A Prankster Pranked
Olivier Dantes could not have had a more acclaimed academic career. At age 19, he graduated, magna cum laude, from the Arcane University. By 23 he had published the groundbreaking enchantment essay “On the Theory of Dynamics of Magical Bodies”. For Dantes’s 27th birthday, the Arch-mage had promoted him Master Wizard and appointed him full Professor of Mysticism . Now, after five years of unending research, experimentation, and writing, Dantes had finished his tome, “Formal Heuristics for the Process of Enchantment”, a definitive thesis establishing Enchantment as the seventh College of Magic.
Alas, Dantes’s career met its match in the form of one Caius Insubfero, Apprentice of the Arcane University. Insubfero displayed no deftness for magic – but he possessed a talent for mischief, a talent he utilized especially in Professor Dantes’s Mysticism class. Insubfero’s pranks began innocently enough: he cut out all the pages from all school copies of “Before the Ages of Man” and used the bindings to cover up hundreds of complete printings of “The Lusty Argonian Maid” – printings he then deposited throughout classrooms and libraries of the university. Insubfero had also been known to spike Enchanters’ Draughts with Cyrodiilic Brandy, or to telekinetically erase the chalkboard as Professor Dantes wrote on it. These tricks Dantes could bear.
But the last class before Evening-Star break, as the other students struggled through their Mysticism final exam, Caius Insubfero summoned a daedroth. He lost control of it as soon as it zoomed through the mists of Oblivion into the classroom: the daedroth went berserk and chased the students screaming from the lecture hall. Before Dantes could bring it down, the daedroth destroyed 358,241 septims worth of desks, chairs, paper, ink, robes, scrolls, staves, soul gems, and other artifacts priceless to everyone but the University’s insurance claims adjusters. After to the chaos, Dantes was forced to annul the results of the exam and give each and every one of his students a passing grade.
This proved the proverbial straw that broke the silt-strider’s back. That evening Dantes stormed into the Arch-mage’s office demanding Caius Insubfero’s expulsion from the Arcane University.
“Alas, I cannot expel him!” the Arch-mage declared. “Caius is the nephew of the great Baron Insubfero, Lord of Lionsridge in Colovia! He sits on the Elder Council! To expel young Caius would blacken his family’s name! And name is everything to that family! But more importantly, Baron Insubfero chairs on the Arcane University’s Board of Regents! How do you think that dolt Caius got accepted here anyway?”
Despondent, Dantes spent the next month putting the finishing touches on his “Formal Heuristics” in preparation for its publication and presentation. Already mages from across the Empire had been invited to the University for his lecture on the subject – the book’s publication was widely believed to herald *the* magical discovery of the century, if not the age! Thus the alternating excitement and stress of his forthcoming publication erased the memory of Caius Insubfero from Olivier Dantes’s mind.
But then, break ended, and the memory of Insubfero’s pranks came flooding back with a vengeance. Over break Insubfero had formally entered the College of Mysticism, and the college administration had assigned the student to Professor Dantes’s advisement. The weekly meetings in his office gave Caius plenty of opportunity to play all sorts of nasty tricks against the Professor.
Casting Burden hexes on the Professor once he sat down on his chair proved one of Insubfero’s favorite pranks. The poor Dantes, encumbered by magical weight, would crash through his chair onto the floor. Once Insubfero frenzied Hoblet, Dantes’s pet imp. The Imp, usually happy to while away hours in a large birdcage in the Professor’s office, broke free in and flew, enraged, all the way to the Imperial Arboretum terrifying hundreds of the City’s children, dogs, and cats before a kindly guardsman subdued the creature and brought it back. A few weeks after that, Insubfero conjured a snowstorm in Dantes’s sleeping quarters. He returned, late at night after a consultation with the head of the University Press about his “Formal Heuristics”, only to find his room covered in blanket of snow, three-feet deep.
Dantes believed this would surely be Insubfero’s worst and cruelest trick. Lacking any means to discipline the wayward disciple, he could only hope so, and hope that, having reached its climax, the pranking – no, hazing – would stop. Dantes was wrong. Insubfero’s harshest trick would come on the First of Rain’s Hand, when Professor Dantes was due to give his presentation on “Formal Heuristics for the Process of Enchantment” to the entire Arcane University, as well as esteemed representatives of the Adamantine Tower, the Crystal Tower, the College of Winterhold, and House Telvanni.
Insubfero, like all students, sat in the audience, at the back of the hall, per Dantes’s instructions. But at the back of the hall, no one could see him. Thus, no one saw Caius sneak around the hall, behind the podium, and cast a Drain Intelligence Curse on Insubfero as he started his lecture.
“My inestimably accomplished colleagues,” Dantes began, “who have journeyed here from across Tamriel, welcome! I won’t bore you with small talk – that is the Arch-mage’s job. I am here to talk about magic. In particular, Enchantment. For you see, Enchantment is as systematic and methodical a branch of magic as any of the Seven Colleges. Its processes are reproducible; its variables can be isolated for experimentation. It is a magic of logic, a magic of algorithm, a magic of shiny-bubbly things, trapped in rocks. Like frosted sugar! You can put it in your oat-meal with breakfast! A soul-gem! My mama told me that eyes are the window to the soul – GEM! Get it!? Hardeeharhar! Hey, did any of you hear the one about the Orc with the Enchanted Sword? If you know what I mean…”
Professor Dantes’s lecture, which he had prepared in painstaking detail over months, after years of research, a lecture which would put his book on the list of the greatest treatises on magic in history, and which would earn Enchantment its own College at the Arcane University, descended into a torrent of vacuous and inane babble cut mercifully short when the Arch-mage himself cast a Silence spell over Dantes. With one prank, Caius Insubfero had discredited years of research and destroyed the most luminous magical career since Galerion’s.
That night, deprived of his professorship and facing a one-way trip to Bravil Mages’ Guild Chapter House, Olivier Dantes did what any self-disrespecting former-luminary would do: he went to the Bloated Float and got hammered. He drank until closing time, and then staggered out the front door through the Waterfront District. As night reached its darkest, the drunken mage heard scratching and whining, and looked behind himself to see a mangy brown hound scratching its right ear.
“Shoo dog,” he slurred, “I’ve no treatsh for yoo”. The dog didn’t leave. “Oh, allite. Here goesh.” Dantes poured out the last of his Daedric Lava Whiskey, and the grateful dog lapped it up, tail wagging.
“Thanks!” the dog called.
Dantes rubbed his eyes. “Did you jusht shay ‘thanksh’?” he asked.
“Sure did!” the dog called back. The shock of a talking dog jolted Dantes into sobriety.
“What, what in Oblivion, what in Oblivion…” Dantes shrieked.
“Name’s Barbas,” the dog said. “You may have heard of me.”
“THE HOUND OF CLAVICUS VILE!” Dantes screamed.
“Yeah, he’s my master,” Barbas explained. “He’s been watching you, he always liked your style. Said you were going places. Not any more, unless you count Bravil as a place. Master doesn’t. He’s real miffed at what happened to you, said it wasn’t your fault. He knows it was that Insubfero kid, one of his pranks. Anyway, Master sent me to see if you wanted anything, before you, well, consign yourself to a life of ignominy.”
“Won’t your master desire something in return?” Dantes asked, intrigued but also concerned.
“Don’t worry about it,” Barbas urged. “We can figure out payment later.”
Dantes thought a while. Here was the messenger of one of the Daedric Princes, offering him anything he desired. Should he send him away? No. What should he wish for then?
“Can you get me my job back?” Dantes asked.
“No can do,” Barbas whined. “Pick something realistic.”
“What about the power to get back at that little mudcrab Insubfero?” Dantes demanded.
“Yeah, I can do that.”
“Can you smash him into imp gall?”
“No, but I can help you play a prank on him so mean, that not he, nor anyone else in his family ever steps into the public spotlight again.”
Dantes pondered. “Alright,” he agreed. “Let’s do it.”
“Then we have to act fast!” Barbas howled as he raced towards the city proper. “Moonlight’s burning!” The still-inebriated Dantes staggered after him across the bridge to the Imperial Lighthouse, along past the Temple of the One into the Talos Plaza district. Barbas navigated the narrow, winding streets while Dantes struggled not to lose sight of him, and finally found relief when he saw the hound sitting before a door to a townhouse, scratching his ear.
“This is the Insubfero family’s home in the City,” Barbas explained. “Caius throws parties here pretty often. He has all the rich kids from the best families in the city here. Word is the Emperor’s natural son even stops by once in a while.”
“Emperor Uriel has an illegitimate son?” Dantes asked.
“Shhhhh!” Barbas hissed. “Our secret! Now quickly, knock the door!”
Dantes ran up and pounded on the door. To his surprise, he put his fist clean through the oak planks, and the door swung right off its hinges with a loud bang! The rich kiddies inside looked over in shock and awe, and the eerie silence only broke when one finally blurted out, “OH MY GODS! IT’S SOREN SKULL-CRUSHER!”
Dantes looked around – he knew the name of the Arena Grand Champion as well as any Citizen, but he did not see him anywhere. As he looked, however, the approbating adolescents swarmed him and dragged him inside. The house was no mere house – it was a mansion, a palace even, with velvet rugs, marble walls, and golden chandeliers. But the cheering partiers blocked his view of the house with their swinging arms.
Dantes (or Soren, as the partiers apparently perceived him) did see one thing of note, something that made his blood boil with rage: Caius Insubfero promenade towards him, only to shake his arm and declare, “Soren! I’m your biggest fan!”
Wild cheers broke out as the youths danced around the stodgy professor they believed to be their Arena Hero. One partier, a hairy brown-bearded Nord, cried out “Let’s sneak into the Arena! And have a fight!” Dantes observed the Nord scratching his right ear furiously, and knew him to be Barbas in disguise.
“Off to the Arena!” Dantes cried, summoning his best Nord accent. “But bring plenty of liquor!” A tumult of cheers roared through the room and spilled into the streets as the celebrating youths carried Dantes/Soren out the front door and through the Elven Gardens and Market District. They reached the Arena, completely inebriated, and Dantes kicked down the Bloodworks door using Soren’s strength. The rich youths, the crème-de-la-crème of the Empire’s aristocracy, streamed into the empty Bloodworks and beyond into the Arena battlefield.
There they danced, and laughed, and threw punches, and collapsed in the sand in joy, knowing such a party would never again be thrown. They had let loose, forgotten all their inhibitions, and now slept off the stupor of drunkenness the wild revelry had misted over their minds. All slept, but Barbas and Dantes.
“Come on,” Barbas whispered to the professor. “It’s almost sun-up, we have to get out of here!”
The pair snuck back into the Bloodworks, and out the door. A dense fog had settled over the city, and it masked Dantes transformation back into his everyday self, as well as his escape, from Hundolin the Bookmaker, who was now preparing the Arena for opening. A crowd had already gathered before the elf, waiting to place bets and buy tickets. Dantes, never one for the vulgar Arena, strolled past them, until Barbas stopped him.
“Buy us some tickets,” the hound-turned-Nord ordered. “You’ll want to see this.”
Dantes stepped into line, waited two hours, and finally reached Hunlondin. He bought two tickets, and took his seat in the front row, near a Khajiit scribbling in a notepad.
“This fog is terrible,” the Khajiit hissed at Dantes. “You can’t even see the battlefield! Today is the first day of the Arena’s season. The Emperor himself will attend! Imagine his disappointment, if the fog doesn’t lift!”
Dantes raised his eyebrows. “The Emperor will be here?” he asked the Khajiit. “How do you know?”
“My name is Skrajaeam,” the Khajiit stated. “I am the Arena correspondent for the Black Horse Courier. I know these things.”
Dantes looked to Barbas, who grinned like a child with a candy-corn. “GOOD PEOPLE OF THE IMPERIAL CITY!” the announcer boomed, nearly throwing Dantes with shock out of his chair. “WELCOME TO THE ARENA! Today, to open the season, we have a special treat for you! Soren Skull-Crusher, Grand Champion, will wrestle a bull minotaur! All while the Emperor Uriel looks on! Let the games begin!”
Suddenly and miraculously the fog lifted, revealing dozens of scions of the Empire’s finest families lounging and snoring in the sand. Soren Skull-Crusher, the *real* Soren Skull-Crusher, looked at them in bewilderment, and horror, a horror that only redoubled as the wild minotaur ran out of the Arena gates.
But the minotaur suddenly stopped, when it saw the sleeping form of Caius Insubfero before it. It bent down, stuck its nose in Caius’s face, and blew hot steaming breath as he smelled him.
“Fluffy?” Caius groaned. “Five more minutes. What is that? You smelly dog! Huh… what?” Caius sat up, rubbed his eyes, yawned, and screamed like a five-year-old Altmer girl when he saw the minotaur before him. The minotaur bellowed with just as much fear, then charged him.
Caius ran for sweet life around the arena trying to dodge the minotaur. “Get me out of here!” Insubfero screamed. “Don’t you know who I am? I AM CAIUS INSUBFERO! CAIUS INSUBFERO!” The crowd, which knew the family, if not the individual, erupted in laughter. “Soren!” Caius screamed, “Why would you do this to me!? I THOUGHT WE WERE FRIENDS!”
As he ran from the minotaur, Insubfero tripped and stumbled over the other youths and they woke up and joined the train in terror. The laughter exploded to deafening levels. Caius and his friends pounded on the Bloodworks doors, took cover behind obstacles, begged Soren to let them out, begged the audience to rescue them. All the while, the Emperor frowned in shame at the next generation of Tamriel’s blue-bloods. Skrajaeam scribbled furiously in his notebook. Dantes looked on in the glee of pure revenge.
Weeks later, Dantes strolled out onto a hill overlooking the Larsius River as the sun set on his first day as Head of Bravil Mages’ Guild Hall. He sat down and stared, smiling and content with the world. In one hand, he held the manuscript – never to be published – of his opus magnum, “Formal Heuristics for the Process of Enchantment”. In his other hand, he held a Black Horse Courier, dated Third of Rain’s Hand. Its headline read as follows: “Insubfero Leads Yuppies on Parade of Fools! Greatest Season Opener in History of Arena!” Last Dantes had heard, the Baron Insubfero had retired from public life altogether in shame. Caius, meanwhile, had transferred from the Arcane University to Military School in snowy Windhelm. Justice, Dantes believed, had been served. All was right with the world.
But a brown, mangy hound sat down next to Dantes and interrupted his reverie when began to scratch his right ear. “Now we figure out payment,” Barbas barked.
