The flavors of curses are cornucopic, but in the broadest sense, like all magics, curses are composed of one of four intents --

to sever, to bind; to wax, or to wane.

And in the dark, she strained, her heavy head grasping consciousness between slippery fingers. Her mind sweltered. There were no lessons here, sweating and warm. This night was not about learning. It was about execution, and rage.

She would bind them, then: less like a knot and more the way that a child's lost teeth are bound to the mouth that cast them aside, the way that a kiss is bound to two lovers and exists in neither. There was a hint of history hidden in each drop of sweat, and there was the backwards way that each conscious thing becomes what it is because of what it was when it wasn't.

She hadn't moved in hours. She wouldn't move. Some would say she couldn't move, but those that knew her wouldn't rob her of her rich stake in this. She meant this more than she had meant anything in her life.

And so she was shaking when, finally, a waft of purple eked up out of the rock on the desk in front of her, slowly lashing about, spreading, writhing, a bit like blood in water. But it wasn't blood.

Not yet.