Disclaimer: I don't own Dragon Age or Fate Stay Night.

Chapter Four: I Hate Spiders Shirou!

Three Months Later:

The air was frigid deep down in this dark cave; one of many that dotted inland Fereldan some of which were used as lairs for fell beasts of all stripes. But this one in particular it seemed was home to one very particular set of beasts. Their breath was visible to both Shiou and Saber as they tried to breathe as quietly as possible. Shirou was dressed in light leather armour coloured a dark wine red with black vambraces, recently purchased from Wade's emporium the local armour merchant in Denerim, he didn't feel confident at relying on traced armour for any length of time. At his back hip were a collection of arrows separated into different holsters. Saber herself was fully geared in her fully manifested armour her blue battle-dress fully repaired.

"Shirou..." she whispered, her eyes were flat as she observed the dank web covered lair they had the unfortunate job of clearing out.

"Yes?"

"I hate spiders…"

"Oh…"

It was at that moment a truly monstrous spider, the size of a small car back home chose to launch itself from the dark shadows of the cave wall at their position. Its horrific multitude of eyes and goo dripping fangs a vile sight to be sure. Saber reacted instantly, Excalibur manifested in her hands, still sheathed by its invisible air, and met the Spider mid charge. With a crash they met in a tangling of shrouded steel meeting sharp claw and fang.

"Trace on!"

Shirou muttered his aria as he hopped backwards and brought up his sylvan-wood bow. Drawing back the string a glow manifested as he traced what appeared to be at first a mundane arrow. He took aim directly at Saber's back, she was between him and his target. However that wouldn't be a problem for him.

"Selecting target!"

With a sharp twang the traced arrow was released with a perfect pull back release. The arrow raced through the distance like a buzzing bee and then did the most curious thing, its trajectory altered slipping neatly under Saber's right arm and pierced its way through the toughened skull plate of the beast and burrowed its way deeply into the spiders brain. It collapsed instantly its limbs twitching at a reminder of nerve impulses, the strings cut at the source.

Shirou smiled, Illya had really out done herself when she made these mystic codes. Seeker arrows she called them, had the capacity to seek out and pierce enemies once he selected a target. Should there be an obstacle it could account for it within reason; this was why Shirou had no fear of shooting with Saber directly engaged.

Saber leaped back from the shuddering corpse and focused her eyes deeper into the darkness, there were about five more of these creatures lurking in the deeper sections and on the nearby wall. Saber internally groaned. She hated spiders…they were just so disgusting, and they got horrible goo all over her hair and face every single time she fought them…not only that but they looked…scary though she would never admit it to anyone.

"Shirou we need some light"

Once again he raised his bow and fired three projected arrows in quick succession, around them was a slight red aura of magic. He aimed them around the massive cavern, one ahead, left and right. The moment they stuck a foreign object, such as the ground or wall they ignited like chemical flares from back home raging to life they radiated red light, illuminating the cave in all its spider lair glory. The cavern was far larger than they had first realized and was absolutely covered in web.

Their eyes widened, suddenly revealed to them was a large female spider sitting directly above them, its vast bulk made it a mystery how it was holding itself to the ceiling. Several other spiders made themselves known leaping at our intrepid heroes just as the mother spider dropped on them. Reacting quickly Shirou dived to the left just as Saber bolted right. Sweeping her blade about she bit the metaphorical bullet and carved into the two nearest spiders, she made noises of disgust as spider guts and blood sprayed at her. To her she felt like it was every spider's personal goal in life to get its bodily fluids somehow onto her clothes or face.

Bringing up his bow quickly while dancing backwards he released more arrows this time elemental based. Explosions of fire and frost punctuated by flashes of light danced between the spiders and Shirou as he unloaded arrow after arrow into the attacking spiders. The last medium sized spider was frozen completely solid as Saber appeared at his side, with a single mighty swing she shattered the ice sculpture into splinters. The enormous female spider skulked along the wall, all eight of its black eyes fixed on them with an unsettling level of calculation present.

Saber shook her whole body like giant cat that had just been dunked in a pool of water, she was completely spattered in small flecks of blood or drool, Shirou wasn't quite sure which was which. Her eyes locked on the mother spider with what could only be utter loathing and resignation. The spider thumped itself down on the main floor of the cave and moved with surprising speed towards them.

"Shirou?"

He rested down on one knee his bow at the ready, circuits thrumming.

"Ready!"

Saber charged a prana burst and launched herself across remaining distance, Excalibur reigned free from the invisible wind as its bright blade shone out. Trusting that Shirou would be able to maim the creature enough for her to finish it quickly she trust her holy blade into the beasts face with a cry.

Shirou carefully projected his next arrow, it was a more experimental one in nature and hadn't quite had all of its bugs ironed out.

"Selecting Targets!" He tracked each of the spider's thick hairy legs joints in turn with his eyes, encoding the information, he would have to force a splitting of eight for this one.

As before with a perfect pull back release the arrow was sent buzzing forward, it wasn't a moment before the glowing arrow split into multiple copies each with their own target. Some missed but out of the eight targets, six burrowed their way into their marks. It was a powerful mystic code but the sheer amount of information needing to be encoded just wasn't practical for anything more than a few targets, beyond that the arrow copies would begin to lose targeting and quality. But still it was an incredible crowd control weapon.

The Spider collapsed on its wounded legs, its pitiful screams of pain audible to both Saber and Shirou, its maw opening wide in pain. Saber decided to end it quickly. Leaping up she turned in mid-air above the monster then struck down with Excalibur with great force. The blade plunged easily through the hardened hide of the wounded creature ending its life quickly if not painlessly.

Saber leaped down as Shirou stepped closer to the huge animal. He knelt down looking at the monstrous form.

"It's strange you know, back home these would be classified as a near-phantasmal beast…here they are just like any other animal."

Saber almost rolled her eyes at Shirou's musing, what did it matter, she would prefer if they didn't exist at all. Saber's eyes turned flat as she began to smell the stink coming from her armour and clothes. She looked down at Excalibur to find the disgusting goo and blood mix sticking to her beloved blade.

Shirou turned at the sound of frantic movement behind him and was presented with an image he would forever remember. Saber was standing with her eyes closed face turned away from Excalibur as she swung it frantically in one hand away from her face and body. Small flecks of blood raining off the blade and she comically shook the blade. He smiled and moved closer and laid a hand on her frantically waving vambrace. The motions calmed and her eyes opened, Shirou pulled out a small cloth and carefully wiped clean her face. His gaze locked on her own green eyes. Carefully he then cleaned Excalibur's blade until it returned to its usually bright appearance the muck but a memory now. Saber's cheeks reddened in embarrassment at her own display and of Shirou's own ministrations, her fringe shadowed her eyes. Her murmured thanks were his sought reward and made him smile once again in reply.

"Well it looks like we're done here, ready to go home?" Home…that was an odd thing, slowly but surely even with the hard work they had been dealing with for the last few months Denerim had become home to them. He still longed for his old house where all of his memories rested though.

Once they exited the cave they were presented with a rich green landscape of rolling shallow hills that stretched off towards the Frostback Mountains that they could see in the far distance. The general area was well wooded and was actually the general work area for a lumber mill which had put out the bounty for the removal of dangerous creatures. Much to Saber's personal displeasure they had not mentioned spiders.

Their rented horses were tied not far from the cave entrance too some tree branches, one was a nearly all black mare, the other had a more patchy pelt of different tones of brown. It wasn't often that they were required to venture so far from the city so they had not thought to invest in acquiring expensive horses which they would have to feed and keep. They untied their horses and started for the lumber mill. After that it would be the long ride home. Shirou winced he could already feel his backside hurting.

The Denerim City Markets were abuzz today with a host of new goods pouring into the city form the newly landed ships from Antiva and Rivian, bringing with them silks, spices dried goods of various kinds, arms and armour of foreign make; a novelty for the local nobles. But there was one thing in the Market place that always drew a crowd, the first thing was in fact a short young girl with silver snow coloured hair the likes of which nobody had seen before, the second were the charms she sold.

Honestly with a nonverbal simple compulsion spell she could literally sell these people anything not that she was selling rubbish of course. The charms whether they be amulets, rings or broaches did exactly what she said on the label! For a period of a few months the charms would function before they would run out of prana after which they would become simple jewellery.

Illya grinned, she loved it when things went her way. Recently she had been finding she had a penchants for accumulating money through her truly devilish monopoly. Honestly the lack of any form of counter force made preforming magecraft in this world ridiculously easy. She could mass produce "enchanted" jewellery which was indiscernible from the real thing and she could do it while half asleep. She even had a combat line of charms which it turned out were wildly popular with the guards, charms that could speed perception under stress, charms that could lighten your load, charms that could even slow arrows and take the bite out of a heavy blow. She was pretty sure a lot of people hated her now days. But oh well it wasn't her fault she had started a pseudo arms race between the criminal underworld and the city watch.

And really she had so many mystic codes attached to her person that a fly couldn't sneak up on her so assassins trying to catch her by surprise was just going to be pointless. She honestly couldn't wait to see the first try. She made sure to completely neglect to tell Shirou and Saber about the possibility, she was sure they would go all wobbly and ask her to stop. But where was the fun in that?!

Besides an assassin wouldn't risk attacking in the crowd and arrows would be completely useless against her mystic code. Her clothes could react to contact with high speed objects, kind of like reactive armour. They would confront her up close and personal. Oh what fun that would be!

Let it not be said that Illya couldn't get a kick out of risking her life. After all it hadn't been long ago that she was convinced she would die in a few years anyway. Amazingly Shirou and Saber had managed to save her using an artificially projected Avalon. It had to be recharged every week or so, but they were sure most of the damage had been repaired. Still she was infuriatingly short and it was likely she might remain so for some years and even then she would likely turn out to be below average in height anyway.

Having sold all of her produce with her pockets heavy with coin she quickly darted her way through the crowd escaping her "adoring" fans into one of the side streets heading for her favorite shop.

"The Wonders of Thedas" was the resplendent sign hung above the door, it was strangely enough as close to a "magic shop" as she had ever seen. They sold books on magical lore and enchanted items, apparently it was one of the few avenues available for mages trapped in the circles to sell their wares. They had a wealth of common lore on the world they now found themselves in, Illya wished she could verify some of it as much of the ancient writings came across more as legends and fanciful tales than true hard fact.

For example, the old gods of the Tevinter Imperium were the sources of the so called "Archdemon". The old gods were apparently dragons that the "maker" had banished deep into the earth where they would slumber for all time…yet apparently it seemed it was still well within the reach of the darkspawn who would continuously search for them. Once found the dragon would be corrupted and would arise as an evil corrupted archdemon of frightful intelligence. It would then direct the horde to rise up out of the deep roads and "kill everything" it seemed, there didn't seem to be any rhyme or reason to its intent however it did start ringing alarm bells in her head. It sounded like what the earths counter force would do to some degree. Was it possible that Thedas' counter force was somehow sealed or at least suppressed so much that even she with her refined senses could not discern it and could only come out in the expression of these darkspawn and archdemons?

She spent a few hours inside reading and speaking with the "tranquil" that manned the shop. It was like they were human puppets without souls, she could tell that they were alive however it just seemed like their souls had somehow been sealed inside them allowing only the most basic of functions to be carried out. Anything emotional seemed to be completely beyond them. In a word, it was the creepiest thing she had ever encountered. She couldn't begin to fathom how you could reverse the effect however. It truly was horrific what the Chantry would do to mages who misbehaved in this world if this was the norm.

Looking out the window she realized Saber and Onii-chan would be home soon, she had to get moving and buy some ingredients for tonight's dinner. She was ambitiously intending to cook them something to eat, in her mind's fantasy it would be nothing but perfection!

It had been three months since the day that Saber had checked them into the Gnawed noble inn. Since then it had been a mad rush for work to gain enough coin to get themselves on their feet. Completing the charter "quests" was a convenient and practical use of their own personal skills. Shirou himself wasn't so thrilled at the thought of rushing into yet more danger but it was helping people so he couldn't complain.

They were quite careful in what work they took, it wouldn't do to carry out the dirty work of some noble under the guise of innocent intentions. In most cases it was usually the high paid jobs which were "no questions asked" sadly so it was a slow grind to get where they needed. Thankfully Illya had taken up some of the slack once she was well again and began raking in quite the bit of coin with her low level mystic codes.

During that time Saber had garnered something of a following, rumors of "The Blue Saber" were circulating around Denerim's rumor mill shared in tavern's and back alleys alike it all contributed to produce a larger than life image of the woman calmly walking beside him. They said she was a free knight working for justice and truth who held helping people above all as the greatest deed possible, that she was a foreigner from a distant land hell bent on ridding the world of evil. Shirou couldn't help but chuckle at how closely they had managed to nail her character…well except for her profound dislike of giant spiders that is. It seemed no matter where Saber went in life legends were fated to rise up about her, he was glad that he was able to accompany her.

After the first two months they had accumulated enough coin to put a down payment on a modest house in the Harbor district not far from Ecklebert's own silk shop. It was a spartan affair with minimal accoutrements, it had the ground floor two bedrooms and a basement which both Illya and Shirou had been sharing as a workshop, much to Illya's dissatisfaction. The cooking facilities had undergone a major revamping with Shirou designing a primitive stove system, he had also traced all of his favorite cooking utensils. Much to Saber's approval he had managed to attain many exotic and in some cases completely new spices that he had never heard of. Recreating some of his modern cuisine was difficult but not impossible, he found that many of the more usual ingredients were quite uncommon in Fereldan which if he was honest didn't have much to say in the culinary world other than "Porridge is Good".

To Saber and Shirou's horror however there was currently some black smoke snaking out of the open front door. Both assuming the worst the charged inside to be met with the disheartening image of Illya sat in the middle of the kitchen brawling her little heart out surrounded by charred food and soot marks…to Shirou's eyes it seemed that a fit of rage she had detonated it.

"Illya!" Shirou grabbed her in a hug looking for injuries, he could see nothing wrong other than a few smudges of black on her face mixing with her tear tracks.

"I-I..I wanted to make something nice for you Onii-chann!" she managed to choked out before more tears started coming out like a torrent. Saber checked the kitchen to ensure there wasn't any residual smouldering. The fire it seemed had burned itself out a while ago.

"It's all right Illya-chan, why don't you help me next time and you can learn as we work?" he consoled the crying girl with a smile. He wiped her cheeks with palm of his hand which to his own horror just smudged the black tracks ever more. "Saber can you get a wet rag please?"

Shirou accepted the rag from Saber and wiped Illya's face clean of black soot. He smiled when he was done, "There much better, now let's clean up."

It wasn't long after they had cleaned up and eaten that Illya went to bed exhausted from the day's events. Shirou cleaned away the plates as well as he could, with no running water to speak of it was difficult to be as cleanly as possible. Saber was resting in a chair by the table wearing a modest blue dress having dispelled her dress and armour. She watched Shirou's back as he struggled with trying to clean the plates. She was used to the problems of the medieval era however much she disliked having to deal with it again she was well adapted. The fact that she had been born into royalty meant little compared to the wonders of the future, as by comparison nearly everyone in the future lived like kings, it had to be very difficult for Shirou to adapt to the mundane portion of life here.

"Shirou, would it be better for you to project our plates and other dinner ware and then dispel it afterwards? She questioned helpfully her head resting on her hand propped up on the table, her tired eyes watched as his shoulders paused a moment.

"…huh that would save me so much time…I could just take them outside and dispel them and any grime could be outside instead of me trying to clean them." Saber smiled, happy that her suggestion had borne fruit. Shirou caught her smile and took in her tired shoulders slightly slumped resting her head on her propped up arm.

"Saber? We've been working pretty hard lately…we haven't had much time to ourselves what with Illya and work." He asked as he gave up with the dishes. Saber needed a break, that much he could tell, it had been break neck speed for the last few months, no time to stop and think. It wasn't healthy for her or himself.

She lifted her hand to tiredly rub it through her hair, that single sprig of hair resolutely resisted her pawing as it sprang up again. Because she had a servant body she didn't quite feel fatigue like Shirou does but it taxes her reserves of prana to push further than she really should every day.

"You have something….. in mind Shirou?" she questioned with cute yawn. His eyes closed in a smile.

"Would you like to go on another date we me Saber?" Saber's eyes widened with flushing cheeks.

"..Of course Shirou I would love too!" her face lit up in a genuine smile the first of many he hoped.

Authors Note:

Hi all I forgot to add my note in at the bottom I was so hasty :p anyway I split this chapter up as it was getting to stupidly long. Anyway its slightly shorter than the previous one. Chapters will probably be around this level.

Lots of interesting things going on in this chapter I hope it makes up for the last two "set up" chapters. I like to keep things realistic after all. I want to know what people think of my interpretation of the darkspawn and the archdemon. Hope it sounds interesting!