FATE/OUTSIDE EXPERIENCE

Part I: Blood Thread

Chapter 1: Bloodstone

AUTHOR'S NOTE: This and any future stories involving Connla will assume that you have read Fate/Laoch Gan Finsceal, so some details already covered there will not be explained here. If you haven't read it, I recommend you do so before this one so you aren't too confused.

In front of the Heroic Summoning System FATE, Fujimaru Ritsuka and Mash Kyrielight stood before the altar. Ritsuka sacrificed three Saint Quartz to initiate the ritual, and the chamber was engulfed in dazzling white light. That was when a rare sight happened before them – the orbs that formed a circle shone with multiple colors before converging and exploding in chromatic particles.

"Senpai, this is-!" Mash exclaimed.

"A super rare summon!?" Ritsuka shouted elatedly.

The light dissipated, and there stood a tall figure whose red eyes glowed eerily beneath his hood.

"Wait a minute… Isn't that…?" the young Magus uttered, taking a good look at her newest recruit.

"… Does my color have something to do with you?" the man asked her in a chilly, hollow tone.

The youngest Servant in Ritsuka's entourage - the Lancer known as Connla – was busy delivering papers between Chaldea's different departments. When she wasn't out on Rayshift missions with her Master, she was put to work doing various chores around the facility. She was happy to help out if it meant allowing everything to run smoothly, even if it meant doing thankless things like sweeping, taking out the garbage, or doing the dishes. Many other Servants were not interested in performing such jobs, so she was often saddled with the simple tasks that could build up over time if they weren't done regularly.

I have to take these to Dr. Roman so he can adjust Master's exercise schedule, she thought while jogging down the long hallway.

She was about to pass by the chamber containing FATE when Ritsuka, Mash and the new Servant exited. They saw the child coming and stopped. Connla's mind went blank and her eyes shot wide open as her gaze met the man's. Her complexion turned white as snow, and her pupils shrunk into trembling dots. Standing behind the pair was none other than Cuchulainn Alter, who had just been summoned to be Chaldea's newest warrior in the fight to preserve humanity's future.

He too looked rather surprised, but murmured in a muted whisper, "It's you…"

The young girl swallowed and looked away anxiously. Ritsuka and Mash immediately recognized the tense atmosphere, so Mash held Connla's shoulders and said, "Senpai, I'll help Lancer get ready for bed. She looks a bit tired."

"Right…" Ritsuka nodded nervously and watched the pair leave.

After a moment of silence, Cuchulainn muttered, "So she's here too?"

"Y-Yeah… I was hoping to tell her first before showing you to her, but…"

"So you know our history together."

"More or less."

He sighed, then said, "It's fine. She has every right to be upset with me. I'll just lay low and keep out of sight unless you need me to kill someone. Not much else to do here except eat and sleep anyway."

"Sorry about this… Lancer's been a big help with the staff by doing menial chores, but she's really sensitive and gets bothered easily, so she tends to lose focus."

"Has she been doing good on the battlefield?"

"Yes, she's been fighting as hard as she can with the other Servants. We try not to push her too much because of her age, but she insists on trying to keep up with everyone."

"So she still needs some training. Has anyone been mentoring her?"

Ritsuka nodded slightly. "Cu Lancer trains her from time to time, but not as often as he'd like due to our frequent Rayshift missions. I saw some dreams of her past as well, so I have a good idea of how she fights."

"Hmph," Cuchulainn scratched his head in irritation. "If she wasn't so scared of me, I would have put her through the gamut to see what she needs to work on."

"Give her some time. Maybe she'll warm up to you eventually, now that you're both Servants with the same Master."

"I wonder about that."

A week later…

In a large room outfitted to be a grand workshop, the genius inventor Leonardo Da Vinci was busy tinkering away on an unknown magical device. Just to be clear, the Heroic Spirit did not materialize in this world as who he was in life. Rather, he emerged in the image of his magnum opus, the Mona Lisa, virtually 'sculpting' himself to be the perfect woman he had envisioned in his painting. Throughout Chaldea, it was acceptable to refer to Da Vinci as female, even though he was technically male on the inside. Perhaps it was safer to say that the concept of gender was too constricting for a mad genius such as him, and so he found a way to break through such restraints in his new life as a Servant.

Regardless, Da Vinci used a magnifying scope to inspect a stone she had been working on. Although Magecraft wasn't well-known as her forte in life, she could still dabble in the art due to her being a Caster-class Servant. She inspected every millimeter of the gemstone with fascination, looking pleased at her handiwork.

"Not quite the same brilliance as a Saint Quartz, but it'll do," she murmured to herself.

The door to her atelier slid open, and Connla entered with a service cart stacked with plated food and drinks.

"Ms. Da Vinci?" the girl asked. "Dr. Roman told me to bring this to you."

"Thank you," Da Vinci replied and looked up at the bizarrely designed clock on the wall. "My, it's already this late? I didn't really notice how hungry I was."

"Well we're Heroic Spirits, so we don't really need to consume food… But some of the staff were wondering what you were doing, so they wanted me to deliver this. What have you been working on anyway?"

"It's a SE-CR-ET! Although," the woman pondered, "to be honest, I'd say it's pretty much complete now…"

"But it's still considered classified? I understand. I won't ask about it if you don't want to tell me."

"Hold on now."

Connla paused and stared at Da Vinci with a puzzled look. "Yes?"

The inventor had a playful smile plastered all over her face, and her ultramarine eyes beamed with life as she asked, "Are you busy right now?"

"Not really. Master and Ms. Mash are away on a mission, so I've just been doing tasks here and there to pass the time."

"Perfect! Do you think you could do a big favor for me?"

"A favor?"

"Just come with me."

They went to the chamber containing CHALDEAS, the Global Environment Model that was a miniature replica of planet Earth. Surrounding the circular wall were dozens of man-sized blue coffins, with Ritsuka and Mash occupying two of them for their current work. Da Vinci and Connla remained a good distance from the pair so they wouldn't disturb them.

"First, let me show you this," the inventor said as she showed Connla a strange red crystal ebbing with the familiar sigil that was Ritsuka's Command Spell. "This is the culmination of my latest research, that being the concept of a Servant independently engaging in a Rayshift mission to correct issues within the Human Order Foundation."

"I'm not sure what you mean…"

"Well, think of it this way. Through the Spiritron Chassis, Masters are able to send their souls back to the past in order to correct Singularities, okay? However, since our staff and resources are severely limited, we only have Ritsuka and Mash working together to solve any major issues that SHEBA observes. Meanwhile, Ritsuka has many Servants at her command, but she is limited in the number that she is able to bring with her. The remaining Servants are forced to remain on standby here until she calls upon them.

"That's when I started racking my brain about how to utilize those Servants in similar Rayshift missions. After all, it'd be too much for only one Master to have to worry about every single possible problem that manifests in the time stream, right?"

"I guess so," Connla nodded in understanding.

"So it came to me that we Servants really are just spiritual copies of Heroes and Anti-Heroes borrowed from the Throne of Heroes, meaning we're essentially high-density souls. So why shouldn't we be able to Rayshift on our own to help out with the Grand Order?"

"You mean Servants would travel to different eras and correct Singularities on their own?"

"Hmm…" Da Vinci's expression contorted in apprehension. "I was hoping to develop something like that, but the problem is that Servants are bound to their Master through the Command Spells, and Ritsuka can't send commands from one era to a Servant in a completely different time. For instance, she and Mash are in Russia during the Cold War right now, so if you were to go to, say, the Wars of the Roses in the mid-1400s, it would be impossible for Ritsuka to send you commands if you are both 500 years apart."

"Yes, I guess that would be difficult…"

"So I had to come up with a workaround for that problem, hence this pretty little stone. Think of it as a substitute for your Master."

"What is it exactly?" Connla wondered while examining the red gem. It didn't look much different from a perfectly polished ruby, although the color was more of a deep red-brown color than the dark pink hue associated with rubies.

"This is a fragment of Sorcery Ore that has been imbued with Ritsuka's blood. You could liken it to a bloodstone, though it's not really a type of chalcedony…"

"I-It's made out of Master's blood!?"

Da Vinci chuckled. "Don't worry! It's only the amount that Roman draws from her during her checkups. After the medical team analyzes her blood for any abnormalities, it's then kept in cold storage for future use. I took some samples to see if it retained any traces of her magical power, and there was enough to consider crystallizing it into a Bloodstone. The ore amplifies any traces of her magic and restores her Command Spells so that they can be used only once by a Servant who is connected to her. Once those Spells are used up, the Bloodstone becomes worthless, and a new one has to be made to replace it."

"Isn't there a way to recharge the Command Spells so that Master doesn't have to give up so much of her blood to make new stones?"

"I'm looking into that, but I'm afraid this is the best I can come up with for now. This is the very first prototype Bloodstone I made, and I wanted you to take it out on a simple field test."

"Hmm…" the girl murmured hesitantly. "I'm not so sure… How much risk would there be to me?"

"Well, you first have to establish yourself as the 'Master' of this Bloodstone, meaning you would be a short-lived Master over any of Ritsuka's Servants you bring with you. It becomes your temporary body, which I can then attach to the Spiritron Chassis and Rayshift your spirit to any desired era. When you come back, you'll be in the Bloodstone, and you'll re-emerge as a regular Servant once again."

"You mean Master doesn't give me commands through the stone?"

"I already said that's impossible. There's no way to directly connect Master and Servant when they are in completely different times. This is the next best thing; a Servant acting as a Master by virtue of possessing Ritsuka's Command Spells via a Bloodstone. Let's call these temporary Masters 'Blood Servants' to make things easier on us."

"That makes sense," Connla nodded. "So how do I connect myself to this Bloodstone?"

"Oh, you're saying you'll do it?

"I'm not really sure of how safe this is, but I'm confident that you wouldn't subject me to anything dangerous on purpose. If something does happen, I'll trust that it was an accident, and we'll find a way to fix it."

"My, you flatter me! Well then, all you need to do is to drop a tiny bit of your own blood upon the stone. It will identify you as the one-and-only Master of this Bloodstone. It also prevents anyone else from taking its power away from you. Even if they tried to drop their own blood on it, your spiritual signature will override theirs and reject them on the spot."

Da Vinci took a small needle out and pricked Connla's finger so that she could smear a tiny amount of her blood upon the face of the gem. The fluid was readily absorbed, then the Command Spells shone brighter for a moment.

"Good. You're registered as the Master of this Bloodstone," Da Vinci acknowledged.

"I feel kind of heavy…" the child murmured suddenly. Her chest felt like it had a brick or two wedged between her ribs.

"That's because the stone has become your temporary physical vessel. Now close your eyes and imagine yourself as being one with it. Your spirit will go inside the Bloodstone, and you will fall asleep. I will take care of hooking you up to a coffin and Rayshifting you."

Connla took a deep breath and closed her eyes, imagining herself sleeping inside the red crystal. She entered a sort of trance state where she wasn't completely asleep, but she didn't have enough cognition to be considered awake either. Time didn't mean anything, so it was hard to tell if she had been out for a ridiculously long time or for just a few seconds. She felt the familiar sensation of the world rushing past her as she descended into the Rayshift tunnel.

After what felt like a long time, Connla felt her feet plant themselves upon softer ground than what she had been standing on earlier. She felt a light breeze swaying around her, and she gradually opened her eyes. Her lower jaw fell open as she gazed about at her surroundings. She was in the middle of an expansive, hilly meadow looking over the ocean. Countless varieties of wildflowers and grasses danced in the wind, and the sun beamed brightly upon the mid-afternoon atmosphere.

Have I… Rayshifted… by myself…?

After Connla spent a moment of ogling, a strange sight interrupted her from her daze. A larger version of a Saint Quartz floated next to her, and Da Vinci's voice echoed through broken static, "Ah, ah, ah! Testing! One, two, three! Are you there, Connla? Can you hear me?"

"Just enough," the girl answered.

"Good. Is the feed sort of broken?"

"Yes. I can just barely make out what you're saying."

"I figured as much."

"How are you talking to me through a Saint Quartz?"

"Oh, this? It's a projection of the Quartz on my staff. I don't wanna bore you with the details, so let's just say I'm communicating with you through it."

"Sure…" Connla was bewildered enough with so much occurring all at once. Here she was, expecting to just deliver food to Da Vinci only to end up in an entirely different world within the span of an hour.

"Okay, so now you're going to go find a Leyline, then establish a summoning circle," Da Vinci instructed.

"A summoning circle? I thought only Ms. Mash could do that."

"Technically speaking, any Servant who has made a contract with Ritsuka should be able to do it. Mash is the most reliable Servant due to her possessing the Round Table itself, but the Bloodstone will help you set it up. You also know a thing or two about Celtic Runes, so it shouldn't be a problem for you."

"But Ms. Da Vinci, I'm not exactly sure where I am or what time period I've been sent to, or even for what purpose. Everything looks fine here."

"That's perfect. I purposefully sent you to France in 1431, which was a Singularity that had been resolved before you had been summoned. Mash already set up a summoning circle elsewhere, but it'd be helpful to establish another one in case of an emergency."

Connla murmured in acknowledgement, then said, "So I just have to look for a Leyline…"

"Yep. Be careful though. You're the only Servant there, so there won't be any backup should you get into a scuffle. Get that circle established as soon as you can, then I'll call you back to HQ."

"How are you going to bring me back?"

"Don't worry. I have full control of the Bloodstone, so if I think it is getting too dangerous for you, or if we lose contact, I'll retrieve you right away. I don't have to worry about monitoring your vitals since you're already a spirit anyway, but to be safe, find that Leyline ASAP. You'll be a lot safer with the summoning circle in place, and it will be much easier for me to recall you."

"Understood. Commencing my investigation."

Connla began walking through the grassy field, still astonished that Da Vinci's strange invention actually worked. Even though it was just a harmless trek for now, the idea that a Servant could work in a completely separate timeline independent from Ritsuka's fascinated her. There were still a lot of questionable points that needed ironing out, but the young Lancer was glad to help out as a test subject if it meant lessening the burden on her Master in the long run. She knew that Da Vinci had worked tirelessly to make sure nothing would go wrong and that she would return to Chaldea safely, so Connla entrusted all of her faith and confidence in the inventor.

She gazed at her surroundings, trying to get her bearings straight. To her right was the Bay of Biscay, with the island of Île d'Oléron directly across from where she was in mainland France. She was north of the Gironde estuary, where the port city of Bordeaux rested at the southernmost tip of the river. This general region hadn't been greatly affected by the Hundred Years' War of the Evil Dragons incident, which comprised the first Singularity that Ritsuka and her Servants resolved. Connla had not been around at the time- she'd been summoned just before the Magus took on the sixth known Singularity in the Holy Land of Camelot. Whatever happened in France was completely unknown to the young Servant.

That's why she had a hard time imagining that a country possessing such vast, elegant plains and grand ocean views could be the setting for a cataclysmic event that threatened humanity's very foundation. To be fair though, she wasn't familiar with the original Hundred Years' War either, so perhaps this beautiful nation had plenty of dark history attached to it.

"Come on, what are you standing around for?" Da Vinci's voice urged. "Get moving already."

"Oh, I'm sorry. I just thought I'd take it in for a second."

"Guess I can't blame you. You're the first Servant to ever Rayshift by yourself to a fractured timeline, so you must be feeling out of place without your Master to give you commands."

"That's not what I was… Never mind," Connla's muttering trailed off. "Do you know where I should be looking for the Leyline?"

"Not exactly, but I'm picking up a strong signature somewhere near the Gironde. It could be on the same side of the river that you are, or on the opposite side."

"So I just need to focus on the water."

"That's right…" Da Vinci affirmed, but then her tone went quiet rather quickly. "Hm? I'm picking up a Servant signature very close to you."

The young Lancer inhaled deeply and looked around. When she looked up at the northeastern hills that would lead to Orleans, that was when she saw someone riding a white horse. The armored man commanded his steed to trot directly toward her, so his visage gradually became clearer to her.

Da Vinci worriedly asked, "Is it a hostile?"

"I don't think so," Connla shook her head. "Judging from his armor and military decorations, he looks like a knight."

Once the man was within speaking range, she inspected his features thoroughly. The first thing she noticed was how chalky white his skin looked. 'Pale' probably didn't begin to describe how devoid of color his pallor was. This, coupled with the distinct bags under his weary black eyes, already suggested that he was a man who endured unfathomable stress throughout his life. He wore a green coat beneath the mismatched set of armor, giving him the aura that, though he was an esteemed knight, something didn't seem to be quite right with him.

He stopped in front of the child and dismounted his steed before approaching her. His smile was friendly, but it didn't fit with his dogged appearance at all. The man asked, "Greetings, young lady. What brings you to this region all by yourself?"

"Um…" Connla fumbled with her words for a moment, then replied, "I'm looking for a specific place, but…"

"Are you perhaps lost?"

"Hmm… I guess so. I know this is France, but I'm not familiar with the local towns and landmarks."

"Where are you trying to go?"

"I want to go further south."

"Then you're headed for the Bordeaux region. How fortunate that my path likewise takes me to those areas. Allow me to show you the way."

"Thank you, sir."

Connla followed the black-haired knight for a bit, then eventually said, "By the way, I don't think I got your name."

"Oh, my apologies. My mind has been so preoccupied that I forgot the most basic tenant of socializing. I am Gilles de Rais, a knight of the military and former ally of the Holy Maiden."

"I knew it!" Da Vinci exclaimed. "You're a national hero who served under Jeanne D'Arc during the Hundred Years War! Well, I already knew that thanks to the First Singularity, but we didn't get to see you much during the incident."

"My goodness!" the man likewise blurted. "Where is that beautiful voice coming from!?"

"Whoops, sorry. I'm Leonardo Da Vinci, a brilliant genius and inventor who will not be born for another 20 or so years in your time. You're hearing me from the crystal floating next to her."

Gilles genuinely looked baffled. "What are you-?"

"Never you mind that. Just think of me as an invisible assistant for the little lady there. She's not allowed to tell you her name due to certain circumstances, so I'll introduce her for you. She is Connla, a young traveler from Ireland who has left her home in search of adventure."

"Connla, hm?" the knight murmured while inspecting his guest from head to toe. "Interesting. Your form is too immature to embark on such a grueling journey, yet your countenance somehow convinces me that you have the fortitude and skills needed to survive."

"Um…" the child spearman uttered, unsure of how to respond to Gilles' compliments.

"Well, I'm sure you have quite the tale to tell, but I suggest we move as quickly as we can. I have heard reports that the Bordeaux region has become unstable due to thieves and insurgents running rampant lately. Honestly…" Gilles' expression suddenly turned dour. "Those traitors threw away my beloved Jeanne, and then proceeded to cause havoc upon their own home with no regard for the miracles she blessed this nation with. Do those corrupt vermin not know the depths to which they have sunken?"

Connla didn't want to bother him with questions regarding what he was mumbling about. She stayed far behind him while Da Vinci whispered in her ear, "I suggest you keep him out of arm's reach if you know what's good for you."

"Why?"

"Gilles de Rais is an infamous figure in French history, first serving under Jeanne D'Arc as a valiant knight. But then Pierre Cauchon, the Bishop of Beauvais, betrayed Jeanne and had her executed as a heretic. As a fervent follower of Jeanne and her belief in God, Gilles couldn't accept it and turned to witchcraft, kidnapping young boys and doing some despicable things to them under the pseudonym 'Bluebeard'. He would be executed himself due to other nobles wanting his territories for themselves, and his horrific deeds would go largely unpunished."

"So that's what he was talking about…"

"Well, this period we're in is very shortly after Jeanne's execution, so Gilles hasn't quite given in to his insanity yet. Don't be surprised if you see signs of his darker nature though. Keep a healthy distance from him, but don't make him suspicious of your behavior."

"I'll be careful."