"Place the hat on the table's center and I'll get started on decoding it." Sergius said seriously.
"Alright, If it helps I also made a physical copy of the enchantment that you could look over before you begin." I said as I set the pinchy hat on the table.
"That would be helpful, yes. Enchantments can be difficult to fully observe when active as you no doubt know." he said and I handed over the stack of parchment.
He raised an eyebrow at the sheer volume of parchment and his expression quickly turned to astonishment as he looked at the sketched enchantment diagrams.-
"I suppose I should say 'as expected of the Madgod'. This enchantment scheme could only be the work of a madman, or a genius. Let me see if what I'm thinking is correct." he said before putting his hands on the table and closing his eyes as magicka pulsed from his palms.
I stood there awkwardly for a good fifteen minutes before he stood up straight and shook his head to no doubt clear the dissonant overlap that comes with perceiving an enchantment like this. He didn't even bother speaking to me before he picked up the hat and put it on top of my head with his own [telekinesis] spell.-
"Is this safe?" I asked a bit nervous about the daedric originated hat.
"Safe? That infernal thing makes you practically untouchable!" he said with an annoyed expression.
"Uh, context required?" I said confused.
"How to explain this? So you are aware that enchantments are typically geometrical structures right?" he asked and I nodded "Well for us mortals the scale and complexity of the structures we can craft are..... limited I suppose is the best way to describe it. Our minds can not even grasp higher dimensions than the three we occupy. That enchantment is a geometric shape as normal. But the reason it seems to make no sense is because it's a fourth dimensional structure." he said seriously.
"So we can see the enchantment but not conceptualize it's depth?" I said astonished.
"Indeed. That is the nature of what we call divine enchantments. In this case the dimension being used outside ours is the tie that binds the work of sheer madness into a functional enchantment." he said tiredly.
"But what does it do?" I asked still very uncomfortable with the hat on my head.
"That's the maddening part, it does several things at once!" he complained in frustration.
"Wait what? I thought three was the limit?" I said confused.
"Apparently not! Somehow that mad bastard managed to put six different functions on a single thing. The fact that thing is alive is just the Oblivion damned icing on top!" he said angrily.
I couldn't blame him. How could I when he, a master enchanter, just learned one of the most fundamental rules of enchantment was wrong? That's like reaching the peak of a profession only to find out you've been doing it wrong the whole time, maddening.-
'Wait? isn't that the point?' I froze as the thought crossed my mind.
"It's a fucking trap." I whispered in horror.
"What?" Sergius asked confused.
"The hat, the enchantment, everything. It's all a trap to drive you mad." I said and he stiffened.
"Obsession." he breathed out with barely contained dread.
"But how did he know I'd bring you specifically the hat?" I asked as that detail still eluded me.
"He played your paranoia." he said with a sag of his shoulders.
"But that's ridiculous!" I said in disbelief.
"Is it? Sheogorath IS madness. He loves watching the chaos that a single insane action can have on us mortals. For any sane being just handing out something like that hat would be ridiculous but for him? Just a prank." he said seriously.
"I fucking hate being played with by daedric princes." I groaned as I rubbed the bridge of my nose as a headache throbbed behind my eyes.
"Well the good news is he took care of that already. One of the effects of that enchantment is anti-daedra warding. So long as you wear that hat no daedra can lock onto you without being obvious about it." he said shaking his head at the crazy enchantment.
"And the other four things?" I asked with a sneaking suspicion I've been played even further than I knew.
"The second is a simple repair function. Apparently he didn't want the hat getting destroyed so he made it regenerative. The third is a flat out boosting function. For something to do with the soul, and sound? I have no damned clue honestly what's that about. Then you have the invitation to the isles he somehow rolled into the enchantment. A literal invitation written in runes of all things, a functional one at that! The fourth lets you pull food out of the hat. I wish I was joking. The final function lets you breath underwater. Probably because of the whole crab thing." he said leaving my eye twitching.
The mad god really seemed to just stuff whatever came to mind into this damned thing and yet all of it was useful some fucking how! Even worse is that he made an enchantment effect that boosted the thu'um. I didn't even know that was possible! The invitation could not be any more obvious with it's intentions. I could practically hear the fucker in my head going "Why not stop by the isles for a tad? The weather's lovely this time of year".-
The worse part is I was sorely tempted to accept that invitation. The isles are dangerous true but they also have some of the most useful materials known. Madness ore for example can be forged into weapons and armor that rival Ebony armors and weapons. There is even a book on the stuff that postulates that the stuff IS Ebony but from a different source than the stuff on Nirn. That it comes from the blood of Sheogorath himself.-
Considering what I know about the event known as the Graymarch I can genuinely believe that. The Graymarch is a little event at the end of every era up to the start of this one due to a certain reason in which the daedric prince Jyggalag, the lord of order, sweeps across the isles killing absolutely everything in the process before vanishing. I know thanks to meta knowledge that originally Jyggalag was cursed with madness by the other princes because of his terrifying power and thus became Sheogorath.-
At the end of the Oblivion crisis two hundred odd years ago when the third era was ending the one known as the hero of Kvatch that played a key role in ending the daedric invasion mantled Sheogorath successfully. This meant there was both a Sheogorath and Jyggalag in existence at the same time. This dissonance in reality broke the curse freeing Jyggalag while the hero truly became Sheogorath. The existence of Madness ore could definitely have been from all the insane plans Sheogorath had tried to use to stop the Graymarch before that point. Perhaps some insane idea to shed his madness infused blood across the isle in hopes of it fighting off the forces of order.