The blue-ish synth meandered through the grounds of the Academia Draconis, taking his time as he waited for the next class on Perception-magic to start. He didn't actually belong on-campus, of course. He'd managed to bamboozle one of the gate golems into letting him in, but that was as far as he'd gotten today. The other classes - one on Machine-magic that intrigued him, another on Remembrance (whatever that was) - had been limited to students only, and that meant that the professors were checking ID at the door. He could convince basic constructs that he belonged here, but Tarnish didn't think that he had the skills to convince real magicians to believe that he did.
But he could look like he belonged, as long as he didn't make any serious mistakes.
So, he wandered through the grounds. He had to admit, it was always an interesting trip to the Academia Draconis; the spiral pathways that led between the lines of buildings were different to the usual grid-patterns from his home dimension, and he wondered if there was a magical purpose to them, something that made it all make sense, or if the builders had done it purely for aesthetic reasons. Either way, it was peaceful, allowing students - and visitors, like him - to weave in and out of each other's paths as they walked about.
He considered turning on the sensors in his feet, curious if the grass felt real or if it was just an illusion over something else, but he decided not to. It was fine as it was, and he didn't need the extra sensory input.
Time passed as he walked between the double-storied buildings, occasionally passing the bigger ones that went beyond mere dormitories. Some were clearly some kind of stand-in for the frat houses and sororities of his former plane, and he wondered if they had the same rules. There were magical letters around the doors that he didn't know how to read, and there were other marks of enchantment throughout the larger buildings, and he didn't know which ones were just meant to ID the building, and which ones were there to keep the other sororities and frats from messing with them.
It should have made him feel like a foreigner. If anything, it only made him more curious, more intent on learning the rules of this world, because it felt like it should make sense if he could just get the basics down.
Ding.
Dong.
Ding.
Dong.
That was the central bell calling everyone to their next class. The synth turned his steps toward the great lecture halls on the outer rim of the campus, picking up the pace as a great many other students did the same. The sheer mass of different species pressing in around him was a comfort, as well as a bit of an asset for someone like him that was trying to blend in to the crowd. The more differences around him, the better; he was less weird in a crowd of many than in something too homogenous.
They walked through the spirals, crossing at the intersections to make their way further and further out. Tarnish knew the way, but he let himself be led by the flood all around him. They were quicker than him, more familiar, even though -
Flicker. Flicker. The map in his head showed him the ideal route, if he wanted it. The programs that were part of being a synthetic being gathering all the bits and pieces of information that he'd collected over his previous visits. It was like an overlay on his vision, telling him where to go.
He dismissed it. Not needed, not yet.
The crowd let him back and forth and back and forth, pressing in on all sides. He felt them grinding against him from time to time, almost crushing him. Even with his synthetic body, there was a faint hint of worry about the possibility of being dented and damaged by some of the larger students. Even the small ones were stronger than they should have been, and he had to keep reminding himself that size was no indication of strength in this world. With the Body-magic that seemed so common, they were constantly adjusting and optimizing themselves. A mouse that was barely into adulthood could have completely smashed a bear that was three times its size in his world, just because the mouse knew a stronger kind of magic.
This...is so cool...
Tarnish was all but carried by the flood of students heading to the biggest of the lecture halls. An oval-shaped building on the north compass point of the circular campus, the lecture hall had a set of thirty-some stairs to climb. He was pretty sure that his feet didn't touch the ground once on the way up, and neither did most of the other students that were caught in the middle of the swell heading up the stairs.
And then, they were inside.
Tarnish's ocular scanners adjusted immediately to the difference in lighting. The rows of seats leading down to the raised stage could probably hold upward of five hundred people. He didn't think there were that many in here -
Three hundred and six.
Not quite that many, but more than half. That'd be a good enough crowd to get lost in.
Once his feet touched the ground again, the synth followed a small cluster of students to the bottom-right rows, close enough to see the stage but with a big enough group that he wouldn't immediately stand out. The urge to put his hood up was pushed back, cancelled out. A hood might hide his face a bit, but it'd make the glowing shapes of his eyes stand out even more than they already did. Not something that would help him blend in.
He took his seat between a stallion and an orca, a little shorter than either, but not by much. He leaned back, one finger extended over his desk. A piece of paper shimmered into his overlay again. Unlike the others, he didn't need to take notes physically; he could just draw with his finger on the desk, and it'd be saved to where it needed to be.
The rest of the students got comfortable around him, but Tarnish's attention was on the stage. He knew that this lecture was supposed to be special. He'd attended a few others, taught by the standard lecturers in the Academia Draconis, but this one was supposed to be taught by the one that ran the whole school. The fact that the headmaster himself would be showing up had him curious. After all, the one that had founded the school was supposed to be the best, weren't they?
Well, he was going to find out.
The students waited in silence. It was the first time that a pre-lecture hall had been so quiet, and he was honestly surprised. Every other school he'd visited had maintained a certain volume of students chatting while they waited, but this one -
"Welcome."
Tarnish stopped thinking. The stage had been empty less than a second ago, but as soon as the voice spoke, it wasn't. It was as if there'd been a flicker, going from one reality to another.
How...
"Welcome to my lecture on Perception-magic. Which is?"
The black-scaled, white-eyed dragon looked around the room. Nobody answered.
"Ideas. Or rather, your personal idea of how the world works. How it moves. How it is. Different between all of you, of course, but more interesting and more varied for all of that."
Tarnish would have arched an eyebrow at that, if he had one. Instead, he just watched as the dragon moved, a yellow coat swishing around him as he walked from one end of the stage to another.
"Our reality is viewed from billions of perspectives at once, each one seeing something just a little different from the ones closest to them. Certain things - gravity, physics (to an extent) and other natural laws - seem immutable to us, but the details always change. What if I were to tell you that the perception of the immutable is just that? Our perception of natural laws, our understanding of them, and that understanding is what makes it so?"
"You can't just say that gravity exists because we think it exists," someone further back said.
"You say that. But imagine for a moment that you could," the black dragon said, chuckling as he turned toward the audience. "Already, our perception of the world around us is what allows us to interact with it. We perceive the tug of gravity on our bodies. We feel the pressure of the ground beneath us informing our sense of balance. We move about the world only because we see, feel, hear, taste the things that it has to offer us. Think for a moment how much worse you are when you can't see, or when you go numb and can't feel the world, and how you tumble down, or feel like you're falling up, or any number of other impossible, disorienting things.
"Take that feeling, and then stir magic into that huge messy mix. Take that feeling of being completely lost, of the world no longer making sense, and then realize that you can make someone else feel exactly that. Or something else, anything else, that you can think of. That is Perception-magic: the ability to completely inform someone else's view of the world, and how they can interact with it."
Tarnish couldn't help but be fascinated at the idea. It was completely philosophical to him, of course, but there was something about it that really tweaked at his imagination. He was already synth, of course, and he had gone through reprogramming at least once in his life, so he knew some of that feeling, but the very idea of someone being able to do that at will -
"There's even examples of doing it without using any magic at all." The black dragon chuckled, turning to fix the synth with a stare. "Like someone acting so much like one of my students that he fits in for a few minutes."
Tarnish froze as all eyes in the lecture hall turned to him. The dragon chuckled.
"Not a bad act. And a lovely example of how you can pull something like that even without magic. Perhaps even a little unintentional use of it...but I know my classes. And my students." The dragon chuckled. "We'll address this after class. Anyway. Where was I?"
...This could either be very good, or very bad...
Regardless, he’d have at least one more lesson before the powers that be threw him out. He’d have to make it count.
The End
Summary: Tarnish, a synth that is still trying to find his way around in Docetri, ends up sneaking into one of Draconicon's classes.
Tags: No Sex, Synth, Docetri, Magic Class, Slice of Life, Various Species, Dragon, Draconicon, Magic, Exposure,
