before. "Fucking--" she choked out. The stone fell next to the quartz and began to grow, but Dip fell heavily with it.
"Shit!" Was the last thing she managed before her own chrysalis swallowed her whole.
A few hours had passed.
On occasion, Eurydome visited Serendipity for maintenence on her greatsword. When she came by that evening, she found no blacksmith and three chrysalises in her forge, taking up space.
Huh. Noisily, the gladiator snuffed around the workspace, quickly locating one of the stones Dip had been trying to revive. A larimar, Eurydome was fairly certain. She weighed it in her hand for a moment before looking over the other chrysalises.
Well, if Dip was trying to revive them, she might as well help. Maybe she could get a free sword out of it.
Injecting her magic into the rock and watching it take root, Eurydome watched it blearily. Ahh... that'd taken a lot out of her. The gladiator turned, beginning to walk back to Orion, but only made it a few feet before she, too, succumbed into a chunk of amethyst.