"HONORIA," SEB GREETED as he slid into the seat next to me during Artefacts class the next day. The Artefacts classroom was one of the more unique ones, a large, spacious chamber with shelves on all four walls, displaying all sorts of artefacts, talismans and other magical objects. It was meticulously decorated and made of a light wood, giving a spacious and comfortable feeling to the classroom. Three massive, arched windows allowed sunlight in, casting the room in a soft glow.

"Seb," I replied, arching my head to turn to him. The Artefacts classroom had tables of three to four people each, and our teacher, Mr Dawson, didn't really care about where we sat each lesson. I practically knew no one else in the class, so I tended to sit by myself until someone else sat next to me because they ran out of seats.

But today, Seb had randomly decided to grace me with his presence. And he wasn't alone. "Hope you don't mind me and this fool sitting here with you," Seb said, flashing a bright smile, gesturing to the familiar dark-haired boy next to him. Theodore Yu. The Artefacts genius himself.

I offered a grin. "As long as you two agree to carry me through this lesson." We were going to be enchanting our talismans. I didn't find it difficult, but if you could get carried, why not get carried?

"Oh, I don't have any hope of being able to do it. Theo here, though..."

Theodore rolled his eyes. "Seb, you're just as good as I am at this class. At least last year you were."

"Don't believe him," Seb fake-whispered to me. "I'm shit. He's the god."

"I've realised," I replied, taking off my black uniform blazer and hanging it on the back of the chair, revealing the cotton white shirt underneath, fully buttoned up. "Major respect, Theodore."

He shrugged nonchalantly. "My family does this stuff for a living. I'd be damned if I weren't good at it."

I huffed. "Tell that to Adelina."

Seb frowned. "She's damned good at combat, isn't she?"

"Her parents made her study Healing and History of Magic, let's just say she's this close to dropping both."

"How many subjects does she do?" Seb asked, tilting his head.

"Five. She could drop it, but her parents wouldn't let her."

"To be fair," Seb admitted, "it is literally September. Would look quite bad if she dropped half her subjects now."

"Yeah, that's what I told her. To wait."

Theo said, in Cantonese, "If she's bad at it, she really shouldn't take it. It would reflect really badly on her if she applied for university or the like."

"Yeah," Seb snorted back in the same dialect, "but her combat skills and her family name are more than enough to get her through."

I stayed quiet, not wanting to comment. It was a bit of a strange subject, families and last names, here at the college. Thing was, a lot of the student population didn't put much effort into their academics because they knew their parents' names would get them anywhere in life, as well as their money. Apparently a kid in our year was caught smoking weed or something in his dorm last year, but was allowed to stay in school after his parents made a few hefty donations.

I didn't approve of it. But if I wanted to avoid and scorn every student who got in here or was still here because of nepotism and their family name, that would be half the student population.

And, well, it's their money. They decide what to do with it. And they weren't necessarily all bad people. Adelina, for example. Her academic grades were a mess, and her skills in combat magic and the Roche name were the only things that secured her a spot in this school. But she was genuinely nice, and brutally honest about how she thought she was accepted in the first place. She could be a bit spoiled, a bit immature, but she had a good heart.

That was all I cared about. The world wasn't fair, and there was no point in levelling the playing field. The important thing was playing to win, and you always ended up needing to play within the constraints given to you, no matter how small and annoying.

Mr Dawson, red-haired and blue-eyed with the palest skin I'd ever seen, walked in then, grinning as he regarded all of us. "Good morning, everyone."

The robotic response from us all brought a frown to his face. "Do have some energy, kids. We're enchanting a talisman today. When I was younger, I couldn't be more excited."

Everyone exchanged glances and little smiles, but no one replied directly. Mr Dawson sighed and strolled to the middle of the classroom, glancing around."Alright, everyone, bring out your talismans. Has anyone not finished theirs?"

Two students raised their hands. Mr Dawson glanced at everyone else and waved their hands. "I want you all to look at each other's and check the carvings, make sure everything is auspicious and correct. We don't want any mistakes now, do we?"

I reached into my bag and pulled out my talisman. We'd all been given a piece of alabaster, and told to research auspicious signs to create our own design to carve on. The carvings were the soul of a talisman, the enchantment simply gave it life.

For mine, I'd carved on a Chinese character, 福. It meant good luck. It wasn't too difficult to carve on and suited my purpose simply.

Seb glanced at mine, and then at Theo's besides him. "Oh look, you two did the same thing." I turned to look at Theo's. I wasn't surprised. This was the most obvious thing to do for us Chinese kids, and the simplest.

Theo nodded in approval. "Brilliant minds think alike. This guy, on the other hand..."

Seb very hesitantly removed the hand he had over his talisman, revealing the mess of a carving on it. My jaw dropped. "What..."

Seb offered, very helpfully, "It's meant to be a dragon."

Now that he said it, I could somewhat see the shape of the creature. The long, squiggly line, what was now obviously meant to be the scales, but looked more like his inability to carve a smooth line, and the large blob that I assumed was the head.

I said, raising my head to glance at Theo, who obviously knew the most out of all three of us, "Is that going to work?"

"It will, believe it or not," Theo sighed. "Not very well, but, well, this is a talisman for protection. We're not even specifying protection against what, you could argue this talisman doesn't work that well in the first place. Only reason the school's making us do this is to test our overall skill on talisman making."

"Fair enough," I muttered, gaze drifting back to Seb's talisman. "Dear god, my guy."

He deadpanned, "I spent two hours on this."

"Well, that's two hours wasted."

Theo let out a sound that sounded very much like choked laughter. Seb glared at both of us. "Hey, just because I have no artistic talent—"

"I don't either," I interrupted with a finger raised before tapping it on my own carved stone, "which is why I did this instead of carving a bloody dragon."

Seb swore under his breath. "Fuck both of you."

I just grinned in response. Theo shook his head and turned away as Mr Dawson had finished dealing with the other students. "Alright. Everyone should have their talismans now. Anyone having any major issues with theirs? No? Alright. Now, who here has enchanted talismans before?"

A bit less than half the class raised their hands, me included. Both Seb and Theo's hands were raised as well.

"Excellent, excellent," Mr Dawson murmured, glancing around. "Okay, would any of you like to tell me how it's done?"

I kept my hand raised, as did Theo. Seb dropped his. Mr Dawson's gaze surveyed around the room before landing on me. "Honoria, would you like to tell us?"

I cleared my throat. "After you have your talisman carved, you should lay it down on a flat surface and use its characteristics to tailor-make a spell for its enchantment. We can use the Talisman Table for this."

"Very good, very good. Now, I feel the need to emphasise that you do not need to memorise the Talisman Table—I haven't memorised it myself. You just need to know how to read it and use it. You will be given the table during your exams. Wonderful work, Honoria. Now. How do we do the actual process of enchantment? Theo, would you like to answer?"

"Well, sir, you should cover the talisman with both your hands—the hand you use to write with should be the one at the bottom. Commit the spell to memory—that is very important, as your mind needs to be completely clear when doing the spell. A single distracting thought and the spell will fail. Then, you need to clear your mind completely and say the spell again and again until you feel the talisman getting hotter in your hands, until you can no longer touch it without feeling like your skin is starting to burn. Then, you remove your hands and let it cool," Theo said it all without hesitance, without a second thought. It showed experience, expertise, even, with the subject. "Your talisman is done after that, though it can be a bit difficult to test whether everything went well, since this is a protection talisman."

Mr Dawson's smile widened. "Flawless, Theo, utterly flawless. And as expected."

Well. I flashed a smile at Theo as he sat down, and he returned it with a nod. He didn't smile back, almost as if this kind of thing was every day for him—which I supposed it was. He was easily one of the best students in the entire school at all subjects, and he made it look so easy.

I was jealous. Insanely jealous.

I supposed some people were just born smarter than others.

"Fucking hell, bro," I heard Seb whisper next to me. "Leave some space for the rest of us."

"Wasn't like you were going to answer."

"Yeah, but what about everyone else? My god."

Mr Dawson continued, "I'm going to start handing out Talisman Tables. These are physical copies, and you don't need to not lose these. You have copies in your textbooks. I want you all to write down your spells. If your talisman's characteristics fall into more than one of the options, pick the one that you think fits most. Feel free to ask around for input if you really can't decide. If you're done with your spell, raise your hand, and I'll come check."

Simple enough.

The Talisman Table was separated into five categories: shape, colour, size, use and symbol. Shape was simple—you simply had to fit your talisman's shape into one of the categories. Mine was nearly round. That was category four. Thus, my spell started with gihi. Colour. Everyone had alabaster talisman, and therefore it was the lightest colour on the spectrum. Wasu. Next, size. Same for everyone again. It was the size of our palms. Namu. Use. There were only two options for this anyways, benevolent or malevolent. Protection talismans were obviously benevolent. Thus, fara. And finally, symbol. Mine was considered complicated due to the amount of strokes, with straight lines. My spell therefore ended with sairopalen.

I scribbled my spell down. Gihi-wasu-namu-fara-sairopalen.

Seb glanced over my shoulder. "Jesus, you have amazing handwriting."

"Thanks," I said, not looking up. "You done with yours?"

"No," Seb sighed. "Looking at spells gives me a headache. I like to believe there's a reason no one above the age of ten likes to use verbal spells except for talismans and runes and whatnot."

Theo groaned. "Seb. It's so simple. Just categorise the bloody rock and write the spell down. It's not that difficult."

"Not for you," Seb said with a groan. "I swear, if there's a version of dyslexia for spells, it's what I have. I've never been good with this shit."

"There probably is," I admitted, "but really, it's just categorising and writing it down. I'll help you if you want."

"Don't," Theo said with disgust. "It's his work, he should be the one to do it."

"Suit yourself," I replied, shrugging as I turned back to my talisman, raising my hand. Theo raised his too. Since we were the first table with two people done, Mr Dawson strolled over leisurely, grinning from ear to ear.

"Ah, are we done here?"

"Yes, sir," I responded with a small smile. "I believe here's my spell."

He glanced over it. "Seems good," he said approvingly. "Theo, show me yours?"

Theo passed over his notebook. Mr Dawson nodded. "Excellent, excellent. Wait a bit now, yeah? We want everyone to be done before we start on the next step."

"Oh, just great," Seb grimaced. "I'm sitting with not one, but two geniuses."

I ignored him. "You're ridiculously good at this, Theo."

Theo's lips lifted for a split second. "Thanks."

Seb rolled his eyes. "You ever heard of the Yus back in Hong Kong? Yu's Artefacts and Talismans? That's his family's. He's the bloody heir."

I paused, trying to wrack my mind. Then, quickly, I blinked. "Oh, fuck." I remembered now. Most of the artefacts and talismans my family had were from the store down the road that doubled as a normal antique store, so I'd never paid much attention to the brand of the things I bought there. But now I remembered. I dug into my school bag and pulled out a jade talisman, one that my grandma had given to me.

I flipped it around. And there it was. Yu's Artefacts & Talismans, printed in tiny Chinese letters at the bottom. "Holy fuck."

Theo leaned over, trying to catch a glimpse of the talisman. I directly passed it over. He inspected it. "Oh, this is an old one. I can tell because this is the old logo. My aunt designed the new one."

"Yeah," I told him. "This was my grandma's. And her mother before that. And so on. For focus." Most magicians had one like that, especially when they were younger. For my family's women, we kept our focus talisman until our daughter was old enough to use one. Same for our men.

"Let me guess..." he spun it around his fingers. "This is from the mid eighteenth century?"

"Around the time the Brits invaded, yeah, just after the Opium War."

"Yep," Theo said. "Production dropped steeply after that. Didn't pick up until the mid-to-late nineteenth century. Between the Japanese invasion and stuff. Couldn't exactly continue mass production."

Seb's eyes fluttered shut. "Fuck, history."

"Hey," I protested. "It's interesting."

Theo passed it back to me. "Yeah, Yu's my family's pride and joy. Which is why I'm so good at this. I've practically been dealing and making this stuff since I was an infant."

"Quite impressive."

"What do your parents do?" Seb asked, frowning, glancing at me.

"Nothing as fancy," I said truthfully. "My dad's on the board of a property company. Human job. My mum's a housewife."

Seb shrugged. "Normal. Pretty much the same as mine, just a different industry. My dad works at a company that produces all kinds of random shit."

Theo scowled. "Why don't you stop talking and start dealing with your actual assignment?"

"Fine! Fine!"

It felt like forever later when Mr Dawson had finished checking everyone's talismans and spells. He clapped his hands at the front of the classroom, attracting everyone's attention as he began to announce the next steps. "Now comes the actual enchanting. I am aware that some of you might find it difficult to clear your minds here, but I implore you to try your best anyways. During your exams, you will be in a room with other people, and you will have to enchant a talisman there. You must learn how to properly focus."

I glanced at my spell again, murmuring it under my breath again and again in an attempt to memorise it. Gihi-wasu-namu-fara-sairopalen. Gihi-wasu-namu-fara-sairopalen.

Gihi-wasu-namu-fara-sairopalen.

I shut my eyes, trying to block out the rest of the room, before opening them again to put my stone under my hands. The alabaster was cold to the touch. I let myself focus on it and it only.

Deep breath, deep breath. And then I started: "Gihi-wasu-namu-fara-sairopalen..."

Two times. Three times. Four times. Nothing. I swore under my breath and opened my eyes, shaking my head as I did so. Damnit. All around the room chanting began as everyone started with their enchanting. I sucked in a breath and tried again. "Gihi-wasu-namu-fara-sairopalen, gihi-wasu-namu-sai—"

I groaned. I'd messed up the spell. Again.

But that was part of the difficulty of talisman making. It wasn't the creation of the talisman, the carving that was the problem, it was the focusing when enchanting it. It tested the very basic skills of a spellcaster, of a magician.

The only way through it was trial and error, practise until you could snap into that mode of utmost concentration within seconds.

Like what Theodore Yu was doing, and Sebastian Hong was not.

Both Seb and I found ourselves staring at a very concentrated Theo, muttering his incantation without a single stutter, again and again, again and again. We exchanged a glance.

Seb silently shook his head and mouthed, "Built different."

I nodded in agreement before turning back to my own talisman, staring at the character on the alabaster that suddenly felt mocking. Right. If he could do this, so could I. I've always been decent with my spells, though I hadn't really done any verbal incantations since I was probably eight years old. Shaking my shoulders, I lowered my head, covered the stone with my hands, and shut my eyes again.

"Gihi-wasu-namu-fara-sairopalen," I repeated again and again, again and again, forcing my hold on the rest of the world to fade away, for everything around me to become unimportant. I focused on the jade talisman I'd pocketed, the one for focus. They were allowed in exams, anyway. Only memory ones were banned.

I went back to the basics, the way I was taught to forget, to let go, to release all the things weighing me down. Magic was just an art we practised, and like any other artistic pursuit it required utmost concentration to master.

This was how I learnt it.

Again, and again, and again, I chanted the incantation, forcing the world out, until I finally started feeling the slightest bit of heat under my hands. I didn't dare let myself be distracted, continuing on with my incantation with a bit more confidence, a bit more force. It felt like it went on forever, though it was probably just ten times or so, until my hands flew off the talisman. "Fuck," I hissed. "That is hot."

Seb's eyes darted to my talisman, and then to me. "Yeah, no kidding."

Theo coughed slightly. I glanced at him, confused, and he met my gaze for the slightest second with his brows knitted together before moving his sight to Seb's talisman. "Bro, you going to do this or what?"

"I'm trying."

"No you're not."

I ignored their bickering and tapped the talisman. It was still hot, but that meant success, so I was happy. I slumped back into my chair, grinning. Well, it took longer than I wanted, but I did it in the end and that was all that really mattered.

All around the classroom, people were still struggling. Only three or four people seemed to be done with their work. Mr Dawson was looking around, going to students who looked like they were particularly struggling.

No help for Seb, though, who was alternating between his own spell and swearing. Maybe Mr Dawson wanted me and Theo to help him. Well, neither of us were doing so. He could struggle with it by himself. It wasn't as if we could truly help in any productive way anyways, unless we enchanted it for him. It was up to him, at the end of it.

"How do you do this?" Seb scowled, sending a scathing look at Theo. "Everyone's muttering around you and there's so much noise and—"

"Let it go," I advised, cutting in. "Shut your eyes and try to block everything out. Let the world go. Let it fall away."

"Easier said than done."

"It's the only way," Theo said sagely. "So, you should probably just keep trying until you do it. Look, both of us have done it, no reason you can't."

"Yeah, because both of you are good at this."

"Why even take this class, if you're shit at it, then?" I asked with a frown.

Theo snorted. "What an excellent question for Mr Hong here."

"I didn't want to take any other classes," Seb argued, "and I'm actually good with the artefacts part of this class."

"The artefacts part is pure memory," I pointed out. "That's not very challenging, is it? And the talismans part takes up fifty percent of our final grade. Why don't you stop talking and keep trying?"

"Fine," he hissed. "I will, then. Some friends you two are."

I hadn't realised we were friends, but I didn't say that.

Both Theo and I were quiet as Sebastian began his chanting. I rolled the talisman around my fingers. It was still warm, but not burning any longer. The stone was smooth except for where my carvings were.

Once, I'd asked my grandmother what a protection talisman was for. We were all given one at an early age, and I wore a similar one still on my wrist, one of the many talisman charms attached to my bracelet. I knew that before, it was to protect against monsters that were attracted to magicians like us, but in the past century or so, with most magicians having moved to urbanised areas with dense human populations, monster attacks had become so rare.

My grandmother had answered that there were many things one needed protection from in their life, not just the monsters but the things that plagued all humans as well. Pain from the loss of friendship and love, the misfortunes of life. Protection talismans could not stop us from getting hurt, but it could lessen the pain, make it easier to make it through.

It was why they were the most commonly made ones, and why it was the first we ever made in class. Smaller talismans would be attached to jewellery and other accessories and worn around the body. Larger talismans, ones like these, would be placed around our homes to ward off danger.

"Hey, yo," Seb suddenly called out. "Is this done?"

Theo frowned, and I turned as well. He reached over and took the talisman in his hand before sending Seb an incredulous look. "No? Obviously not? This isn't even hot. It's just warm from your hands, Seb."

I coughed to hide the choke of laughter making its way up my throat. My god he was awful at this.

Seb turned to me, gritting his teeth. "Do not laugh, Honoria Song. Wait, what's your Chinese name?"

"Manyuk. Man, as in the character for word and whatnot. Yuk for jade. It's a simple name."

"Suits you," Theo said. "You seem like the scholarly, quiet kind."

I snorted. "Until you meet me, that is. Also, I thought you said he was as good at this class as you."

Seb decided to explain for his friend. "We only learned artefacts last year."

"Ah," I murmured. "That explains it."

"Oh, well," Seb yanked his talisman back, "let me try this again."

Theo let out a long and exasperated sigh. "I'm this close to enchanting this for you."

"No, no, I have to be the one to do it." Seb flashed a bright smile. Well, that was a brilliant change of mind. I shook his head and turned back to my talisman, continuing to toy with it in my hand.

Yes, the people at this school were rather unique indeed.