After Gabrielle (Renee O'Connor) enthralls the crowd in a local tavern with tales of Xena's heroic exploits, she is approached by a gentle young man named Orion (Dean O'Gorman), who asks if she's planning to participate in the Bard Competition at the Athens City Academy of the Performing Bards. When she learns that the top four contestants will be admitted as students to the Academy, she decides to audition, especially after Orion's father Polonius (Grahame Moore) tells her that the Academy is definitely not for young ladies. She bids Xena a bittersweet farewell and travels to Athens, where the tryouts are about to begin. There she manages to con her way onto the list of registrants after mesmerizing Orion and a group of other student hopefuls with a tale of the spectacular battle between Xena and the villainous Draco which took place in her village.
Later, as Gabrielle and the other contestants listen to the opening speech of Docenius (Alan De Malmanche), the head of the audition panel, a stranger leaps to the stage. Brandishing a sword, he stabs Docenius and escapes through a window. As the performance hall erupts in chaos, Docenius calmly gets to his feet and challenges his audience to take the event and turn it into a story. Angered by the manipulation, Gabrielle protests and goes into her bard mode to tell the story of Celesta's capture by Sisyphus and Death's ultimate release. Spellbound by her tale, the crowd bursts into spontaneous applause. Orion is thrilled but Polonius, seeing her as formidable competition for his son, becomes extremely worried. When Gabrielle and a number of her fellow storytellers, including the pompous Euripides (Joseph Manning), the stuttering Twickenham (Andrew Thurtell) and the animated Stallonus (Patrick Brunton), gather in her room that night to practice their performances, she enthralls them again with stories about Xena. The next day, when Orion asks her to critique his tale, she honestly tells him that his performance is being hampered by his obvious concern about the reaction of his audience. When he confesses that storytelling was pure joy for him as a child -- before his father began directing him -- she urges him to stop trying to please Polonius and to start pleasing himself instead. Meanwhile, Polonius tells Academy registrar Kellos (Lori Dungey) that Gabrielle conned her way into the competition, and succeeds in getting her disqualified. As she begins to pack up to leave, however, her fellow entrants convince her to stay through the competition.
The following day, all those competing join together and refuse to continue without Gabrielle. The great bard Gastacius (David Weatherley), acting as the senior judge, calls for her to tell a story and after she is finished, declares she must be reinstated. Later, as the competition intensifies, a hypercritical Polonius angrily rehearses his son backstage until Orion flees in despair. When Gabrielle learns he has quit the competition, she convinces him he mustn't give up and urges him to start telling stories his way again, without the advice of his well-meaning but misguided father. Orion finally returns to the auditions, but tells his father to stop interfering. In the end, Orion is accepted to the Academy after a brilliant performance and reveals to Gabrielle that his real name is Homer. After an equally awesome audition, Gabrielle rejoins Xena and confides that even though she was also accepted, she'd rather be living life's adventures with Xena than telling stories about them as a bard.
Guest Starring: Dean O'Gorman (Orion/Homer), Grahame Moore (Polonius), Andrew Thurtell (Twickenham), Joseph Manning (Euripedes), Patrick Brown (Stallonus), Alan De Malmanche (Docenius), Lori Dungley (Kellos), David Weatherley (Gastacius), Bernard Moody (Drunk)
Starring: Lucy Lawless as Xena, Renee O'Connor as Gabrielle
Written by R.J. Stewart & Steven L. Sears
Directed by Jace Alexander
Trivia: The clips shown during Stallonus' tale are from old Hercules movies starring Steve Reeves. The clips shown during Orion's final, touching tale are from "Spartacus", the feature film starring Kirk Douglas.