Earth, Mesopotamia
3800 BC
Zeist.
That was the name of the land that Seth called home; this land of mountains, desert and half-ruined cities ruled by those either blessed or cursed with the inability to die once dealt a wound that would kill a normal man; those that would go on forever, unless their heads were struck from their necks, the only certain way an Immortal could receive Death's embrace. This was forbidden by the priests of Zeist, as for an Immortal to loose his head meant the Quickening, a part of the banned Game which could ultimately result in a single Immortal, having slain all others, winning the Prize, because there could be only one. This could not, must not happen now, so decreed the priests.
Any Immortal who played the Game by seeking the head of another faced exile not merely from Zeist, but from the time in which they lived, via an arcane process fully understood by few, whereby those found unkillable ones found guilty of transgressing the law were cast into time's wilderness to be abandoned in some far-flung future epoch where the Game could be safely played. Seth, an Immortal himself, was frankly mystified by all this, yet he obeyed, as did his mentor and alleged 'ruler' of Zeist, General Katana.
There was one Immortal whom General Katana especially feared and hated, the outlander who went by the name of Connor Macleod. He had taken up arms against Katana, and been tossed to the future for his head to avoid Katana's hungry blade, yet the General had warily observed him via the scrying abilities of Zeist. A future had been seen wherein Macleod won the Prize, becoming mortal, yet still Katana feared his return, and so crossed the temporal gulf himself, reactivating Macleod's immortality and fighting him. Seth watched through the window of time as Macleod defeated Katana in combat and severed his head, winning the Prize a second time.
"Macleod's head is mine," Seth growled. "My master will be avenged. Now send me to his killer, damn you!"
OOOOOOOOOOOO
Every drop of blood inside him boiled and was wrenched from his body. Every one of his bones was broken and turned to ash. That was how it felt as Seth plumetted through time toward a foe in an unimaginable age. Suddenly he felt the ground beneath his feet again, fought to steady himself. He shook his head to clear the fuzziness clouding his brain, then forced his eyes to focus on his environment. At first he thought the time spell had failed, as he seemed to still be in Zeist, with its barren terrain and ancient, decaying citadels...until he looked up into the sky and saw looming in the purple-pink heavens the gigantic form of an indigo globe, such as never hung so near his world. Something had gone wrong. Very wrong. Standing alone on an utterly alien terrain in an utterly alien aeon, Seth cried out to those who had sent him on this journey. "What has happened!" he roared. "I demand you answer!" But no answer came from Zeist. With no other course of action, he started walking.
He did not have to go far before he had his first encounter with some of this world's indigenous inhabitants: Kaylar, they called themselves; brutal creatures surprisingly formed much like men, though of greater stature. These barbarians attacked Seth and left his bloody, broken corpse in the sand. His injuries healed, he tracked the bandits to their camp as they slept in the night, quickly dispatching them. Seth was grateful the power of Zeist still enabled him to understand the last savage's petrified cries of "Ghost!" before his sword skewered his heart.
After that he traveled further, and one day came to a great city. The marvels of Zeist had been staggering in the era Seth was born in, but the things he saw here shook even his senses. The denizens of this place! Some, like the Kaylar, were not too dissimilar to himself physically, while others were formed like the stuff of fevered dreams and nightmares. Yet all seemed perfectly at home with one another, like these conditions had existed for a long time. He soon learned that this world, the seventh that revolved around its sun, had many names in many tongues, but the name given its star by the folk of Earth was Beta Rigel, or simply Rigel. This seventh planet was home to many cultures, some born of its own soil, others spawned by visitors from far off planets and stars. Magnificently advanced in some areas, barbaric and rustic in others.
Some of this Seth learned from the first other Immortal he met in this place. When he first felt the tingling caused by his aura brushing against that of another like himself, he thought it could only be Macleod...and yet it was not. "How is this possible?" Seth asked. "Macleod won the Prize...only he was left."
"I've never heard of any Macleod," the other Immortal told him. "And as for the Prize, well, I'm pretty sure it hasn't been won yet." And they fought, Seth and this other, and Seth took his head and experienced for the first time the forbidden glory of the Quickening. He instantly knew it would not be his last.