FATE/PARALLEL COLORS

Chapter 16: Alien Abduction

Cuchulainn was mortified. He couldn't understand what the hell he was looking at. Was this supposed to be a human being, or a monster taking on human shape? It certainly wasn't anything like the banshees, kelpies, fairies, or other Celtic creatures he was familiar with. He had to remember what Scathach said though; this was supposed to be an entity from beyond the cosmos that defied human logic. To rely on his preexisting knowledge was to trap himself, unwilling to discover what this new monstrosity was supposed to be.

Without warning, Aisling whipped her left arm forth and snatched Cuchulainn's neck! She pinned him to the ground with brute strength that normally wasn't possible for a child of her petite stature.

"Agh!" he choked, startled at not being able to breathe. His reflexes were normally uncanny, but somehow her movements were too fast for him to notice. It was as if her arm teleported from her side right in front of him.

Her small hand wrapped around his throat tighter and tighter. He gasped for air while staring into her vapid eyes. However, his gaze shifted slightly to her right hand, specifically her thumb, where he noticed a faint red glint. He realized that it came from a ring crafted with gold and Bloodstones. The design shocked him – it was the same pattern he asked the royal druid Cathbad to craft for him, which was a series of jagged lines crisscrossing in a diamond motif. Cuchulainn had it made so only his offspring could wear it, and that it would reject anyone else who tried to put it on.

There was no doubt in his mind now. This was indeed Connla. Something had gone seriously wrong with her while he was gone, and he needed to rectify it.

"Ghhh… AAAGH!" he roared and grabbed Aisling's arm with all his might, ripping her fingers off his throat and throwing her several feet away. He got into a hunched battle position and shouted, "Who the hell are you, and what have you done to my kid!?"

No answer, as to be expected. He clenched his teeth, and jagged lines formed on his face. Aisling wielded her own spear and stood in a tall stance, pointing the blade at him while giving him that constant empty stare. She stood perfectly still like a statue, obviously waiting for him to make the first move. Growing frustrated with the tension boiling between them, Cuchulainn rushed at her and deftly swung Gae Bolg about like a high-speed cleaver. Aisling leapt and vaulted through each of his attacks with the grace of flowing water. Once she found an opportunity, she hopped over one low swipe and slashed at his throat. He narrowly missed being decapitated by bending backwards and throwing his chin up.

While Cuchulainn was busy reeling from the near-miss, Aisling quickly flipped away and summoned some Ken Runes on her legs, amplifying them so that when she jumped backwards, she soared high into the air thanks to a burst of wind. At the apex of her leap, she hurled her spear at his exposed chest, hoping to skewer his heart while he was caught off guard. However, his innate reflexes kicked in and he batted the lance away just in time. He regained his balance and chased after Aisling while she was landing, now weaponless and unable to parry his numerous spear thrusts. She appeared totally unfazed with this disadvantage though, as she simply ducked and weaved around countless mad stabs at her head with a bored look on her face.

"ERRRAAA~AAAHH!" Cuchulainn shrieked, beyond irritated with her tenacity and humdrum expression. To him, it almost felt like she wasn't taking him seriously. If there was one thing he enjoyed about combat, it was seeing his opponent's reactions to his superhuman abilities, and likewise showing respect for their capabilities. The fact that Aisling showed absolutely no emotion at all pissed him off. It was as if he was fighting a mannequin that didn't give a rat's ass about their battle.

During the middle of Cuchulainn's mad onslaught, his spear almost pierced Aisling's face. However, she unexpectedly vanished in a burst of colors, startling him. He noticed another flash to his side and swung again, but Aisling teleported once more. Then another flash, attack, and teleport. She kept warping around the frustrated spearman in random spots to confuse him, then performed a rising knee attack to his chin that threw him onto his back. She then teleported over to her spear several dozen feet away and snatched it out of the ground as he clamored to his feet and fiercely glared at her.

"Shit… I know you trained under Scathach, but this is a little ridiculous, wouldn't you agree?" Cuchulainn wondered. "Do you really want me to get serious this early into the match?"

"…"

"Well, I'm not hearing a 'no', so I'll take it as a 'yes'!"

He wielded Gae Bolg in a throwing position and made it energize with a bright red aura. Any other foe would have trembled once they realized he had activated the legendary spear's curse. Aisling still didn't seem to respond though, and that troubled Cuchulainn a bit. She made no motion to either counterattack or run away, not that either would've done much good anyway. Soon, he was ready to unleash his deadliest attack on her.

"Gae… BOLG!"

He hurtled the spear with the force of 100 men, letting it fly straight for Aisling's heart. Due to the reversal of cause and effect, it should have pierced her heart before it even left his hands, defying all logic in order to accomplish this. Just then, Cuchulainn's eyes widened with surprise. Already, he could tell that something was wrong.

Gae Bolg kept zig-zagging around Aisling's perfectly still body, leaving not even a scratch on her. The spear tore through the ground around her in an epic display of chaos and destruction, yet it failed to wound her in the slightest. That was when Cuchulainn noticed what was actually going on – Aisling had trapped Gae Bolg in a series of miniature portals that caused the deadly spear to loop around her in an endless search for her heart. The reversal of cause and effect wouldn't mean much if the spear couldn't find her heart in the first place. The Barbed Spear eventually ceased its futile looping and released its energy in a massive burst of energy. If it wouldn't be able to find its victim, it could at least blow them up with an anti-army explosion.

Cuchulainn covered his face with his arm to block the wind from his eyes, then stared at the blast site once the heat died down. He couldn't find Aisling anywhere. Was she vaporized in the explosion? Somehow he doubted it was going to be that easy. Just as he suspected, a rift opened near him like static, and Aisling casually hopped through looking as healthy as ever. Cuchulainn scowled in a guttural voice, "Damn you… You're mocking me now, aren't you?"

She didn't respond. Her mind didn't seem to be focused on exchanging banter with him. She twirled her spear upon her hand, then held it vertical before her and stood in an unusually calm yet menacing pose. The air rippled and crackled with static around her. She closed her eyes, and her lips moved without producing any sound. Some kind of mystical voice took over as it whispered a bizarre chant:

"N'gha'agl ot ye'bthnkk ng mgn'ghftephaii ahahog. The image came to me in a dream… Shapes of Sleep." †

An ominous chorus of baritone male voices sang around them as numerous rifts opened in the ground around her. Various geometric shapes such as cones, rods, squares, gears, and ovals wormed their way out of the portals and surrounded Aisling. Her body floated off the ground, and the shapes rapidly encased her until they melded and formed into some sort of humanoid machine wielding a much larger version of her usual spear made out of steel rods and cones.

However, what caught Cuchulainn's attention wasn't the living geometry encasing Aisling. His eyes were drawn toward a horrific three-dimensional illusion looming over the construct. He struggled to follow this thing's outline, but his line of sight kept stretching into a never-ending abyss, with more and more shapes and polyhedrons fighting to dominate his field of vision. The sight was too much for him to handle, and he lost what little hold he had on his sanity at this point.

This… thing… responded to Connla?

He no longer knew what he was doing. His body underwent the same nightmarish mutation witnessed in the Moon Cell timeline, twisting him into a human-yet-inhuman creature only capable of absolute destruction and carnage. Gae Bolg responded to its owner's transformation by growing in size, generating a bunch of thorny barbs around the polearm. His eyes – one sunk deep into his face, the other threatening to fall out of its socket – glowed bright red, and blood poured out of his mouth as his organs were almost on the verge of collapse beneath his out-of-proportion skeleton. Despite this atrocious change in his form, he felt a tremendous berserker power coursing through him.

"EEE~EEEYAAA~AAAHHH!" Cuchulainn shrieked and hunched into a low crouching position. He then hurled at Aisling in a somersault and pinned himself atop the construct's upper body, viciously clawing away at the bizarre shapes and gears in a futile attempt to pull the small girl out of there. Unfortunately, the robot kept regenerating itself faster than he could tear it to shreds. Ever silent and emotionless, Aisling commanded her alien exoskeleton to grab his ribcage and rip through his muscles and viscera using some spikes and a bunch of wires. On top of the piercing pain, she also made the wires go live, electrocuting him with thousands of volts.

If they weren't fighting in a pocket dimension, Cuchulainn's scream of agony would have deafened an entire city. His blood spilled out of his mouth onto Aisling's face, who didn't react to this grotesque sight whatsoever. Her face and hair wet with bright red fluid, she vapidly made the robot toss Cuchulainn away like so much trash. He skidded along the ground on the balls of his feet, simultaneously throwing Gae Bolg at the machine's head. The spear punctured through the spheres comprising its cranium, dislocating it from the rest of the body. However, that didn't affect its performance whatsoever. More spheres dropped from some portals and melded together to replace the head.

Cuchulainn couldn't understand it. He was powerful enough to ruin entire armies, yet this thing was shrugging off his most brutal attacks like they were nothing? As the two titans kept fighting, it was becoming clear who had the greater advantage here. Sure, Aisling's mech was rather unusual for him to fight against, especially since it could recover whatever damage it sustained. That wasn't his biggest concern though. He really wanted to go all out and destroy this monster with him in one glorious burst of raw explosive energy. Yet, somewhere in the deepest part of his consciousness, he couldn't bring himself to do it. If he did, he would risk eradicating Connla in the process. He wanted to bring her home… not in a body bag, but her walking by his side.

What was he going to do? How could he separate her from this alien that fused with her? Could he really do it with force alone?

As Cuchulainn was lost in his thoughts, Daoloth suddenly dug its fingers into his upper chest, penetrating the flesh and muscle so it could get a good grip on him, then smashed its metallic head against his cranium with enough force to break apart a boulder. The shockwave even made the grass around them flutter in the wind. The pain was too much for him to bear. His eyes rolled back into his head as he blacked out momentarily. Whether it was due to the severe time-space distortions surrounding them, or an intentional move on Daoloth's part, the spearman felt his mind being sucked out of his body…

Before he knew it, Cuchulainn found himself in an endless field of tall wheat swaying in the gentle breeze. was The sky was clear, with not a cloud in sight. Birds chirped in the occasional tree that was allowed to grow in this infinite farmland. He was back to his normal self for now, yet was missing Gae Bolg. He looked around for any signs of human life. A few minutes later, he came upon a small grove of trees where he found a familiar purple-haired girl kneeling on the grass with a butterfly resting on her finger. There was also a druid's staff floating off the ground next to her, and the lantern attached to the top appeared to be talking to her.

"Connla!" Cuchulainn screamed and tried to run up to her. However, he hit an invisible wall like a glass window. No matter how much he bashed his fist against it, nothing would make it budge. He shouted and screamed Connla's name several times, but apparently she couldn't hear him. The girl and her non-human companion appeared oblivious to his presence as they observed the butterfly's wings.

"What is this gaudy thing supposed to be?" Lochrann asked Aisling.

"It's called a butterfly," she said. "They first start off as little eggs, then mature into caterpillars. They then go through a metamorphosis as a pupa, and then break out of the chrysalis as a butterfly. They're said to be nature's most beautiful type of insect. I didn't really get to see them much since I lived in the mountains, but my teacher told me about them."

"Why do they exist? What purpose do they serve other than to be so garish?"

"They're pollinators, just like bees. Without them, we can't grow delicious vegetables and fruits, and flowers won't be able to bloom."

"Can't they be less showy about it? What if a predator was to show up and hunt them down?"

"It's because they're so colorful that it actually deters some animals, since they hunt by using sight. Not only that, they can camouflage themselves with their surroundings."

"I see. I still think they're too ugly for my liking," Lochrann grumbled.

"Really?" Aisling murmured. "Mi-go must have a different concept of what beauty is. Maybe we can find another dream where you can show me what it is you like."

"That's a good idea. Once we find the way out of this layer, we can go to a replica of Yuggoth."

Aisling released the butterfly, then stood up and took the staff in her hand before walking further into the maze of wheat and chaff, chatting happily with Lochrann along the way.

"CONNLA! CONNLA! ANSWER ME! CONNLAAA~AAA!" Cuchulainn kept shrieking for dear life, practically slamming his entire body against the ghostly barrier at this point.

Aisling briefly stopped in mid-step, then looked around with a puzzled expression. Lochrann asked, "What's the matter?"

"Did you hear something?"

"No, I didn't."

"That's odd. I thought I heard someone's voice."

"That can't be right. This entire dream is completely devoid of life other than us."

"Hm… Maybe I was just imagining things," Aisling shrugged, then continued walking.

Unable to break through the wall, Cuchulainn slumped to his knees and scratched his bloodied fingers against the barrier in absolute exhaustion and despair. He couldn't do anything as he watched Aisling's back get smaller and smaller until she fully disappeared into the wheat field. Eventually, his vision turned black as he was ejected from this bizarre space.

Back in the real world, Cuchulainn's mind immediately returned to his body, and he regained his focus on the battle. He knew what to do now.

If he couldn't understand Daoloth's power through human reason… then he would discard that humanity and become part of the Outer God itself, just like Connla did.

"Hrgh… HGH… HRRRROOOOOOGGGHHH!" Cuchulainn roared like an animal as he pushed back against Aisling's mech with every ounce of his strength, forcing it to the ground. Then he did something truly unexpected – he bore his sharpened teeth upon the metallic exoskeleton and bit down as hard as he could. Just as he suspected, fresh alien blood resembling machine oil gushed out of the wounds. He tore off the casing with his mouth, exposing the living shape's musculature and blood vessels. He then buried his face into the flesh and proceeded to devour it!

Aisling narrowed her eyes. Although incapable of expressing emotions, Daoloth grew curious with Cuchulainn's erratic behavior the longer it observed him through her eyes. The savage spearman ripped out as much flesh as he could out of the mech before Aisling made it throw him off her. He crunched on the last sinews of alien meat and swallowed, allowing its essence to course through him. His entire body throbbed like a humanoid heart, twisting and undulating even further as Daoloth's power was forcibly introduced into his Spirit Origin. Additional eyes opened up everywhere, and he grew a third arm out of his lower back. Although his body was mutating into something less and less human with each second, his mind was gradually becoming clearer as he could now perceive Daoloth's true form and not go insane from it. Information spilled through his brain like a broken dam, and he concentrated on only what he needed to know – the Outer God's weaknesses.

Cuchulainn unleashed a beastly roar, then practically teleported in front of Aisling. He rushed against the robot, grabbing its throat and making it fly along with him before smashing it back-first against the nearest rocky cliff. Several alien shapes were squashed flat, but Aisling paid no mind to the damage and pressed the machine's hands against Cuchulainn's chest. She conjured an Ansuz Rune and made it explode, hurtling the berserker in a wide arc that sent him falling down the ledge towards the ocean. However, he dug his bone-exposed fingers into the earth while plummeting, stopping his descent before he could hit the water. He grabbed on to whatever protruding rocks he could and ferociously climbed back up with enough speed that he could leap over the befuddled Foreigner.

Cuchulainn fell upon Aisling, intent on stomping his gargantuan feet over her. She vaulted out of the way, leaving him to crash into the ground. The force was so intense that it cracked a good portion of the cliffside off, making it avalanche off the earth and slide towards the ocean far below. Without thinking, Aisling sprinted towards the edge as the ground around her detonated and disintegrated into useless dirt, then actually jumped off the cliff and dived headfirst upon the water. However, she had no intention of falling underwater – she actually threw her hand out and made a large black portal open, and she passed through it, abandoning her original dimension altogether. She was now in a new world that didn't exist in any of Earth's timelines, comprised of little more than skyscrapers stretching for what seemed like forever into a black abyss.

Aisling fell for several hundred meters, thinking she had escaped her enemy. However, an unusual surge of fury and energy caught her attention, and she looked back to discover a humanoid behemoth plummeting after her. Indeed, Cuchulainn had followed her through the portal, refusing to allow his opponent to escape.

"YOU WON'T GET AWAAA~AAAYYY!" he screeched as he fell closer and closer to Aisling, then hurtled Gae Bolg at her. She batted it aside with her own makeshift spear before closing in and swiping at him multiple times. He blocked each attack to protect his vital regions, but she dug deep into his flesh with each stroke, causing blood to spray all around them. She backed off and flung more fireballs at him, but he reclaimed Gae Bolg and used it as a shield to effortlessly deflect the projectiles. Then both of them summoned gigantic fireballs upon their hands and launched them at each other, creating a massive explosion of flames and heat that swirled around them.

Aisling knew she was in trouble. No matter what she did, Cuchulainn always had a response. Despite his vicious appearance and complete descent into madness, his fighting capabilities and quick strategizing were not dulled in the slightest. Now that he knew what Daoloth's weaknesses were, it would only be a matter of time before he wore the Outer God down and reclaimed Connla. She had to do something that he would not expect, and she was starting to get an idea. However, she was going to have to find an opening.

As the pair kept falling, Aisling spotted what looked to be chains and bridges randomly connecting each of the impossibly tall structures together. She could use them as obstacles to duck and weave through in an attempt to lose sight of Cuchulainn. As she came closer to them, she streamlined the robot's body so that it would fall around the rapidly rising bridges as easily as a needle threading through cloth. She also hopped and bounded along some obstacles to change her course, even ducking and rolling between a set of tightly-weaved corridors.

As far as Cuchulainn was concerned though, he just rammed through any bridges that got in his way with brute strength. Large pieces of rubble rained around Aisling, which was what she was looking for. She gracefully leapt along each piece in a confusing motion, causing him to miss where she was going. Sometimes she would command her mech to bash some of the huge debris at him as projectiles, making them smash and volley off of him to further dizzy him. He managed to grab some boulders in his massive hands and glared up at Aisling with a deadly grin.

"EEEE~EEEYAAAAH HAH HAH HAH!" he bellowed a disturbing laugh and chucked the rocks at her like shotput balls. He kept doing this for a short while, forcing Aisling to fly and jump everywhere to avoid being struck. She twirled her body around a boulder that sailed just inches away from her, then thrust her hands out and summoned a peculiar orb of multicolored light lined with words that belonged to some alien language. She launched it at Cuchulainn, and it hit him square on the chest. Although the impact didn't hurt him whatsoever, he grew increasingly confused as strange colors cloaked his entire body, etching a large curse on his Spirit Origin. Then his form started to phase out of this reality much like a ghost.

"NO… NOT LIKE THIS!" Cuchulainn bellowed in a panic and reached his hand out in a desperate attempt to grab Aisling's arm. With each passing second, he fell farther and farther away from her into a second chasm full of undulating colors that each led to millions of parallel worlds. Aisling remained in the skyscraper world watching as Cuchulainn's form vanished into the Kaleidoscope, before that portal started to close in on him. With tears falling off his face, all he could do was scream one last thing at her:

"CONNLAAA~AAA~AAA~AAA~AAA~AAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!"

The rift finally closed for good. Aisling was now alone. Since she had no need to stay in this strange dimension of endless skyscrapers any longer, she opened a new portal and dropped through. The robot landed upon a mass of squishy ground that cushioned her fall, ballooning outward like a heated marshmallow while sinking in the center. Once she regained her bearings, she stood back up and let the alien geometry encasing her break apart so she could stand on her own feet once more.

It wasn't really known if Outer Gods could experience fear. However, a strange sensation coursed through Daoloth's entire being, akin to a human sighing a breath of relief. In all of the deity's years observing parallel worlds, never before had it witnessed a beast possessing such carnage and tenacity. To think it had been a target of such a monster nearly made the god shiver. Earth certainly was home to some of the most frightening creatures that Daoloth had ever seen.

Furthermore, it couldn't understand why Cuchulainn would go so far as to leave his original timeline behind in pursuit of Aisling. Why would he bother? If the Heroic Spirit Connla never appeared in Cuchulainn's life, things would be better for him, right? That was what Daoloth was led to believe when it witnessed the original Connla's death. Well, regardless of the reason, it managed to evade Cuchulainn by banishing him to the Kaleidoscope, dooming him into a life of endless searching for Aisling in thousands of parallel worlds. It was the best strategy Daoloth could come up with for now until it figured out a way to defeat him.

PW #301934

An unknown Connla was all alone in a forest, doing her best to protect a nearby village from a horde of man-eating chimeras. Although she had slain several of them, she was getting dangerously run down. She didn't seem to thin out the number of monsters either, meaning she was in dire peril. She didn't know when her allied Servants guarding the village would be able to come help her either. All Connla could do was continue fighting as best as she could until she was killed.

She contemplated using her Noble Phantasm on several of the more weakened monsters, to at least give her friends a slight advantage at the cost of her life. As she got into position to release it though, that was when the air shifted around her and the monsters, catching everyone off guard. It felt difficult for anyone to breathe, as if all of the oxygen was being sucked out of the immediate area. Just then, Connla heard some kind of unusual high-pitched sound, like a banshee's scream.

"… eeeEEEYAAA~AAA~AAA~AAA~HHH!"

The space between the Lancer and the chimeras exploded, and a massive humanoid creature leapt through from literally out of nowhere. Indeed, it was Cuchulainn in his full riastrad mode, after having plummeted through the Kaleidoscope and appearing in a completely random world. Connla fell onto her buttocks in shock when she recognized him, but was unable to speak out of pure fright. Cuchulainn glanced back and forth between her and the monsters surrounding her. After taking a moment to understand the situation, he grinned so wide that his molars were visible to her.

"I SEE…"

Without warning, the mutated spearman proceeded to decimate the chimeras threatening this world's Connla. She was so scared of the sight that she covered her eyes and cowered into a ball, only able to hear the sounds of crunching bones, the creatures' death cries, and Cuchulainn's rabid laughing. This lasted for several minutes, until eventually the monsters had either dead or run away in terror. Silence returned to the forest, but Connla didn't have the courage to look up at the monstrosity that was supposed to be her father. Soon, she felt a large bony hand gingerly touch her back.

"ARE YOU… OKAY?" she heard Cuchulainn murmur in his warped voice.

Trembling like a leaf in the wind, she timidly glanced up at him and whimpered with a nod, "M-Mm…"

"GOOD."

He stood up, then turned and walked away from her while saying, "I MUST GO. I MUST… SEARCH… FOR MY… CONNLA. PRAY TELL… BE SAFE… AND DON'T CAUSE ME… ANY MORE… TROUBLE."

With that, the air shifted again, and Cuchulainn seemed to be swallowed into the ether itself. Connla remained on her knees, staring in dumbfounded silence at where he had been standing. She barely even noticed as several footsteps approached, belonging to her comrade Servants. She simply remained there, wondering what the hell just happened.

PW #F7FBFF

The same thing happened when this world's Connla was the only survivor among her group of Servants. This was a post-apocalyptic world where a Mage's experiments into immortality accidentally got out into the greater world and had infected all humans and Mages alike with a virus that turned them into zombies. Just as the previous Connla was fighting a hopeless battle against chimeras, this one was running all over the city trying to get away from a constant pursuit of ghouls. She was perched atop a column in front of a posh shopping mall hurtling fireballs at some zombies that attempted to scramble up to reach her.

This is it, isn't it? There's nowhere left for me to run anymore.

Despair gripped the child Lancer's heart as she contemplated just ending her own life right there. However, the air shifted around the group of zombies, and Cuchulainn once again stomped through like a mad bull. Before either Connla or the creatures knew what was going on, he unleashed a feral roar that disintegrated several of the nearest ghouls before wailing away at the rest in a violent dervish. He relished in the carnage, giggling with glee as blood, organs and limbs sprayed all over him. Connla watched the gory spectacle in terrified silence, but unlike her previous counterpart, she couldn't take her eyes off of Cuchulainn.

It didn't take long for him to finish decimating these monsters. Once he was finished, he turned to look up at Connla, and he asked, "ARE YOU… OKAY?"

"Yeah… but… what are you doing here?" she wondered.

"NEVER… MIND THAT. THIS WORLD… IS DONE FOR… ISN'T IT? YOU CANNOT… SURVIVE HERE."

After an uncomfortable pause, she nodded. He spread his arms up and implored, "COME DOWN. I'll TAKE YOU… SOMEWHERE SAFE."

Unable to hold back her emotions, she jumped off the column and fell upon him, being swallowed in his embrace as she cried out, "Father!"

As they united with each other, the atmosphere warped around them, and both Servants were taken away to another world.

PW #92A1B3

This timeline was still in the medieval era, devoid of modern conveniences like automobiles, airplanes and international communications. Out in the middle of some undeveloped wilderness, Cuchulainn and Connla appeared after escaping from the previous world. He set her down and said, "YOU'LL BE… SAFE HERE."

"Where are we?" she asked while examining her surroundings.

"THAT IS… FOR YOU… TO FIGURE OUT."

"You mean you're not coming with me?" she moaned, appearing disappointed.

"I CANNOT. I MUST… SEARCH FOR… MY CONNLA."

She tilted her head, wondering what that meant. He patted her back and assured, "DON'T… WORRY… ABOUT ME. YOU SHOULD… FORGET… ABOUT ME… AND LIVE… HAPPILY… HERE."

"Father…"

"IT'S ALL RIGHT. I'M HAPPY… YOU'RE OKAY. THAT'S ALL… I NEED."

With a warm smile on his distorted face, Cuchulainn turned away from Connla and took several steps into the clearing where the spatial distortions were their densest. His form gradually turned translucent until he fully vanished from this timeline. From there, he would continue finding more Connlas in peril, rescuing them while looking for any clues about his own version of her, who had been abducted by an alien god he sought to destroy for good.

Chaldea

Once Connla finished recounting her story, the four Cuchulainns sat there in an uneasy silence and struggled to understand what they just heard. Her heart heavy with grief, she stared down at her knees and murmured, "I'm sorry… This must seem like a lot for you to take in…"

"It's okay," Caster said. "You're just telling us what happened. Besides, given everything that's occurred with you, it's actually not that hard to understand."

"So Aisling really is a Connla twisted into becoming a follower of that crazy Outer God, huh?" Prototype grumbled. "And she seems willing to go through with throwing her humanity away in order to become its priestess."

Lancer said, "As much of a sad story that is, it still doesn't explain why Aisling, Daoloth or whatever the hell she is has been trying to assassinate our Connla, and why they're tempting other Servants into becoming Denialists."

Connla shook her head. "I really don't know. My best guess on the assassination attempts is simply to keep me quiet about Aisling's existence, since me and my counterparts can have visions about her. That must be why Rider of Akakor was sent to Cliste's world - in order to prevent her from investigating Aisling."

"I guess that makes sense, considering that Aisling is trying to run away from her world's Cuchulainn."

Alter shuddered as he muttered, "Speaking of which, that Cuchulainn who suddenly appeared and wiped out all of those monsters during our Rayshift before…"

"Mm," Connla nodded sadly. "That was the Cuchulainn from Aisling's timeline; the one we've dubbed Riastrad."

"Damn it all…" he pressed his head against his head and cursed under his breath. The sight of his warp spasmed self continued to haunt him even now.

"Well that sure explains a lot," Lancer grunted. "I was wondering why he just popped in from out of thin air and slaughtered those monsters. He was actually trying to help you, wasn't he?"

Connla glanced away and frowned. "I guess so. His eyes were full of madness, yet I sensed a glimpse of clarity when he and I looked at each other. I just never imagined that he'd be from the same world as Aisling though."

"So he's stuck jumping through parallel worlds in an endless search for her?" Prototype asked.

"Looks like it. Even now, he must be protecting another one of my counterparts from some kind of danger. I really wish I could do something to help him escape such a nightmare, but with no way of tracking him down, it's impossible for me to do anything for him."

"I see," Caster folded his hands together in contemplation. "Well, is that everything you're able to share with us?"

"Yes," Connla said. "I swear on my honor as Fujimaru Ritsuka's Servant that that is all I know."

"All right. I'm glad to see you're looking a little better, now that you've unloaded such a bombshell on us. I think you should take a nice long break, while we think of our next plan."

"Mm. I'm feeling a little tired."

"All right, that's enough," Alter said and made her stand with him. "Time for a bath, then it's off to bed with you."

"Okay…"

AUTHOR'S NOTES:

† - R'Lyehian for, "Tomb of shapes and visions expand."

†† - The name of Aisling's second Noble Phantasm is a direct reference to the techno song Shapes of Sleep by The Grid.