A/N—I don't own this. Everything belongs to Michael Scott.

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The World's Greatest Playwright

Thunder claps: loud and piercing, rumbling with all the force of an encroaching army, rolling like a drum roll across the battered heath. It rings in the ears of the tired men, in bloodied armor, and it shakes the wearied horses, plodding along, feet sinking in the mud and hide catching on the sharp bracken.

Lightning screams: one long ragged bolt, reaching towards the earth. The sudden burst of illumination reveals, for just an instant, the whole horrific landscape—empty, browning grass stained in places with dark blood, and dirt unearthed and lying in heaping piles, where, perhaps, graves had been begun, but never finished.

"Double, double, toil and trouble..." The voice is cracked and eerie, seeming to have no source, until another jagged flash of light throws a crooked, bent, hunched shadow over the land. The long, creeping darkness attracts the attention of the weary travelers, who glance up just in time to see the figure before all disappears as the lightning fades, leaving them alone, with the low muttered words vibrating in their ears, stirring their hearts with emotions that, as soldiers, they disdain as only fit for women.

"Fire burn..." A flicker of light: reddish-orange, strangely lifelike and real in the barren heath.

"...and cauldron bubble..." As if replying to the command of the hags (for hags it could only be), a low, bubbling, simmering sound fills the quiet air, and the dancing flames hop up around the rounded shape of a dented cauldron, which reflects with frightening vividness the faces of the one—the two—the three wrinkled speakers who gather about the fire, death and prophecy shining in their coal-like eyes, the depths of which seem to reveal the workings of heart and mind, and where blood and fire merge in a blazing chaos—

"Can you be any more useless, boy?"

William Shakespeare jumped, and the frightened twitch of his arm upset the inkwell beside him, sending the contents spilling across the desk and onto the floor, oddly reminiscent of the blood that had so occupied his mind. He yanked his paper out of the way—not that it mattered (it was still blank)—and then turned, wincing, to face his opponent.

"Yes, Mr. Fleming?" he asked, knowing that he ought to apologize, but not feeling in any way inclined to do so.

Mr. Nicholas Fleming stood looking down at. His pale, nearly colorless, eyes were narrowed, and were full of anger. Nicholas Fleming wasn't extraordinarily tall, or muscled, or handsome. He wasn't extraordinarily short, or scrawny, or ugly: he just wasn't really anything to talk about, as Will knew from hearing his younger sister talk, who would mention absolutely anybody worth talking about, even if they did happen to be the married, middle-aged bookseller. But Joan didn't talk about him, which led Will to assume that he was completely un-talked about everywhere else.

"I asked you a question, William."

Will blushed, hating to have to ask yet another question. "Erm...Mr. Fleming, could you repeat it please?"

Mr. Fleming's eyebrows rocketed for an instant, before slanting downwards as he became more irate. "With pleasure. Can you be any more useless, boy?"

Will would have given anything—maybe not anything: after all, anything was anything, and when you were William Shakespeare anything was also very little—but just about anything, to be anywhere else. And there was absolutely no question about the anywhere. If anywhere was the pigpen down the road, so be it, as long as Mr. Fleming didn't follow.

"Yes, sir," he said, knowing that a reprimand was coming, and deciding that he might as well add some spice to the conversation.

"What do you mean by that?"

"Well, sir, I could have been gambling away your money. I mean, look on the sunny side: all I was doing was thinking, which does no harm to you or your money."

Mr. Fleming's mouth didn't even twitch. He was absolutely nothing like Perenelle, his wife, who would, perhaps, have let Will off just for his wit.

"You have errands to run, and chores to do, William. I don't see any of them getting done. Have you done them?"

He didn't dare lie. Not that he had any problem with lying. But one so brazen, so blatantly untrue, could bring nothing but pain, which was something that Will really, really didn't like. So he decided to just speak the truth.

"No, sir." Then, upon consideration of his circumstances, he decided that a little justification was permissible. "But I wasn't being useless. I was benefitting the world."

Mr. Fleming scowled. "William, we've already talked about this."

"One day I shall be the world's greatest playwright, and—" He stopped short. When the fire started in Mr. Fleming's eyes, it was time to clam it and high-tail it to wherever he wanted you to be. Will grabbed the parcels and dashed out the door, not even saying another word. The fire in Mr. Fleming's eyes had been strong indeed. Perhaps that last statement hadn't really been necessary...but he wasn't sorry. Not, as least, until he got punished for it.

Last one...last one...

Every bone in his body ached. His feet hurt, and his throat burned. His lungs felt like they wanted to nothing more than either blow up, or shrivel up. Neither sounded painless, which was enough to make Will reluctant to have such an occurrence happen to him. His arms were weak, and they could barely hold the last package, which was sad, as it was small—Will highly doubted if it was even a book. But then, a lot of the things Mr. Fleming sent about the village seemed awfully heavy, or awkward, to be a book, yet Will wasn't quite idiot enough to dare to open them and find out if he was right.

Last one...last one...

He staggered into the street, and clambered up the simple steps to hammer on the door. He got a splinter in his knuckle, and was sucking on his injured hand in a most undignified manner when the door opened, and the maid, who gave him a look like she thought him little to look at (he could have said the same of her, if he hadn't been afraid of receiving a punch from her calloused hand) and deposited the tarnished coin into his hands before slamming the door in his face.

Will resisted the urge to spit, and turned his back on the door, heading back down the street, cursing Mr. Fleming, who had sent him to the opposite end of town. A look at the sky, which was cloudy, failed to tell him the time, but the clock, distantly chiming in the square, alerted him to the fact that it was a quarter to seven.

"I hate my life..." he muttered, plodding along. "Only me. Only me. What happened to a good apprenticeship?"

His mutinous words were drowned out by a sudden roar. Will jumped, and nearly wet himself, fearing the worst, before he realized that the roar was that of applause. It was loud, but not loud enough to obscure the deep, rumbling voice that echoed in the air, reaching Will's ears from its source in the square. Will followed the sound, and stopped short, a small, sharp gasp ripping itself from his burning lungs.

Bodies lie everywhere, stiff and cold, unmoving, frozen in whatever pose they had fallen in. Most are facedown, but the few that turn their countenances to the sky are pale and lifeless, with eyes of every color starting passionless at the clouds.

A tall warrior, in complete armor, staggers across the field of battle, looking ahead with focused eyes. He gives no heed to the bodies at his feet, but merely picks his way through them, tripping in holes, or on roots, until he reaches his destination.

His armor clangs loudly as he crumples to his knees, reaching out a gauntlet clad hand to roll over the body that seems to absorb his whole attention. Clumsy fingers scrabble at the band that hold the helmet to the head, and tears stream down the man's dark skin as he stares down at the face of the young woman, whose raven hair tumbles free from her helmet and falls in a limp curtain into the mud.

The warrior makes no sound, but merely looks down at the lifeless form, lips forming a name...

...an expression in his eyes that was more than acting. Will knew the look too well. It was the one that his parents' eyes took on whenever Joan, or Margaret, was mentioned. Both of Will's elder sisters were dead: Joan in infancy, Margaret a year before Will's own birth. Will had seen the same haunted, pained look in his mother's eyes, in the wrinkles on his father's face. The man was acting, that was certain, but his mind was not on the body in front of him. It was elsewhere, in a world, in a past that had obviously held much pain, and little joy. At that moment, the man looked old: centuries old, like a man who had seen countless battles, and had held countless loved ones in his arms, and cried for them, for every one of them. Which was impossible.

Will stood there, staring at the warrior.

He was a tall man, with skin the color of earth of the kind that Will's mother so wanted for her garden, and so envied in the gardens of others. His eyes were a dark, dark brown, and they reminded Will of the leather that his father made his living by, that he had so wanted Will to make his living by. Brilliant white teeth flashed for a moment, as the knight's lips moved, once again forming a name—this one different. Will couldn't read lips well enough to know exactly what the man had said, but he had watched his parents, and the Flemings, whisper amongst themselves too many times to not be able to at least count the syllables. The first name had been but one—Rose, perhaps, or Joan. But this one was three. Unconsciously, Will mimed the movement of the man's lips, and somehow, something came out.

"Isuelt..." He didn't know what had possessed him. Of all names...perhaps he had said it because it was on his mind. He had just recently read the story of Tristram and Isuelt, though of all the characters in the tale, he had preferred the sorry Palamedes.

The man looked up, and Will saw in his dark eyes affirmation—unplanned, full of pain. The man's eyes locked with his, and Will had to suppress the urge to run.