OCT Audition Example 2

"Treasure, eh? Ah, I see they got you suckered into all this too. Well sit down and have a drink then! Oh, waitress! Do ya mind giving us some service over here?"

The large man glanced around at the three men sitting at the table. His eyes lingered for a moment longer on the one seated to his left. Unlike the other two who appeared to be rather ordinary-looking humans, this third was most certainly not. His mottled brown and green skin, leathery but yet moist-looking, suggested that his was a pond or swamp-dwelling species. More striking than the skin was the fact that the man possessed six insectile limbs (a pair of which arched over his shoulders from behind his back) and a most menacing carnivorous visage. His two-inch teeth jutted over his closed lips, giving him a serrated smile that contrasted eerily with his blank grey eyes.

The easygoing, rough-faced man seated across the table renewed his invitation with a wave of his bush hat. "Oh come now, don't let Gill here intimidate ya. He's assured us that he only bites what he intends to eat, and I gotta say he's eaten well enough already! Ya got a stomach deeper than Mammut itself, I'd say, Gill!"

The swamp creature gurgled and a bit of froth seeped from between his teeth. He cocked his head in a friendly way which nonetheless managed to be disturbing.

"Oh come on and sit, why don't ya! You're not be judging us, are ya?"

"Ah, man, let him do what he wants," came the strained, gravelly voice of the well-worn man sitting to the right. Well-worn, but with decades of hard experience chiselled onto his face and hands. Tough and gruff, without a care for what anyone felt about what he had to say -- this was the sort of man that Ensis often had the most fun with in his travels.

The Ensis blade and his bulky wielder had been wandering the streets of Haradam for six days, absorbing the local culture and digesting gossip. Ensis had questioned no one about the legendary treasure rumored to lie in the depths of Mammut. Instead he had played the part of the naive tourist, visiting gift shops and historical sites and eating from the vending carts. Until now he had just moseyed around town, busying his easily amused wielder with trivial things -- and all the while Ensis listened to the rumors and puzzled over their meaning.

Now that the Bloodspring Festival was underway and the Mammut cave system was open to tourists and explorers, it became more important for Ensis and his wielder to remain unassuming. Even before the caves were officially open to the public, the spirit of competition was fierce in the small town. Fights broke out in the frosty streets on a routine basis as adventurers sought to eliminate their competition. Rather than draw undue attention to himself and risk being ejected from the city, Ensis appeared to only be inquisitive in regard to the legendary Bloodspring.

It was with this unassuming, inquisitive approach that he talked with the three men in the ramshackle old tavern. The tavern was arguably the least popular one in the small city of Haradam. It was famous for its sour beer, talentless local musicians, surly bartenders and unattractive waitresses. That, and rather enormous woolly rats. A dive of such poor reputation saw little business even during the Bloodspring boom season -- and for this very reason it was a likely gathering place for the sort of people who were cunning and well-informed, the sort of people who could be a real help to Ensis as well as a real hindrance.

Remember now, Dolt, the sword telepathed to his wielder, I'm going to be doing all of the talking here. We are doing delicate business here and I can't have you bungling around. You will say nothing!

"'Kay buddy!"

The friendly man across the table looked up from under the wide brim of his bush hat. "Come again?"

"Ghr-hmn!" Ensis asserted his control over the big man's body and cleared his throat. He flicked the man's larynx sharply with his thumb as a warning for him to remain silent. "Okay, buddy, I'll be happy to join you if you insist." Ensis spun around and whisked a tray of beers from the hands of a passing waitress. "In fact," he continued jovially, "since I've never seen you folks around here before the next round's on me!"

"Har, you can't rightly argue with a bargain like that!" the bush-hat man said as he reached out for a glass. "Thought I'd be a shriveled dry corpse before that waitress ever paid attention to us, always staring off into space as she is. Cheers, m'good fellow! M'name's Kurt, this here's Braan and our slimey new mate over there is Gill. Don't ya worry, he takes no offense to being called slimey."

The older man took a beer and sat back in his seat. "You a regular here, son?"

"Oh, I've been in and out of a lot of places, enjoying the Festival. Quite a crowd they draw here!" Ensis pulled out a chair and sat, leaning in so as to encroach on the old man's space. He marveled at how well such an obnoxious gesture worked in gaining the trust of men such as he. "I came on a friend's recommendation, and I see the festivities live up to her every word. But I could never quite figure out what this Bloodspring is that everyone's talking about. Best I can figure is it's some kind of treasure, but no two people seem to have the same story."

The amphibian, Gill, stared at the big man's face as he spoke. Out of the corner of his eye, Ensis caught the flicker of the creature's nictitating membranes snapping open and shut. "You seek the Bloodspring," the creature gurgled without moving his lips. The throated voice had no particular inflection, and so the statement sounded more like an accusation than a question.

Ensis hesitated a moment while he thought quickly about how to respond to Gill's disarming comment. He was unaccustomed to dealing with unreadable races, and even less to being flustered. By good fortune, Braan spoke characteristically out of turn and interrupted this inconvenient line of conversation.

"It's all just a damn tourism scam if you ask me. No one's ever been more than eight miles deep before they had to turn back, and the caves supposedly go twice that far. How does anyone know what's down there? Some mystery thing with improbable properties that no one could possibly reach? Scam! No doubt about it."

"But that ain't stoppin' ya from going down there after it!" Kurt interjected with a sharp laugh.

"Hell no. I'll go down as far as I can, anyway. Every caver's gotta do the Bloodspring dive at least once in his life."

"Once only," Gill gurgled. "Once below the forest, and life ends."

Ensis perked up. "Forest? You say there's a forest underground?"

Gill slowly turned toward the big man and flicked his eye membranes. "Ice. Forest. Fire. A city."

"Hogwash!" Braan interrupted. "Unconfirmed! Folktales! Just because they tell stories about a city doesn't mean it exists."

"Mine have seen it. City, untouched, beautiful colors and strange light."

"Your people have been that far?" Kurt asked incredulously. "And there's been no reports?"

"You're a swampy," Braan added. "How did your people get past the ice, and the hot springs?"

Gill snorted. "Mine are resilient and we keep many secrets." The amphibian flexed his four uppermost limbs and clicked his insect-like "fingers" -- fingers which could easily dig into small cracks. "And we climb. We climb deeper, no tools."

So here they were, three of the biggest obstacles in Ensis's path to success. Kurt had guts and probably a knack for improvisation. Braan had years of cave exploration experience. And Gill was of a race that had several natural advantages for climbing, whose people may have reached farther than any man -- and Gill himself was intimidating in an irrational way that Ensis was not prone to experience.

The pieces are in place and the game begins. Watch and learn, Dolt.

Ensis stood up, feigning a tipsy swagger and spilling just enough beer on himself so as to appear that he had drunk more than he had. "Well gentlemen, I wasn't sure how to spend the last of my time here, but now I wanna see this Bloodspring for myself!"

Gill's eyes did not change, but Ensis felt the creeping sensation that he was glaring. Braan put his face in his hand and rubbed his lips. Kurt spoke. "Ah... do ya have a voucher?"

"Yeah! I was gonna take the tour and they say it's all the same voucher. Good thing I got in before there was such a waitin' list!"

"Right.... And... do ya have any gear?"

"Just what I got on my back," Ensis said, reaching behind him and patting the concealed sword.

"So... you're gonna leave the tour -- and go down God knows how many miles past God knows what without so much as a rope?"

Ensis stumbled over and mussed up Braan's wiry graying hair, evoking an irritated flinch. "Like my old man says, I'll go as far as I can. In case you don't know, I'm known far and wide as the Blade of Legend!"

"Well, The Blade of Legend." Kurt paused to sip his beer. "Good luck to ya then."

The big man tipped his head back and pretended to guzzle the remainder of his beer, though in fact most of it ran down his exposed, flabby chest. He slammed the glass on the table just a little too harshly and said, "I don't need luck. I got meh wits!"

Kurt stifled a laugh. "Wits, eh? I say ya got more tits than wits."

"Do I now?" Ensis said loudly, gaining the attention of some of the tavern's other patrons. "If you think you're soooo smart, then what say we all make a bet?"

Braan sighed and pulled a cigar from his vest pocket. "What do you mean, a bet?"

Ensis clapped the old man on the shoulder, jarring him so that he nearly dropped his lighter and the cigar fell from his lips. "Oh y'know, a wager, a gamble, a venture, an adventure! A bet, you know?"

Kurt gave a smug smile and adjusted his hat. "Alright, I'm game. Whatcha got in mind?"

"Well we all wanna see this Bloodspring, right? And the way people talk, no one wants anyone else to see it, right? Even all us around this table, we all want the glory to usselves, right?" Ensis faked an impressive belch. "Least you all don't talk like you're workin' like a team, anyway."

"So what's your point?" Braan prodded.

Ensis leaned on the table. His left arm buckled and he barely caught himself before falling onto Gill's lap. The amphibian's lack of response to his stunt made Ensis wonder if he was aware of the purpose behind his foolery. Gathering himself, he moved on with his charade.

"My point issat we put all our vouchers on the table, 'n whoever -- or whatever wins'll be the only one who gets their voucher back."

Kurt smiled. "I see. So we're all playing for the right to enter Mammut."

"Exactly!" Ensis called out as he flopped back into his seat, sending his body fat jiggling. "Who's in?"

"Well what're we doing?" Kurt asked. "Some sort of strongman contest or something? Or how 'bout a sporting game of rock-paper-scissors?"

"Well let's see...." Ensis swiped Gill's untouched beer and pretended to guzzle, again garnering no discernible response from the leering amphibian. When he was done he sat for a moment with a glazed expression. "I got it! See, whoever wins should be the one with the best chance of reaching the Bloodspring, right? And to get to it before anyone else does, you gotta have wits, right? So we'll all try 'n outwit each other!"

"Outwit, you say? And since you're surely the wittiest of us, how do you propose we'll do that?"

Ensis picked up a glass and rang it on the table like a gavel. "Whichever of us is the last one with his pants up wins! And no wrestlin' for 'em either. You gotta use your wits!" Ensis poked hard at his temple to emphasize his last point.

By this time all of the tavern's denizens were focused on their group, including the usually oblivious waitress. Kurt with his brash manner, Braan with his dignity, Gill with his species pride -- neither of the three would turn down the challenge to outsmart the others. Not with a small crowd testing them, whispering and nudging and chuckling. And certainly not with a drunken loudmouth posing the challenge. After a bit more token harassment in Braan's direction, the vouchers of all four contenders lay in the middle of the warped wooden table.

"Very well," Kurt said when all was ready. "Let's begin, eh?"

The game began inauspiciously. Kurt's opening gambit was a standard "What's that behind you?" ploy directed at Gill. Unfamiliar with this ages-old human custom, Gill turned. But Kurt was also unfamiliar with the amphibian's unsettlingly keen awareness, and he nearly had his wrist broken when he reached for the drawstrings on Gill's canvas shorts. The amphibian slowly turned back to meet Kurt's eyes, and he let out a terse growl: "I see nothing of interest." With that, he released Kurt's wrist. It took nearly ten minutes for Kurt to regain the comfort level to sit close to Gill again.

"Kurt my boy, if you're going to use distractions to get a man's pants off, you got to be an adult about it," said Braan. He produced an impressive amount of Canrif currency and summoned the wide-eyed waitress. "You there. Get his pants off."

The waitress made her way uncertainly toward the bills Braan held out to her. She then shuffled over to Kurt with the yelps and catcalls of the tavern patrons weighing on her heels. A couple of men in a corner, apparently acquaintances of Kurt's, began to chant his name. Kurt grinned, his eyes hidden beneath his hat. He settled into a comfortable position in his seat as the waitress approached. The crowd's encouragement grew louder as the woman reached out her unsteady hand. Then it grew louder still when Kurt took her hand and moved it confidently toward the button of his jeans.

The smug smile on Braan's face vanished when, at the last moment, Kurt guided the woman's hand into his pocket and it returned with an even larger wad of bills. Kurt smirked at Braan and said, "Ma'am I'll more than double that money if you'll get his pants off instead."

The crowd exploded into laughter and cheering as the waitress turned to Braan. Her confidence was bolstered by the cheering patrons and the spirit of the game; there was now a good measure of swagger and sashay in her step. But she had barely reached her target when she was adamantly waved away. "Goddammit!" Braan grumbled, jamming his half-smoked cigar in the ashtray. "Never mind, it was a bad idea anyway!"

The crowd was vocal in its dissatisfaction. The waitress was happy to keep the all of the money.

Ensis watched the playful interchanges and basked in the crowd's attention. More people were beginning to come in from the streets, curious about the ruckus in the decrepit old tavern. In the midst of all this, Gill remained maddeningly unmoved. In fact, despite having no supporting evidence, Ensis could not shake the feeling that the amphibian was watching him closely from behind those opaque nictitating membranes. What did the creature know? Could he see through Ensis's act, or even be aware that the fat man was only the sword's puppet? What did he really know about Mammut, or the Bloodspring? What motivation brought him here when he seemed to have no passions?

Or, perhaps, was Ensis pondering this too much? Were his instincts and artificial intelligence filling in the blanks when the creature offered so little soluble data?

The game continued on, with no party succeeding in tricking another. Kurt challenged Ensis to rock-paper-scisors, an arm wrestle, and several other such adolescent games; Ensis denounced these as being "bets on a bet, the unimaginative man's way out." Meanwhile Braan was playing footsie with Gill's drawstrings, and seemed to be doing quite well at it until he realized that he would be hard pressed to remove the amphibian's shorts while the creature was still seated. When the revelation came over the old man's face, the ambhibian cocked his head at him and flicked his membranes in a seemingly taunting manner.

When Kurt attempted another useless trick, "accidentally" spilling a foul-smelling beverage on Gill's shorts with a casual "whoopsie", Ensis stood up. "Is this the best you all can do? You guys are trying to prove you're smart by relying on your opponents to be incredibly stupid!"

Kurt shot back, "Well it's not so easy to con someone out of their knickers when they know they're being conned."

Ensis glared at Kurt. He reached over to Braan and took the lighter from his pocket. Holding Kurt's gaze all the while, he flicked the lighter and tossed it onto Gill's lap. The amphibian's alcohol-soaked shorts caught fire in an instant and he leapt from his seat. The creature rolled on the floor in a panic, flailing his spindly insect limbs, snarling and screeching. The creature's screams pierced the air, even cutting through the shrieks of some of the onlookers. The fire was quickly destroying his moist skin; he soon gave up on extinguishing the flames and ripped the shorts away. A quick-thinking patron dashed forth and stomped them out while Gill skittered naked out the door on all sixes.

A hush had fallen over the crowd, with even more people arriving on the scene in the wake of this last commotion. Ensis picked up Gill's voucher and casually ripped it to bits. "Now that, my comrades, is how one removes another's pants." The big man's drunken facade fell away. "Now that spoilsport over there is out of the way, are we ready to get serious?"

The crowd began cheering again, much livelier than before now that the game had become more exciting. Braan sighed and rubbed his forehead. "I knew you were up to something. I knew from the moment you opened your fat mouth."

"But here we are!" Ensis said as he sat back down. "And now we're all committed, aren't --"

Ensis's speech was cut short when he sat on something sharp. Immediately he realized that it was a small, thin knife jutting from the toe of Kurt's boot. Before he could react, Kurt wiggled his foot to give the knife a sharp twist. Ensis stood up just in time before the knife would have cut the femoral artery, a potentially fatal wound. Still his thigh bled profusely; the back of his shorts was quickly drenched in blood. Ensis ripped a strip of fabric from his cloak and whipped it around his leg to make a quick tourniquet, then immediately set to work in controlling the blood flow in the leg to hasten the healing process.

"Ha!" Ensis laughed as he worked. "You wily little bastard!"

"What can I say?" Kurt replied. He took his foot off the chair and the knife sprang back inside. "Ya said you wanted to make the game more interesting, didn't ya? Looks like you're going to have to take off those pants and tend to that nasty wound."

Braan shoved away from the table and stood up. He snatched his voucher from the table and turned to leave. "That's enough of this bullshit. I'm done."

Kurt leaned back and pulled his hat up off of his eyes. "Where ya going with that voucher, Braan? You agreed to the bet as well as all of us."

Without looking back, Braan tore his voucher and spat on it, then tossed the pieces over his shoulder. "I'd rather not share a cave with the likes of you sick fuckers anyway. Takes all the damn fun out of the sport." He slammed the door open and said as he left, "I'll be back next season after you all you fool treasure hunters have killed each other off or died in the goddamn cave!"

Braan shoved his way out the door as more people filed in. The game was down to two, and the crowd was on the edge of frenzy. Ensis had eliminated Gill, whom he judged to be the greatest threat; and Braan, who merely seemed to be in the way. Only Kurt remained, the man who had acted as the alpha of the three. Ensis was unsurprised to learn that Kurt was capable of more cunning and ruthlessness than he led others to believe. Gill and Braan may have had an advantage over him in technical climbing, but Kurt would be the fiercest competitor in the race for the Bloodspring.

"Ya just going to stand there bleeding?" Kurt goaded with an overly friendly smirk. "I think time's working you on this one."

"I admit you've done well, you little rascal. You almost beat me at my own game. But time waits for me, and I estimate that it'll be catching up to you at any moment."

Kurt's smile remained, but some of the vigor drained from it. "What are you talking about?"

Ensis tore another strip from his cloak and changed the padding on the tourniquet. His conscious constriction of the blood vessels had nearly stopped the bleeding, though the muscle damage would take longer to mend. He would be limping through the cave for a while.

"What I'm talking about is that time is knocking on your door. Your back door to be precise."

Kurt's stomach began to churn and his belly gurgled. At last his perpetual amiable smile faltered.

"That's right, my friend. The game was over before it even began, when I laced your beers with laxative! I bet Braan is feeling mighty sick to his stomach over us right now, and poor Gill must be shooting fireballs! Har, you just can't rightly argue with a bargain like that, now can you?"

The crowd burst into laughter and whistles and clinking glasses. Kurt swallowed hard and tensed his abdomen, shifting in his seat. "You haven't won yet, mate. I'll wait it out."

"Oh will you now?" Ensis turned to the crowd and raised his glass; the crowd responded with an exuberant huzzah. "You're going to have to pull 'em down to save yourself, or pull 'em down to clean up afterward. Either way, they're going down!"

The crowd shouted another huzzah, and the sound of it gave Kurt's intestines a nauseating lurch. "Ah fuck you all!" he snapped as he rose up and grabbed both men's vouchers from the table. He scrambled away toward the nearest restroom (it was in fact the women's restroom), doubled over with legs bowed.

"Stop him!" someone shouted from somewhere in the crowd. "He's going back on their bet!"

With all eyes on Kurt as he made his escape, no one saw the big man draw his sword from under his cloak. There was a flash of movement as the big man dashed forward and the blade sizzled through the air. Though the precise nature of the motion was unclear, the result was certain: Kurt lost a small bit of fingertip, and the wound was instantly cauterized; his voucher was sliced in two with the cut edges singed by fire, and the pieces curled as they fluttered to the floor. Ensis's voucher twirled in the air with a bit of cooked fingertip stuck to the corner. With a theatrical spin the big man snatched his voucher out of the air and sheathed his sword, and his flowing cloak fell into place to conceal it.

Kurt could do nothing but watch, and soil himself.

Ensis flicked the bit of finger off of his voucher and smoothed the paper. He returned it to his pocket, then turned to walk away. After a step he paused as if he had forgotten something. He looked back at Kurt and pointed at him as a teacher might reprimand a student. "'Blade of Legend,' my friend, and don't you forget it. And all of you good folks, tell your friends! This season Ensis, the Blade of Legend, will lay eyes on your fabled Bloodspring!"

The crowd whooped and clapped and gathered around the big man while Kurt crawled off to the restroom. As Kurt squirmed through the door Ensis called to him, "I'd tell them to knock the shit out of you for me, but it smells like it's already been taken care of!" Another burst of raucous laughter and free-flowing liquor shook the tiny tavern.

See how that works, Dolt? You get rid of some competition, breathe new life into a decaying old bar, make a name for yourself in the tourist capital of the Badlands, and have loads of fun in the process.

"Heheh," the big man chuckled with his own voice. "Smells like it's already taken care of. 'Ats a good one, buddy!"

Wasn't it?