My short stint as a runic sorcerer began during a boring sales presentation made by a company peddling yet another digital whiteboard. Nimble with the stylus on my Galaxy Note 7, I'd been creating the most hilariously inappropriate shapes on the notepad when the device burst into a column of flame. My colleagues thought it impossible that I hadn't been injured, so I made a joke that I'd rediscovered runic magic. I expected them to laugh and think nothing of it, so it came as a complete surprise when two people who worked in marketing nodded their heads in serious agreement.

Recently divorced and bored with my life, I decided to go along with it. I told myself it would be fun to string them along and see how far I could take the joke. So I began talking about how I was a rune researcher, had looked into several old scrolls, and knew a variety of spells. Everyone except the two marketing people laughed and walked away. They started asking questions, eventually wanting to know how they could gain the same magical powers themselves. Needing to cover for the origin of my powers, I told them that they were too inexperienced to know my secrets. They asked if they could come over to my apartment sometime, and I said "why the hell not?"

Later that night I researched runic magic for real, learning everything I could about ancient epigraphy and Tacitus. When my co-workers came over for dinner I wowed them with my breadth of knowledge on the topic, telling them that they needed to study "ancient Germanic languages," and that they needed to read a list of eleven books I'd compiled. I'd even put together a scroll of spells that I could cast, with names that sounded like formal versions of several spells out of the 5th edition D&D players handbook, such as "sphere of chromaticus" and "missile of arcanic power." They asked when they could begin casting these spells, showing that they hadn't thought critically about a word I said. I honestly couldn't believe they were that gullible. So I told them that not only did they need to do everything I'd already said, but that they'd also need to take a six-week intensive course with a faerie overlord named "Druphennia." At this point I really expected the gig to be up, but they asked "where do I sign up?"

Unable to create anything more off the top of my head, I told them I'd look into it and that I'd have an answer for them in a couple of days. I hadn't really begun to brainstorm a solution by the next day when they came to me with five of their friends, who also somehow believed I had the capability to give them magical powers and also wanted to take the course. So told them all that they'd need to quit their jobs and spend six weeks out in the woods eating mushrooms and praying to Druphennia. That got a couple of them to shake their heads and bow out, but five of them were all in.

That was the point where I started to regret the whole thing. I told the crowd to write down their names and I would talk to Druphennia. The next day I told them all that Druphennia was too busy to accept new students right now, and that there'd be a waiting list. All of them wanted to be on it, despite the fact that I told them it could be fifty years before they were accepted.

Once they realized that they couldn't learn magic themselves, they started asking me to do spells for them, to which I answered that I wasn't allowed to practice magic in real life and that the ordeal with the Note 7 had purely been an accident. This made the whole thing less appealing to all of them except a woman named Mary. That Friday night she called me up and said she was going to practice for Druphrennia by spending part of her weekend out in the wilderness eating mushrooms. I told her not to and that some mushrooms could be dangerous, but she brushed it off.

With nothing else to do, I went to her house. She led me into the woods behind her place. At this point, I was prepared to confess the whole thing, as the last thing I wanted to do was continue this charade for nothing, but I decided to keep my mouth shut when she showed me a circle of trees covered in strange runes. I thought she had taken this way too far when she told me to kneel down in front of the trees. I tried to say that it was all for naught, all a lie. She told me to hush.

The last words I heard before she teleported me were, "we don't allow imposters."

r/StoriesToThinkAbout