III – Power.
Utretch, the Netherlands.
A week later.
In an abandoned warehouse, sword lashes echoed preternaturally. A large, bulky man contained as he could the several blows from the other, a smaller and slimmer man. However small the lad looked like, Charles Owen, the big immortal, a Liverpudlian of 500 years of age, thought, he had an impossible strength for someone his shape.
He parried a chop and countered with a strong whip that, notwithstanding his usual accuracy, missed, and Owen found his scimitar cutting the air, the inertia of the blow sending him imbalancedly out of his defensive stance. The blade of the other carved through his back and he hissed as he fell on his knees.
"Who are you?" he gasped, knowing that his measure of life was to end soon.
"I'm Connor MacLeod of the clan MacLeod." The other squelched back.
MacLeod? The Highlander? It couldn't be. He was said to be a brave man, fighting on the good side. The struggle against evil had always had him as one of his strongholds. He was not a man to be found where Charles had, in the Red Light district, doing a prostitute against a wall without her permission. Himself, on the other hand, usually flirted with the hookers, and had cheated more than one for free sex.
He had been a pirate. He had murdered and raped women and boys of different civilizations and tribes. He had enjoyed it. He no longer felt the need to seize children, but an attractive woman, one with rounded breasts and large hips, turned him on. He deserved hell and death, but to a fine man, not to this stranger who dared tarnish the name of a brave warrior.
"My arse you're MacLeod." He spat.
"Shut up!" the victor yelled.
He raised his katana and let it fall against Charles' neck. The head came off easily and the other opened fully his arms to embrace the quickening. The body was engulfed in blue light, as yellow thunderbolts struck the winner. He shrieked, enjoying it, desiring more, more and even more. How he understood his cruellest enemies now. Power, what a thrill to have. Despite what that effete snob of his mentor had said...
-----
The Highlands of Scotland, 1542.
"What is there for the last one?" Connor MacLeod, a longhaired filthy Highlander newly born to immortality, queried yet again. He had the feeling his mentor, Don Juan Sanchez Villalobos Ramirez, concealed something, so he was asking for the nth time, should Ramirez let something out that hadn't been told the time before.
"The Prize, of course. But that will be at the time of the Gathering. The last of our special brethren will gather, to battle to the last." Ramirez, a cocky elegant man with grey hairs and a funny moustache, dressed in extravagant, and surely uncomfortable, tight red clothes replied as he gazed at the sunset. "Haven't I told you that already, you fool?"
"You have, but... why we fight?"
"If you ask me, MacLeod..." Ramirez stroked his moustache "... it is the possibility of limitless power. The Prize will make one of us, Princes of the Universe, a King beyond anyone's dispute. Many find that appealing."
"What about you...?" Connor inquired.
"Power... what is it but the ability to control somebody else?" Ramirez said poetically. "When you grow as old as I have, you realise some things are more important than others. When I courted Cleopatra, she had legions spread under my feet. I could have been the true ruler of Egypt..."
"And why didn't...?"
"Power can be addictive, MacLeod. I am immortal, so are you. The world can't know we exist. If I were to get gripped by power, I would be unable to let it go. And soon they might realise the king is ageless."
"I don't want any power over any other man... it's useless if you're not happy." Connor commented.
"I'm glad you don't." Ramirez smiled. "But you will still fight. You may not want to rule, but you will want to stay alive. The only way to do that is by getting closer and closer to the source of strength: immortal power... the Quickening!"
Connor felt his mind boggled. Again he mentioned that funny word. Ramirez had had him raise his hand to be hit by a bolt of lightning. It had been a very strange thing. He had felt himself joined to this Spaniard in a way he could not understand.
"The Quickening... I don't like it." Connor protested. "You know what quickens my heart, you haggis? Seeing my bonny Heather beautiful, tender, and unharmed."
"Allow me to say I'd prefer it as well... but I've told you already..." Ramirez said seriously. "You must let her go. She will wither and die, and you will watch helplessly."
"I know that... but... I can't." Connor's voice cracked.
"I hope you someday gain enough strength to do it, before she..." Ramirez stared silently at the dark clouds that were gathering above them. "MacLeod... are you willing to try your words?"
"Aye. What do you want?" Connor challenged.
"I want you to find and behead one of us... and I want you to return and tell me and Heather that you didn't enjoy the power unleashed by the quickening. Do that, and I promise I won't bother you anymore about leaving her." Connor rationalised. Where in bloody hell would he find an immortal? "I know what you're thinking. Ride north. There you will find another of us."
Connor clenched his hand round his claymore tightly. "Fine, brother. Tell Heather I'll return to her as soon as I can, that neither heaven nor hell will keep me away from her, let alone you, you Spanish peacock."
"Good luck, Highlander. I pray your words end up being true."
"They will, Ramirez. They will."
Connor rode away, being gripped by an uncertain sensation of fatality he didn't understand. He found that immortal and defeated him easily. But the quickening brought a power he was unable to reject. Never had he felt pleasure or pain like it.
He had returned to tell Ramirez he had been wrong. But the house had fallen down and Ramirez was dead. Heather told him amid cries that a hulk in a golden armour, whom Ramirez referred to as "Kurgan", appeared and beheaded the Spaniard. He had the queer sensation she was hiding something, but he dared not tell her that he had also taken a head... and wanted another.
------
Connor MacLeod rose after the quickening. Ramirez was a fool. The Kurgan had told the truth. Power is to be enjoyed and accumulated. Connor would have lied had the Spaniard been alive. He would pretend nothing happened, so that he could return to the tranquillity before Ramirez appeared, when there were only Heather and him.
Connor remembered he had a wife to return to. He thought of her and felt his jeans tighter as he walked away, wondering what would be soon.
AUTHOR'S NOTE: Charles Owen is yet another non-canon immortal. Connor's departure to the north is the explanation I give to his absence when Kurgan calls in at the MacLeod home.