"Spartans were taught to say a lot with a few words. Children learned a habit of long silence, so that when they finally spoke, their words had weight and were noticed.

For example, an Athenian joked that sword-swallowers used Spartan swords because they were so short, and a Spartan replied: "We find them long enough to reach the hearts of our enemies." Plutarch

The world spins around us, a maze of blue and purple bubbling and screaming like a flooded torrent. My spear is ready and my shield as well, but there is no enemy, nothing to focus on, to fight back against.

My legs are batting the air, looking something to lean on, but there is nothing but void.

My mother once told me not to fight things I cannot change for it wastes strength that could be used on fighting that which can be changed. I thought it was a cowardly way of thinking, back then, now I understand; it means follow the caravan until you can gut the one running it.

My shield rests by my side and my spear remains close to me as I soar forward like a bird.

I saw birds hit rock walls. Hope this is not what awaits me.

Golden shapes surround me in the vertiginous haze. My phalanx is still by my side.

"Marcus!" I roar over the screeching that envelops us.

A shape shifts and an answer comes; "Still alive! What is it?"

"It seems someone has gotten wind of your adventure with Athena's priestress!" I doubt whatever is abducting us now can actually be the goddess of wisdom. Firstly because I do not believe in that crazy nonsense, and secondly because the goddess of wisdom would never be so unwise as to anger thirty Lancedaemonians.

"So long as my mother does not find out!"

Something hits me hard across the chest, a bag of meat wrapped in cheap clothing and holding a pointy stick.

The bait, the helot I gave my javelin to. She's upside down and rolled into a tight ball. Or maybe I'm the one whose's upside down and stiff as a spear. Doesn't matter. I spin her around so we're face to face, not heel to chin and look into her eyes.

Won't be easy, they're squeezed shut.

She reminds me of my sister when she's had a nightmare.

Yes, Spartan children also have nightmares.

"Nothing to fear!" I announce to the terrified kid, "Just relax and enjoy the journey." She opens her eyes and looks at me, looking much less shaken than I expected.

"You are insane!" She sounds surprised.

Marcus roars something about getting ready and I echo his order. He felt in his guts that we are getting close and I trust in my Enomotarch's instincts.

At this speed, I cannot say if we will survive the fall, but if we do, then whoever is responsible for this will realize not all Helenians are weaklings.

The Helot curls back into a ball and I keep my body straight but limp, to prepare myself for impact.

I fell great heights in my youth, and broke many bones, but the lesson paid off and I soon learned how to fall adequately.

Now I feel it. A shift in the flow, subtle, but noticeable. Something is parting the… Water? Whatever it is, we're almost out, that much is obvious, we can feel the shore rushing to meet us.

It is not sand, but tall grass, as far as the eye can see, there is nothing but tall grasses just like the ones we just left. There is no sign of the others, no sign anyone has ever been here before me.

The sky is grey and a thick fog hangs in the air. No treeline, no city lights, no road. We're nowhere near Athen anymore.

"Spartans!" A rough voice cuts through the fog, somewhere behind me, "Regroup on me!"

It is certainly not Marcus, but the voice speaks with the accents of authority, so I obey and march in that direction, crouched behind my shield, spear at the ready and eyes wide open. The farther I advance, the thicker the mist becomes, first hiding the far away valleys, then the edges of the field and, soon enough, the tip of my spear.

I remain calm despite the fear that knots my stomach and grips my guts. It is simply fog, water. Water that could hide a whole army, but still, water.

There is movement around me, cautious steps in the grass and bronze rubbing on bronze. More Spartans.

"Marcus?" I hiss under my breath, hoping I do not attract anything hungry.

"Aye, brother," the Enomotarch is somewhere to my left, close, by the sound of it. "You killed anything yet?" His voice is more eager than worried. Marcus enjoys the killing, I enjoy the fighting, we are very different.

"No, but I seek to rectify this soon."

He scoffs and we close the distance between each others. I can hear him, but do not see his spear until it clatters on my shield. We move as one from that point, no need to see the other to know our flank is now covered. We simply make sure our footsteps beat with the same rhythm.

The man calls all the Spartans once again, he is getting closer.

Cold water wraps around my feet, Marcus's as well, judging from the quiet splashing to my left. We soon find ourselves with water to our knees, but still move on, sandals digging in the sticky sand.

It tries to suck our feet in, helped by the bulk of our equipment, but the Enomotarch and I keep a steady pace. Time is strange when you are expecting a fight, it seems to forget to flow for a while, then try to catch up, as if Chronos himself was anxious to see what happens to warriors.

We walk here for what seems like a long time, but could easily have been a few minutes, seeing as the lighting does not shift in the slightest

"By Zeus, I should run more." The exhausted voice came from my right, it's Leonas, one of the best javelin thrower of our mora, he has much strength in the upper body but always find himself lacking when it comes to footwork.

I call him, my voice low, but not a whisper. He does not answer, but I soon have to dodge the tip of his spear. "Watch it, Spartan." I hiss, re-orienting his weapon in the same direction as mine.

"Apologies. This mist is thicker than my wife's…"

"Do not finish that sentence. Please." Marcus seems to always assume the worst of people. He is oftentimes right, now that I think of it.

The voice continues calling us, not urgent, but not tiring, like a mother calling her childs for dinner.

Whoever is calling us has no doubt we are coming.

The splashing gets monotonous and I have a very short attention span, so I soon find myself drifting back to Plataea. Eighty men found their death by my hand that day, an impressive number, even for a Spartan. I feel no pride for it, this victory would have felt just as good had it been won without a single death, but men have to die for a battle to be fought, otherwise, war would be just another expensive game.

It may be a good thing that war is so horrible, otherwise the mighty and the rich would grow quite fond of it.

My ears feel strange for a moment, pulsing as if I had climbed down a slope too fast. A short yawn solves that.

"What was that?" Leonas' surprised cry makes me shut my jaw and open my eyes, just in time to spot a large cross shaped shadow disappearing overhead.

"Phalanx?" I hiss, lifting my shield and spear to the sky.

"Turtle." Marcus corrects.

I can feel weak currents around my shin guards as we get into a triangular formation, each of us facing toward one of the edges, and move forward. A spear pokes me in the lower back, but I ignore the thing and hold my own weapon aimed at the sky.

"Gargoyle?" Leonas breathe, sounding genuinely intrigued by the identity of that thing.

To be honest, I do not care what it is, but I hope it is killable and edible. I tell him just as much.

The water we soon find ourselves with water above our ankles and walking on more solid ground. By my experience, the enemy will most likely wait for us to feel safe to strike, even predators in the wild are fond of that technique. Marcus knows that and Leonas is an accomplished hunter, so I keep it to myself.

"Down!" The word resonates in my ears, clear as crystal, but deafening in the thick silence.

We all duck just as a screaming monstrosity swoops down with a snapping of jaws and roar of anger.

Three javelins whistle trough the mist immediately afterward. The creature roars in pain as a result.

"Hope we stuck them in your…" Leonas stops his gleeful shouting, apparently perplex about something.

"Who shouted?" It was not me, nor Marcus. The voice was old and it spoke in a Breton dialect I understand without speaking fluently.

"Me did!" A bright blue ball of light rips through the fog and allows us to see one another.

A blue fire torch? I've seen a few powders from China and Mongolia who could make a fire burn blue, but the ball seems to be floating in midair.

Walking behind it, a man, clad in complex purple robes, walks up to us casually.

"Me is Adam Dupré, maybe you heard me?" I am not exactly the best linguist around. I simply found that I enjoyed reading texts and legends written by other nations, so translating spoken words is far more complex than just reading them then looking up their meaning in a dictionary.

"We heard you." I confirm, hesitantly. Exchanging a glance with Marcus. His eyes are obscured by the helmet, but his body language speaks volume. He has no trust for the man and the fact he does not understand a single thing Adam said does nothing to help.

I translate to the best of my ability and Marcus asks if he knows what that creature was.

"Dovah." The word is whispered, as if it should tell me anything. It does not.

"Can it die?" Marcus has very clear priorities; kill the thing, then find out what it is. I agree with him on that.

"Not by us."

If Spartans cannot kill something, then it cannot die. Easy as that.

We move on with the Breton behind us. He carries no weapon, so I suppose he is not a warrior. Might be a healer or a philosopher.

"Spartans! I can see you now!" The voice announces, now closer than ever, "One last effort and you will be safe!" The voice is familiar, it is not the Regent nor the King, but I cannot help but associate it with kinghood. An Ephor, perhaps? "Run, Spartans, he comes!"

We obey and break into a sprint, shields raised in case something is hidden in the mist. Adam is close on our heels, his light ripping the fog like fire melting parchment.

"Jump!" The order comes a second before I see the cliff. I would love to stop and reconsider following that order, but the Dovah is screaming at my back and my brothers both made the jump already, so I follow and hope I get to take more insane decisions after this one.

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King Leonidas picked up a puzzle from the desk, not knowing or caring that the delicate object was meant as display only.

It was a set of concentric golden spheres with a rock, a diamond, trapped within. One could only turn each sphere in a precise way and turning one would shift the four others.

The only way to release the rock within was to align a set of holes in the spheres, doing so within a day required a good grasp of physics and mathematics, but the puzzle could take weeks for an average person to complete.

He began fiddling with the thing hesitantly, turning the inner spheres so they aligned with each others, then turning to the outside one and ruining his recent effort. The warrior's brows furrowed and his posture suggested he was already loosing patience.

"Dwemers, eh?" The warrior-king finally spoke, "Never heard of your kind."

The bearded, pointy eared man sitting behind the rock desk bared his teeth in a poor imitation of a smile.

"I know you haven't, and you most likely never will. I am but an echo, left to complete a task my kind has left behind long ago. As soon as my job is complete, I will return to oblivion. Get some well earned respite."

The puzzle groaned and rattled under Leonidas' abuses. The king had little patience for games… This included the puzzle and the Dwemer's. "What do you want?"

The Dwarf shrugged. "I want nothing, you are here, you used to be there, you were dead, now you live. To me, knowing my experiment has succeeded is reward enough.

"But?" The king could have broken the puzzle and taken the stone, but that was hardly sporting. Same as he could have beaten some answer out of the old blue guy. Dead or not, if it can still move, you can cut off its limbs.

"But I realize dumping you in the world like that would be inconsiderate of me, so I summoned more." The man's smile was genuine this time. He liked the idea, to have Spartans walking across Tamriel amused him.

"How many?" Leonidas did not sound eager or angry, he just stood there in the dusty office fiddling with a puzzle he could not possibly solve without at least some measure of Dwemer education.

This brought some serious doubt in his host. Maybe the great hero of Sparta was really just a fool.

"A bit over five hundred. I did not want you to come in understrength or to overload your work charge, they are now walking the mists of Sovnguarde, I suppose, waiting for someone to show them the way out..."

The Spartan had no answer to that. His manipulation of the puzzle grew slower, more precise.

The Dwemer scientist –his ghost, anyway- only smiled like a father watching his child play with a wooden sword, pretending to fight invisible monsters.

"Not all of them were dead, I'm afraid, some had to be… Invited." The old man was quite proud of his accomplishment, he had the eyes of a man who is in control. He had succeeded in bringing beings from another Mundus into Tamriel and he had made sure the beings would cause a maximum of fuss while they were at it.

This would be a very interesting experiment, although the Spartans were too archaic, too primitive to survive long in the brutal world of Tamriel, they were aggressive and organized enough to shake the power balance of the world.

"I better go fetch them, in that case." The king shook the puzzle and a shiny pellet fell to the floor.

Leonidas was already out of the room by the time the Dwarven scientist understood.

The pellet, that object the king had left to the floor like it was mere trash, was a diamond. Back in its place, on the desk, the puzzle itself was empty, its four holes lined up neatly.

The Dwemer ghost was not smiling anymore.

A/N: Ozymandeous: Yeah, was written a long time ago, decided to recycle it, but didn't clean it up enough before I did :S