Excerpt: Magic Unlocked

The door shut behind them and he was left alone with his father again. "That was certainly interesting," he said, taking a seat at the dining table and covering his face with his hands. It was all just a bit overwhelming. His father's footsteps approached. The chair scraped as Rikh pulled it out and sat beside him.

"I apologize for not warning you of the ceremony," Rikh said softly, the words sounding foreign and awkward on his lips. "The others said I should have given you some warning.:"

_Would have been nice,_ Kel wanted to say out loud, but he kept his mouth shut. He didn't have very much energy. Those crazy—he glanced at the clock—those crazy two hours had taken a lot out of him. Shock did that to people, Kel found.

"I did consider telling you," Rikh went on, "but I wasn't confident you would take it seriously. You might not have come." Kel opened his mouth to deny it, but then he closed it. He wasn't sure he _would_ have come.

"Was it so important to have me join this thing?" he asked in a tired voice. "What can I do, anyway, _just me_?"

Rikh's face, which had been serious before, grew even more so. "You're the best elf your age when it comes to weapons trainig and combat," Rikh informed him, in a tone that implied it should have been obvious. _Combat_, he'd said, as if Kel had actually experienced such a thing before.

"I've never been _in_ combat," Kel reminded his father, just in case that wasn't clear.

"You've been going to combat school since childhood," Rikh pointed out. He should have known. He'd _known_ regular kids didn't play with swords and arrows at Sunday school.

"But that's not _real_ combat," he tried to argue.

"Starting next week it will be."

Well. That was just great. Sunday school all over again.