"There can be…only one" Connor and Duncan McCloud intoned at the same time.
Duncan's girlfriend, Tessa, looked at them like the brainwashed cultists they were.
"Why?!" She asked. "Why can there be only one? Why do you have to cut each other's heads off with swords? Who cares whether it gets you more powers, someone else will probably just cut off your head with a sword later! It's so stupid!"
"It's just the way it is Tessa," Duncan said with a resigned shrug.
"I told you she wouldn't understand," Connor said. He brandished a smug smile.
"But it doesn't make any sense! Do you have some reason to think there can be only one? Is there an ancient text that says 'There can be only one oh and also cut off each other's heads' ?" Tessa asked.
"Not that I'm aware of," Duncan said.
"Why are we even talking about this?" Connor asked. He took a deep breath and turned toward Tessa, lecturing her as if she were a very small child.
"We fight in the Gathering for the Prize. We cannot fight on holy ground. We only die if you take our heads and with it, our power. What about this is so hard to understand?"
Tess gave him a dirty look from where she was standing on the other side of the counter in Duncan's home.
"What is 'the prize'? Do you win it at 'the amusement park?' Huh?"
"Funny. Look-Duncan, she's not going to get it."
Duncan covered his mouth and turned away to repress a laugh.
"No, no." Tessa said, waggling a finger. "I want to know more about this "prize" that's so important you kill each other for it!"
Connor sidled up to the counter, pouring himself a glass of wine.
"No one knows what 'the prize' is. Connor said. He took a sip of wine. "Some say it's the ability to dominate humanity. Others say it lets you read minds or use the power of the Quickening in some other way. My personal favorite is that it lets you age normally and have children again."
"Or you could see a fertility doctor," Tessa said, exasperated.
Connor rolled his eyes, but Tessa was on a roll.
"Wow!" She said sarcastically. "What great prizes your little game has! I have one question for you all though-"
She paused to look back and forth between Duncan and Connor.
"Tell me, both of you; are those prizes worth being dead?"
"I don't like it either Tessa," Duncan said, crossing his arms. "But it's just how it is."
"We'll see about that," She said. "Tell me, how many immortals do you know that you haven't decapitated yet?"
Two men walked past each other in a dark alley at night somewhere not too far away. The night was cold, and a thick fog was rolling in from the nearby sea.
They paused for a moment after passing, both of them having felt the sensation that could mean only one thing.
The first one, an Asian man with an elaborate coat with stenciled dragons on the front, turned and drew a Chinese sword called a Dao from his coat. The weapon had a bright red tassel on the end.
Fog rolled over the man's shoulders and down his bent legs to the ground as he assumed a fighting stance, his sword held out in front of him.
"There can be only one," he said.
"Only one," agreed the second man. The man had dark skin and a black trench coat. He put his hand inside of it to draw an Ida, a sword from West Africa like a machete that grew broader and heavier near the tip of the blade.
The rolling fog moved past the second man's knees for several long seconds as he stood with his sword out and at the ready.
Then the moment passed, and the way between them became clear. Both men tensed, each ready to strike or parry, teetering on the brink of the impending duel.
Just then there was a squealing of tires, and a number of vans pulled up, blocking the exits on each side of the alley.
"A trap?" the man with the Dao said. He pointed at his opponent. "You dare break the rules?"
The man with the Ida looked confused.
"Not me," he said.
A French woman with blonde hair leapt out of one of the vans and strode towards the two men.
"Me!" She said. "I broke the rules!"
The two men looked at each other and then at the woman.
"You aren't an immortal," One of them said in confusion.
"No, I'm not," she said. "And that's why I'm the only one who can see clearly around here. Stop it!" She shouted, whipping a hand at the spectacle in the alley. "Stop killing each other! It's so pointless!"
"But there can be only one," One of the men said, and the other nodded fervent agreement.
"Do you people even know what civilization is? Maybe you didn't notice because you were too busy being murderous for no reason, but the rest of us have all decided to not kill each other, and we get all sorts of our own great "prizes" in return, like microwaves and medicine and the privilege of not being dead!"
"So here's what's going to happen," Tessa said firmly. "You're both going to turn around right now, go back your own ways, and stop killing each other right now!"
"But, there can-"one of the men began.
"Actually," Tessa said, cutting him off, "There can be many." She signaled to the vans and they began disgorging one trench-coated swordsman and swordswoman after another, until the alleyway was glutted with them.
"Because if you don't reform your pointless homicidal ways, no matter how ancient and sacred they may be, every immortal I can contact is going to have something to say about it."
A few of the immortals in the alley brandished their own swords menacingly.
Next she pointed to a man watching them from one of the building's rooftops with a Y-shaped tattoo on his wrist.
"And don't think you can get away with killing people on the sly either, because we've rewritten the Watcher's charter to make them actually useful for the first time in history, and even if they can't get a nearby group of immortals to you in time, they are now authorized to machine gun any aggressor as many times as necessary for the victim to get away."
The Watcher waved his machine gun good -naturedly in the air above their heads.
"Welcome to the new world gentlemen," She said. "Where we don't risk destroying humanity's only potential source of immortality just so whichever of you ends up being the only one to not be murdered by the others can grow old and die."
"You should join us," Tessa said as the not-dueling men considered their options. "Immortality can be fun when there isn't any cutting off of heads allowed."
Duncan smiled from his position in the back.
"Can't argue with that," he said, while Connor gave him a dirty look.