I did what I've been meaning to do for years, and I have released some curses I laid a decade ago.
I took them into my hand for the very last time. It was I who molded them, who spoke life into them, who gave them purpose and directive. It was I who cast them into the dark, and, only now, brought them into this world again. It was I who gave them their first and last gaze from human eyes, who gave the only human touch they will ever know.
My little creature. Perhaps even that is too animate a term for what you really are.
Their forms have changed. I catalogued each tell-tale sign that the curse had expended all the energy it once had, but in this process, I was observing myself. It was less like a mirror, and more like a photo album— I saw a snapshot of who I used to be.
That was somewhat unexpected. I saw the methods I no longer employ, and realized each process of intent which has long since altered. I saw how my craft has changed as I matured, but I also admired the ingenuity of my past-self. I saw my creativity and determination in these baneful objects. And I set it alight.
Fire poured new energy into it, and I felt them revive, but only for a moment.
Fire broke each sinew, cracked each fiber of what was once whole. As the binds broke and its physical state was altered, I felt the energy shift. No longer was it a cold remnant of some intention of a self long since passed.
Fire consumed it all, and it glowed; ephemeral and irreversible. Thermal decomposition as each thread I wove unraveled, from will to work to carbon black.
They have long since run their course. This was merely the final stage in its once-life. They served their purpose, and I no longer needed them to exist alongside me. In the time since I created them, I have evolved an innumerable amount, but I felt their ghosts, albeit faded, still walking in my shadow.
This is what happens when a curse ages out of its effectiveness. It becomes a hollow corpse— a zombie.
Now, I wouldn't say that this is the case for all curses— I would need to do more research on the matter to verify that. Even then, there is too much variance to speak in absolutes. Each "working" works in its own way, and anything I craft will not behave the same as that of someone else. I am not talking about severely traumatizing incidents, either. I believe that those cases are special circumstances, and require a different approach entirely, if a curse is to be used.
To be succinct, your mileage may vary.
But where it lay in my hand, I felt it, hollow and cold. It was like an empty stomach, mindlessly trying to consume that which it did not have. It yearned to keep going, to follow its directive, but there was simply no energy left.
When I created them, I had no intention of ever letting them go. They were to exist in perpetuum, even though I knew its potency would fade as the energy it was fed had waned. I worked it in the first place, and it was because I intended it to exist.
That in and of itself is permanent. Once something is created, its binds may be undone, but it will have once been. That is the distinction I take with magic: it is a working that imparts a change, or signals an intent, and once it is cast, it is done.
Think of it as the groove in the paper once you erase a pencil stroke. The graphite may be gone, but it has still left its mark, even if the visible line is undone. Or, more popularly, the fascination with kintsugi pottery. The curse is the shatter, and the curse-break is the metallic lacquer. The cracks may be mended, but the pottery cannot revert to its unbroken state. Its initial form has been broken, it has split from itself, and it is an external force which pieced it back together.
But all of this was crafted by a past-self, and it is time for all of it to be released.
I am learning what "forgiveness" is.
I did this more for myself than for the targets. Most of the targets are now entirely inconsequential to me, and, even now, I find it difficult to forgive the crime, or the blow. There is a reason that these curses existed, after all. But forgiveness is about releasing the past to move on.
It is forgiven.
Consider it a "spring cleaning" of sorts.
