Chapter 9 - Going for the entrance exam.
In the early hours of a particular day in which the entrance exam was fixed at a venue in the Floating Lotus academy, Maxmillan, with the help of his sisters and mom, had finished packing all that he needed for his tiring journey to the faraway city.
"Maxie, remember. If anything goes wrong over there, immediately return home." Lenna said with a gloomy expression in her face, which anyone could tell that she was really worried.
"I understand mom." Maxmillan said with the nod of his head.
Then he went forward to hug his mom who embraced him back with a tear bead rolling down her left cheek from her glistening left eye.
She wished she could dissuade Maxmillan, her only son from going to the city. But since he had fully made up his mind, there was no point in doing so. Besides, she wanted him to be happy and didn't want to get in his way, or he might get furious at her as time goes on for causing him to be absent at the exam venue and therefore ruining his possible chances of being admitted into the widely-known institute.
After packing all that he needed into a large sling bag, he embraced his two other sisters and headed for the door to start his journey to the city.
Although his family members would gladly accompany him to the city, but to prevent them from experiencing any ruinous event that might occur if he failed in the end, he decided to take the long trip alone.
He didn't want the society to cast wicked or malicious gazes upon his family who really loved and cared for him. Or if that happened where communities avoided them for being the one to raise someone that couldn't enter into harmony with Astra Mystralis, therefore subjecting his great and loving family to the harshness that only he was supposed to face and endure till he lives out his life, he would feel really bad. And that was absolutely the last thing that he would ever want this greatly responsible and absolutely kind family to go through. He didn't want to come from another world and submerge this beautiful and charitable family into a never-ceasing stygian currents of misery and troubles.
When he got to the gate and turned back to look at his home once more, the home that he grew in with a family that really loved him and would do everything within their power to provide for him, he saw that his mom, Lenna and his two sisters, Nailah and Lylla, were already standing outside the house to accompany him with their loving gazes that however emanated fear and worry.
Smiling and filled with warmness for this beautiful gesture of theirs, he waved at them which they also returned with smiles in their faces.
'I wish I couldn't go. But I just have to try, for my sake and theirs. Anyway, any result that would manifest after taking the academy's entrance exam, will be accepted as my fate in this world. I will never shy away from the consequences of my actions, I will embrace it with my whole being.' Maxmillan said, further strengthening his resolve that had begun to weaken and waver.
Then he opened the gate to leave. And once he did so where he appeared in the street, he didn't turn around to look back at his family who looked at him from the place they stood on with worry concealed in their accompanying gazes and smiles. He simply pressed forward with an unbreakable resolve that anything that would happen, should happen. He wasn't going to avoid it. Instead, he would press ever forward and face it head on.
Therefore, if it worked out well for him, good!
But if not and raging cyclones of countless troubles manifested because of it, then he would face them fearlessly and with an invincible-willed mind!
***
Forty-five minutes later...
As Maxmillan walked to the garage where he would enter a beast-drawn commercial carriage that would take him to the city, he could see kids of many other people leaving their homes with their parents and practicing happily along the way.
Some of them created spherical balls of fire and gleaming, solid structures of ice. Some caused brooms to start sweeping the earth by themselves through enchantment words that sounded out of their lips in the form of whispers. Just about many spectacularly marvelous things were going on that caused Maxmillan to shake his head in sadness at his own unfortunate condition.
But still, after seeing countless kids appear at the garage to enter carriages that will convey them to the Floating Lotus Academy before the exams would begin, and untiringly performed astonishingly brilliant feats of magic along the way with their overly excited and glad parents clapping for them and exulting them, Maxmillan's conviction and resolve didn't waver for a second. Instead, they self-reinforced with every dark cloud of fear and worry that surfaced in his heart to enshroud every inch of it, instantly nullified and dispelled.
The carriage he was in, after the passenger seats were filled in, began its journey to the city. And as it came across every bump that shook the carriage that was beginning to move at a high speed on the wide tarred road to the city, Maxmillan couldn't help but feel like they were cannonball attacks directed at his solid and reinforced conviction to shatter them.
However, he withstood the internal impacts of the road bumps on his resolve, since he was fully ready to see his actions till the end, and was resolutely prepared to embrace anything that will surface as a result of the course of action that he took.
...
A couple of hours later, the carriage arrived at the city from the town. But it wasn't the only one arriving, many others were arriving, about hundreds of them and were filled with people fully prepared, anxious and excited to take the exams that would be conducted by the exam committees of the Floating Lotus Academy, a grand magical institution that they had always dreamt of going to for their admissive exam and become spellcrafter-in-training students.
They knew that their lives were about to change, since they had arrived at the institute were a lot of revered Astra Spellcraft Commanders graduated from and became powerful Astra Spellcraft Lords that held really paramount posts in numerous prestigious organizations and eminent establishment in cities that were as big and prosperous as the Shining Lake City that the Floating Lotus Academy was located.
Maxmillan got down from the carriage with great shock immediately appearing in his face, as he could see numerous greatly towering structures that couldn't be found anywhere from the planet that he came from, found at every direction that his eyes could possibly see to.
The structures he saw, seemed like giant towering swords that pierced through the clouds of the sky. And they were so massive that a large row of tall and enormous mountains wouldn't be able to occupy half of the land space that these grandiose and imposing structures individually occupied. It was simply a breathtaking and mind-blowing sight all around.
Then what blew his mind more that it could almost leave his body, were certain groups of flamboyantly-dressed, seemingly eminent and stellar people who were accompanied by their awe-striking emissaries, flying from one faraway towering building to another at great speeds, with one of them causing snowfall and a deluge of bright sparks of fire to fall from the sky as he flew across it without doing anything.