Ah, intro incantations. The bread and butter of learning some goddamn spells already that you don't have to hunt for between poems or cross your fingers you'll get good ones from the void. Standard, universal English incantations with a grounding in how they work, why they're better than other versions that used to predominate, how they get embedded into artifice and potions, what the difference is between incanting and telling a spellbook it's very lovely.
"It's not for sale, sorry. We have trade secrets that keep us from going hollow and insane like rogues, and it is too likely to help someone else learn them. Bad news for us, obviously, but not just that. If every maleficer could work without restraint, that would be bad for the world, too."
"Thank you. That makes sense. I guess it's black nails or don't know."
Ellen picks up her textbook again, looks through it to see if it says anything she doesn't already know or anything that she knows isn't true. The list of verse forms for spells is missing lots of them but it doesn't actually say it's a complete list, and there probably isn't one. She doesn't think kennings would work for spells in any of her languages, but if she can find a textbook on Old Norse in the library ... or maybe the void would give her one. She already has two Germanic languages, a third shouldn't be that hard. Something something Surt's wound snake ...
She puts down the textbook, starts trying to compose a spell that she is pretty sure won't work in any of the languages she speaks.