The Captain's Log: #108: Talent Show

"...And by the time the lights came on, the audiences' pockets had all been picked clean, and the lead player was nowhere to be found! Anyway, that's why I'm permanently banned from Mund."

 

"I never knew you starred in the theatre," Hester said, sliding Eltanin's shot of rum ration across the table to him.

 

"Oh, I was quite the leading man back in Kilblane. Soujel the First, Sunset Over Chouffel, Love in the Smog, you name it, I played it." He picked up the glass, knocked it back, and placed it on the tray with the other dirty tinware. "It's where I met Harlow, in fact. One look at me in a period costume and he was falling like a rock off a gangplank."

 

"Harlow never struck me as the poetic type."

 

"It's not a side of himself he wants to show the world. The Admiralty sees him as tough, ruthless, ambitious. I knew he cried every time the dog died in Soujel. Oops, spoilers."

 

"It's a two hundred year old story. You're fine."

 

"But yes, I do know my way around a stage. Could probably still recite that scene with Alderose if I tried. 'O, cousin, we stand on the brink of an unknowable abyss, and I fear to look, let alone leap--'"

 

"The Guild's having a talent show tonight. Think they'll want to see you in action?"

 

“Are they?” Eltanin pulled a roll of parchment out of his belt, focused for a bit, and a poster began to sketch itself into form on its surface. “‘Join us this evening for our annual Adventurers’ Talent Show’, mmhmm, ‘night of fun and free food’-- nice– ‘winner gets a thousand gold’? Sold. Set a course for the Parchment Imp. I’m going to soliloquy their socks off.”

 

*

 

“Hey there, bud! Here for the talent show?”

 

That was Martus, friendly and welcoming as always. The elf was standing at his regular spot behind the bar, wiping down mugs with his apron, always with that indelible smile plastered across his face. Gods, he had to be hiding something, right? No one just smiled like that all the time. Unless he was being passive-aggressive about Eltanin being two weeks behind on room rent again, in which case, fair play.

 

“You know it,” the Paperdemon replied, scribbing his name on the signup sheet on the bar. Quite the turnout tonight, it looked like. There were heavy hitters like Dee, Caspian, that one guild intern fox kid…

 

“You’re a little late, but I’m sure we can slot you in somewhere near the end. Find a seat. The show’s starting.”

 

“Enough time to grab a drink?”

 

“Considering it’s the end of the intermission, no. Lights!”

 

At Martus’s command, the lights in the guild hall snapped off, except for a single bright beam on a cleared section of the ground floor that served as a central stage. Eltanin grabbed a bottle of dark rum off the top shelf, leaping into an empty chair seconds before a magically-amplified voice boomed out.

 

“Welcome back, folks! We’ve had some great talents today, but as they say, we’ve saved the best for last. Give it up for Melody and her rendition of ‘Portal to Your Heart’...”

 

*

 

“And next up, we’ve got Marvo the Magnificent, juggling three kitten constructs while performing a double-triple wheelie on a unicycle! Oh, yes, certainly a sentence that has never been strung together in that order in all the history of the Paperverse. ‘Hang on, Martus,’ you might say. ‘Wasn’t Marvo the closing act?’ He was, but we’ve had an exciting new development! A surprise late entrant to tonight’s billet, the Captain of the Redoubtable himself, Eltanin, will be closing out the night instead!”

 

The mention of his name snapped Eltanin out of his rum-induced malaise. Oh, goodness, how much had he had to drink? He snapped his fingers, causing a flame to spark in his palm, and sneakily held it up to the neck of the bottle. The flickering light reflected, unrefracted, off the glass bottom. Uh oh.

 

Wait, hang on, he hadn’t tried the ol’ breathalyzer trick yet. He breathed out gently on his little fire, cursing as it flared up. Okay, now he could panic.

 

The Paperdemon slipped out of his chair, crouch-creeping between tables back to the bar. He remembered seeing a bowl of pretzels somewhere… aha! He popped a few in his mouth as he grabbed a glass, steadying it with both hands as he filled it up in the sink.

 

The squeaking unicycle wheel and mechanical mewing served as his countdown as he gulped down one glass of water, then a second, picking off more pretzels between swigs. Yes, his vision was starting to clear up, but then he remembered the most important thing he wasn’t remembering: His lines!

 

What soliloquy had he said he was going to perform again? Soujel’s ‘Skies on Fire’ speech? Okay, easy. It was just 25 lines. How bad could that be? 1, 2, 3… Behold, cousin mine…

 

“And there you have it, folks! What a lark! What a thrill! I was on the edge of my judges’ table the whole time those kittens were in the air. Put your hands, or paws, together, for Marvo the Magnificent!”

 

That was his cue. Eltanin wiped the crumbs and water from his lips and slipped out from behind the bar, following Kaytlyn’s (right, that was her name) frantic hand signals to take his position beside the spotlight. Marvo unicycled past him, smiling as always, signing something that was probably [Good luck], or the like, with his one hand that wasn’t holding a clockwork kitten. Kaytlyn held her arm across Eltanin’s torso as they waited for Martus’s call, as if he needed to be told what ‘enter stage left’ was!

 

“Hold out just a little while longer, folks, you won’t want to miss this. Fashionably late as always, our last contestant will be performing the famous soliloquy ‘Skies on Fire’ from Avangard’s favourite history play, Soujel the First. You know him, you’ve probably been pickpocketed by him at some point, Eltanin!”

 

Kaytlyn lowered her paw, and Eltanin stepped into the light, turning and bowing in every cardinal direction. There was a full turnout tonight at the Parchment Imp Inn, and dozens of adventurers from all the portals in the known Paperverse had their eyes on him. But no pressure, right?

 

Unfortunately, he couldn’t recover his Soujel costume from the Navy academy that had an active bounty on his head, but he did have one of Dr Rijkamp‘s old black dress uniforms, and an impromptu cloak made out of Kilblane crimson tartan. It was a silly combo if you thought about it for longer than five seconds, but it did at least look half-decent from the second row onwards.

 

“Behold, cousin mine, the fruits of en-devour…”

 

Okay, messed up the ‘endeavour’ pun there, but then lots of non-drunk Soujels did.

 

“Skies on fire, dark as witches’ hour.

The flames themselves obey our call, without voice to protest,

Stolen from the throats of Bulwarks’ best…

They… uhh…”

 

Not now! He could just picture Valas A'Daragon’s eye-roll from the judges’ table. Well, if he couldn’t thrill them with thespian talent, he could at least stupefy them with spoken word.

 

“Their words were snuffed out, like so many lights across the sky, unified at last under the Boar and Rose.”

 

A few audience members familiar with the play muttered among themselves, but an equal number leaned forward in interest.

 

“Unity, peace, prosperity at last, but at what cost? The forest reclaims the wildfire’s ravages, returns to its former flourish, but their barks bear the burns, a loss of innocence seared into memory. Skies on fire, still smouldering today, awaiting the spark that will relight old-drawn lines. Thank you.”

 

The general mood in the hall seemed to be… confusion. A few half-hearted claps, but most of the audience was just muttering among themselves, trying to make sense of the river-of-consciousness they’d just been subjected to. Some of the veteran adventurers booed, but who cared what they thought? He’d done what he’d set out to do, and that was enough for him.

 

“Quite the twist to end our night, folks! A monologue straight from the heart, or wherever it is Paperdemons store their alcohol. Don’t think I didn’t see you snatch that Pavia Spiced Rum, bud! The judges will now recess to choose the winner.”

 

The lights snapped back on, and dozens of patrons rose from their seats. Hushed whispers turned back into normal conversation, humanoids and critters alike stretched their limbs, and on the second floor, Eltanin spotted the judges huddled together at their table, comparing notes and deliberating on the highlights of the night.

 

“Captain,” said a familiar voice, as Hester sidled up to his table. She was wearing a whalebone hoop skirt; a little too formal for the occasion, perhaps, but flattering nonetheless. “So? How’d it go?”

 

“Oh, absolutely awful. See you in the portal room.”

 

“You’re not coming?”

 

“Just want to see the winner, is all. Go ahead.”

 

She shuffled off, just in time, as the lights began to dim once again.

 

“Once again, we’d like to thank you all for coming to the Parchment Imp Inn’s 3rd annual Adventurers’ Talent Show. We had some real class acts tonight, some absolute showstoppers, but in the end, only one contestant can take home that thousand gold pot. Drumroll, please!”

 

A few accommodating adventurers drummed on their tables as Martus pulled the coveted paper out of his envelope.

 

“For gobbling the highest ratio of corn relative to body size, the winner is: Skye the Duck!”

 

The guild erupted into cheers as a mini spotlight snapped on over the little blue-and-white duck himself, who was currently two inches into a fresh loaf of bread. He quacked in confusion as a nearby adventurer hoisted him into the air, paddling his webbed feet in the air as the judges applauded.

 

Once all the excitement had died down, Eltanin began to make his way to the long corridor of portals at the back of the guild hall. One of those doors would take him back to the Redoubtable, where he could sleep off the last throes of the dark rum in peace.

 

“Hey there, bud,” Martus said, materialising as if out of thin air beside him. “Don’t feel too bad, okay? Lots of adventurers gave their all today, but it takes some real talent to gobble as much corn as that duck did tonight.”

 

“Oh, no hard feelings at all, Marty. To the victor go the spoils, and that.”

 

He tried to inch his way past Martus, his wingtips twitching with increasing agitation, but the elf had planted himself squarely between him and the portal room, in a manner that pushing past him would be egregiously rude. Eltanin swore he was doing it on purpose.

 

“Not quite sure what a duck’s going to do with a thousand gold, but a contest’s a contest. Anyway, Valas should be coming out with the pot right now…”

 

“It’s gone!”

 

The dark elf’s magically-enhanced voice boomed out across the guild hall, stopping everyone in their tracks.

 

“The gold. It was right here, all in this pot. Sabotage!”

 

In a twirl of his cloak, Martus was back at the judges’ table, tipping the now-empty iron pot upside down and shaking it, as though a thousand gold was going to suddenly tumble out of its crannies.

 

“It’s that Paperdemon fiend. It’s got to be.”

 

All eyes turned to Eltanin, who lifted his cloak and turned his palms outward, revealing nothing.

 

“Don’t look at me. I was out on the floor the whole time.”

 

[Correct,] Marvo signed. [Saw him the whole night. Never went backstage.]

 

“But nobody else was back there the whole night. Kaytlyn was at the door.”

 

“I, err… ” the guild intern sucked air through her teeth as she rubbed the back of her head with her paw. “I may have stepped out. For just a moment, only at the end!”

 

“WHY would you do that?”

 

Kaytlyn jabbed her finger at Eltanin. “He was blind-drunk! I couldn’t have him miss his cue.”

 

“Alright,” Martus interrupted. “Let’s keep a cool head. So someone snuck in while Kaytlyn was distracted. A thousand gold coins isn’t something you’d be able to hide under a shirt, so be on the lookout for big burlap sacks or the like. I haven’t sensed any outgoing portals yet, so they must still be in the guild hall.”

 

Eltanin had held his tongue as long as he could. He coughed out a laugh, and Martus turned to him, omnipresent figure that he was.

 

“What’s got you in a tizzy, bud?”

 

“The real talent was never the playing, Marty. Well, I mean it would’ve been, if I’d won, but since I didn’t…”

 

With a clear shot to the portal room now in sight, Eltanin crossed the distance in two strides and swung open the door, revealing Hester standing just behind it, her ‘hoop skirt’ discarded to one side as she cradled a sack of one thousand gold pieces in her arms.

 

“Running interference for my purser counts as a talent, right?”

 

The judges’ table erupted into a roar as he bowed and slammed the door shut behind him, knowing that they'd be gone long before anyone could pick their jaws up off the floor to give chase.

 

“Ha! Classic Eltanin, always playing pranks. You bring that gold back first thing tomorrow morning, okay? You hear me, buddy? I know where you guys dock!”