"Right, and the good news?" I asked with a sigh.
"Each of the boots have half of the whole enchantment." he said with a twitch of resignation.
"I'm sorry what? Do you mean they are enchanted as a pair or that the Madgod actually somehow split an enchantment in half and put the two halves in the boots?" I asked confused.
"The latter of those. The infuriating part is despite realizing that it's a trap like your hat I can't help but want to step into it to understand how it was possible." he said rubbing the bridge of his nose.
"I believe that's the point. Not much of a trap if the bait isn't tempting is it? Regardless of the broken fundamental rules of enchanting what do the boots actually do?" I asked bringing us back on track.
"Well as far as I can tell much like your hat they allow you go to the isles and back. The other five functions are suspicious. The first of them allows you to freely traverse any terrain. A function lost since the second era. The second function is a standard resistance to cold and heat, standard travelers enchantment for those that can afford it." he said seriously.
"So far pretty normal actually." I said confused.
He shook his head "Those were just the "normal" functions. The third function is the boots being obligate cannibals in order to repair themselves. That is to say you have to "feed" your boots other boots if they get damaged. The fourth function is the ability to make the boots increase in weight by a ridiculous amount. If my calculations aren't wrong they can weigh as much as boulders, large ones. Thankfully this function can be willed off returning the boots to their normal weight. The final function is herb growth. I mean you can stomp your feet and from that spot a random herb will rapidly growth. That one is too deep into the divine enchanting realm for me to replicate unfortunately. I almost failed to parse it's effect out in fact." he said regretfully.
"Those are ..... unusual functions. Except that last one, that one I can see myself using all the time to fill out my alchemy ingredient stores." I said giving the boots an odd look.
"They are fitting given the mind of the one who constructed them. Pure madness." Sergius said with a shake of his head.
I saw no reason to delay the inevitable and slipped off my original boots and put on the new ones. Immediately the red legs tensed and clung to my foot making the boots fit snuggly on me. I could feel the enchantments effect a thought a way but resisted the urge to try them out. I very much doubted that Sergius would appreciate a random herb growing out of his floor after all. As for increasing the boots weight that was even more nonsensical as all that would accomplish would be to make it harder to walk.-
I thanked Sergius for his help while apologizing for the constant bother. He waved it off though. I left after that as there was simply no longer any reason to stick around. My preparations were complete and with the addition of these new boots I was all but certain where I was going after I delve through Yngol's barrow. If Sheogorath insisted that I visit the Isles then I'd be a fool to reject his invitation. The odd thing though was that he shouldn't be in the isles at the moment. -
If his speech from the game wasn't wrong he should be in solitude, specifically the Pelagius wing of the Blue palace. Even more specifically in the mind of a long dead monarch that haunted that wing or something like that. It was possible that my existence has dislodged him from that as I was more interesting to him than it was. Then again trying to predict the literal god of madness was folly to begin with. I suited up in my bear skin travel clothes and summoned my toad once I was in Winterhold proper. I didn't bother letting Lokjun know I was heading out as the thing was already well aware. -
Just as I got stuff from the bond so too did Lokjun. The beast was smarter, could understand speech and had a larger than normal magicka pool. In addition to all that we both constantly knew where the other was at all times. For example at this moment the not so little monster was about seven hundred feet into the sky west southwest of Winterhold. This didn't surprise me at all as those lands had a bunch of wolves and bears that it hunted.-
Cooking an entire snow bear was a pain in the ass let me tell you. Thankfully Lokjun only ever ate about a quarter of the meat in a single sitting so one bear lasted four days, assuming I didn't take any for myself that is. I usually didn't but sometimes I'd snip off a few steaks to grill up, dry or stew. The meat was tough but with some intensely focused force it could be massaged(read beaten) into softening up. Anyways I rode my toad that was NOT happy about being summoned and left Winterhold quickly. I clenched my fist and a green mist erupted from between my fingers and encompassed us.-
When it vanished our forms had blurred and become nearly see through. This was the effect of the [chameleon] illusion spell. In the harsh blizzard it made us nearly impossible to pinpoint. Even with the clouds of snow getting kicked up as my toad galloped across the ground our actual location was basically impossible to perfectly pinpoint. I didn't get attacked even after a full day of riding which was surprising but I wasn't going to look a gift horse in the mouth.-
I used [shape stone] to create a small cave in the side of the mountain foot and set up a large fire before waiting. Moments later a loud "THUMP!" sounded out and the sharp beaked face of Lokjun appeared at the entrance with a dead ice wolf dangling from it's front claw.
"You really should try and hunt some elk one of these days. Predators have less nutritional value." I chided the monster only to receive a roll of the eyes in return as the corpse was unceremoniously dropped.
I could only shake my head and get to work skinning, gutting and setting the corpse up on a spit to season and roast it.-
Despite hunting predators primarily Lokjun never bloodied itself, killing with snapped necks instead. The sole exception to this was a bear that managed to claw off a scale when the little monster first started hunting and earned itself a slow painful death by drowning. Lokjun had all the arrogance and pride of a dragon and could be VERY petty if it wanted to be.
AUTHOR NOTE: Hi folks so I have made a new story. Fallout: The gathering. It's magic the gathering in Fallout. Why? Because I can.