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Orthorn had never seen snow on his home isle of Auridon. The enormous drifts of white that stretched silently over Skyrim, the way they mirrored the desolate and unbroken sky above, were a constant thrill to him as his hired carriage pulled across the taiga. It was worth it to have been severed from his inheritance for consorting with Daedra, he thought, if now he got to experience such bracing novelty. He quickly discovered that he loved the cold.
As he was chaperoned to the end of the world, he fantasized about what awaited him at his promised sanctuary of learning. The College of Winterhold was frozen year-round, he had heard, perched atop a massive glacier that rose like a shining pillar through the waves. How much more beautiful it must be than the steaming gardens of Shimmerene - and all the winter games the students must enjoy! Between classes with the honored master of Conjuration, he and his fellow apprentices would ski, and play something called knattleikr on the ice floes, and build elaborate castles out of snow. No such gallivanting would have been allowed at the College of Sapiarchs, where the beauty of nature was to be internally acknowledged but treated with perfectionistic disgust.
Upon arrival, Orthorn was disappointed to realize that the College of Winterhold was a brutal sun-bleached grey block a few yards away from calving into the sea. The honored master of Conjuration had walked out on the job nearly a year prior, succeeded by his research fellow who regularly disappeared to somewhere students referred to in hushed tones as "the Midden" in order to avoid teaching. And perhaps worst of all, none of Orthorn's fellow apprentices knew or cared what knattleikr was.
"It's not that impressive," clucked an Alteration scholar when he asked about the neverending frost. They disdained to lift their eyes from their grimoire as they spoke to him. "You get tired of it after two days. On the third day you accept it as your permanent condition, like a bad leg. Then you stop noticing it."
"I've heard there are auroras," Orthorn said hopefully.
"I think so," the Alteration scholar replied, flipping the page.
His frustration mounted over the following weeks as he found himself barred from entering what few social circles existed at the College of Winterhold. Mages were unfriendly in every corner of Tamriel. When the first fresh snow of the season draped over the vestiges of the town, Orthorn resolved to enjoy his outdoor games even without his classmates.
It was a lifeless morning when he slipped out of his dormitory and darted across the crumbling bridge. The lecturers had drilled him on the necessity for untrained apprentices to stay out of town on his first day, and he was beginning to appreciate how particularly dire his circumstances were as a mage from Alinor in the heart of Skyrim's civil war. He had barely known there was a war at first. As he hustled along the icy beaches below campus, determining the ideal stationing for his own battle, he made sure to remain hidden.
Orthorn scooped mounds of snow with mittened hands and packed them into ammunition, lining them in neat rows inside each fort he built. He needed to prepare the stage before calling for his competitor, knowing they would only be available to war with him for a short while. When he was satisfied, he stepped back until the sea foam licked his heels and then swung out his arms, closing his eyes and mumbling his dread incantation as a violet flame sparked and roared into life before him.
He heard nothing for several moments. Anxious that the spell hadn't worked, he opened his eyes, and found an equally aghast Dremora shriveled in the sand. They cast their gaze in horror from Orthorn to the dark rolling sea to the snowy battlefield to the sky above, then back to Orthorn, and exclaimed:
"Who are you - who dares to summon me?"
"My name is Orthorn," he said, only realizing once the words left his mouth that he ought to have used more ceremony.
The Dremora sprung to their feet. "Lord Dagon will grind your bones, Orthorn!"
"Listen here, Dremora. For the next twenty minutes, you serve me. And I know you've never been summoned before. You're a Varlet, the lowest of the low. But when you return to the Deadlands, you will have reason to boast above your peers. Take your place at the fort to the left there."
Glowering, the Dremora slunk inside the crater of snow that stood for a fort. The sloping rim alleged to be a defensive wall reached just above their knees. Orthorn assumed position in his own structure opposite them, never daring to fully turn his back as he crossed the shore. "You and I are going to do battle," he explained, hefting a snowball into his palm.
"In this pathetic arena?" the Dremora sneered. "Where is my opponent?"
"In front of you. You are going to hold a snowball fight with me. No Destruction magic, no packing rocks, no drawing daggers at each other. Simple and honest, like warriors. Watch."
Orthorn flung the snowball at the Dremora. It thwacked against their black armor and disintegrated to the ground as they stood, dumbstruck.
"This is foolish," the Dremora remarked after a moment.
Another snowball clipped their jaw as Orthorn bristled with annoyance. "You're the fool, scum-of-Dagon's-boot. I am giving you license to hurt me. That's what all Kyn want, to torment their conjurers. Now pick up one of the snowballs at your feet and throw it at me."
The Dremora hesitated, but as Orthorn expected, ultimately gave in to his threats to their ego. They gave their snowball a weak underhand toss, and it sailed through the air so gently that it held its shape when it made impact with his stomach.
"Ow," he said rather lamely, unsure how else to react. This affectation of pain encouraged the Dremora, who began pelting him with snowballs at fast speeds, each one slamming into him with greater force than the last. Before Orthorn knew it he was cowering beneath the low walls of his fort with his arms braced over his head, utterly besieged with no space to fight back.
With an ecstatic war-cry the Dremora then leapt over their battlements and tore across the shore, firing snowballs at Orthorn point-blank as he scrambled to get away. The commingled shouts of summoner and summoned as they chased each other around the beach drifted upward to the towers of the College of Winterhold.
*
"Arch-Mage," Mirabelle Ervine reported as she strode back into the antechamber, "it looks like one of the new apprentices is being pursued by a Daedra." She paused. "With an arm full of snowballs."
Savos Aren hummed, considering it. "Well," he said, "I suppose someone should do something about that."