You place the talisman on the stone stump that Iirkë showed you before. Immediately the world begins to rumble and the talisman glows. You expect more theatrics. Perhaps a chasm will open up and spit hot blue light into the sky! But nope. That’s it. Just a little rumble, a little glow, and it’s over.
You stand staring at the talisman and the altar for a moment until you hear someone chuckling behind you. Turning, you find Iirkë, dusting off the sleeves of his tuxedo.
“Alas, I’m back,” he says, but he seems to be talking more to himself than to you. “But it has been productive to be away. For I have had time for self-assessment. And so I have seen that my various schemes of the past for what they were: meager tricks. Now that I am free, I must take more decisive action. First, I will imprison each of my jailers as they have imprisoned me for these many years. And not only that: I will level the forest, set fire to the swamps, and reduce the mountain to a pile of pebbles, so that even if they are able to free themselves, nothing will be the same. Then, I will take over the lodge, and Glenda’s store, but I won’t stop there. I will take the entirety of this land into my control. And I will run it like a corporation. All will be paperwork! All will be ‘touching base’! Endless meetings and sloppy happy hours where the unspeakable is spoken! It will be so wretched that they will come to realize they should’ve just let me be in the first place! They should’ve–”
You clear your throat and Iirkë turns to you. “Can I help you?” he says.
You remind him of his promise: to jettison you into a stratosphere of success you have never experienced with just the snap of his fingers.
“Oh, right, right,” Iirkë says. “Sure.” And with that, he snaps his fingers.
You awake in the storage room holding the drone you’ve been sent to fetch. After you hand it off to the photography department you return to your desk, where you find a post-it from your supervisor to come to her office.
“It’s only been a few days but you’ve been doing great work,” she tells you when you sit down in the chair across from her desk, “and we’ve been talking, me and the higher-ups, about a new position for you. You wouldn’t be a Junior Marketing Assessment Associate anymore. You’d be…” She takes a deep breath. You’re tingling with anticipation. “…a Marketing Assessment Associate.”
You blink. Technically, being so new in your career, this is a stratosphere of success you have never experienced, and yet, of course you’re disappointed. All those who warned you about Iirkë were correct.
But wait! There’s still the potential for a silver lining here. You ask if this position comes with a raise.
“Yes!” your supervisor says. “In time. I mean, after a three months probationary period, you could be looking at a 2% raise.”
You nod. You accept the offer. You go back to work, doing just as you’d done before your promotion, but now with a new title. Sometimes you think about the fun and excitement of your adventure, but it’s hard to relive those feelings knowing the outcome. If anything, these memories now bring you only regret. You might even say: instant regret.
The End