"By the southern shores of Lake Sabaya,

Where the Empire gave its first hurrah,

They raised a city in fall,

Its walls and gates so tall,

Called it where the angels prowl,

And where the mighty beasts fall,

So rose great Sabaya, capital of the Empire,

May it stand forevermore, and let it never tire." - "Ode to Sabaya", by master poet Boris Qislev, from the First Elmaiya Empire.

In the end, Cal stayed for more than just another week at Saelostov. She gave her students permission to relax and enjoy themselves for that week, and they naturally took well to it. More than once Cal noticed them watching some of the plays the city was famous for while she was going around herself.

It was a relaxing week, one of rest and recuperation, and enjoyment. Cal herself watched a few of those plays, and while she found that the stories they told weren't necessarily always to her tastes, the efforts made by the actors and actresses were worth an applause regardless.

What impressed her the most was still how the talented mist mages managed to utilize their illusions to reproduce scenes only typically found in tall tales. She had seen depictions of legendary creatures, stories from mythologies re-enacted, or even the how one actor used his illusionary skills to alter his appearance from a youth, to an adult, all the way to a decrepit old man, before the tale ended with his headless skeleton pondering over his own skull.

Of course, she knew that none of it was real, yet it still impressed her nonetheless. One play that covered the heroic story of the first emperor used many such illusions to display battles, and they did so in a vivid manner, even if she as a veteran felt something lacking from it.

The same could not be said of another play, where the climax was a duel where the heroine and the villain perished in each other's hands. Cal could have sworn that the fight she saw was for real, a fight which ended with the heroine decapitating the villain, even as the villain's sword pierced her heart.

Kino told Cal the secret when she asked later on. It turns out that the troupe - which rose to fame for their rendition of that particular story - had a couple of Unliving members. Those two were the ones who played the heroine and the villain, and quite naturally, they were all too eager to add some "realism" to the play.

The fight she watched, while neatly choreographed to look better for the audience, was about as real as it got. Blades really did strike into flesh on the stage, without any illusion used in its stead. That was what gave the play the visceral feel she felt was missing from many others.

Of course, with the performers being unliving, neither the stab through the heart nor the decapitation bothered them. A quick visit to the local healer and they were as good as new, the costs of which were far more than paid for from their earnings. Their troupe knew the reason for their success all too well, and treated the two - which happened to be a couple - as their star performers.

In the end, Cal and her group only left Saelostov when Kino reminded her of the tournament in Sabaya, which they might be too late to participate in if they delayed any longer. The group finally departed at the last month of summer, since the tournament was scheduled for early autumn.

Normally, it would take over a month to travel from Saelostov to Sabaya by carriage. The Poshka jungle, one of the largest rainforests in the continent, was right between them, and all roads were laid down around at that area, which made for long, time consuming detours.

Cal ignored the roads. To the collective groans of her students - the three who had to carry others, at least - she led them in a straight route towards Sabaya, their route cutting straight through the densest part of the jungle itself.

It took them only two and a half weeks to cross the jungle, and emerge in the vicinity of Sabaya. Other than Cal and Kino, the group in general looked the worse for wear, and her three blood mage students in particular looked almost dead on their feet.

The trek through the dense jungle was hellish for the students. They weren't like Cal, who had decades of experience conducting guerilla warfare and living on the run. Nor were they Kino, who simply blotted out whatever came close enough to bother her in a sphere of void.

They barely got any sleep over the past two weeks. Day and night, they were kept alert by the constant attacks from predatory animals, poisonous snakes and insects, and other sort of wildlife that didn't like the group's presence in their territory.

It was not hard for them to fight off the wild animals. Even the occasional monster proved to be little match for the three blood mages amongst them, but the constant need for alertness took its toll on them nonetheless, and now all they wanted was to drop into a bed and sleep until the next week.

Since they were merely hours away from the city now, the group trudged onwards, intending to spend the night there. The eyes of Ognar, Giselle, and Willa lit up as the tall walls of the city came closer in their view, and the line at the gates came into sight.

The gates were opened wide, and despite the amount of travelers, multiple lanes of both carriages and travelers on foot were processed at once efficiently by the guards on duty. It was not fifteen minutes between Cal's group taking their place at the end of one line and their getting processed.

Despite the shabby appearance of most of the group, the guards shrugged and allowed them in after some cursory checks. The tournament that took place twice a decade in Sabaya had always attracted many people from everywhere, so they were used to crowds like these.

Since they took a shortcut through the forest, they arrived early, and the tournament was still another two and a half weeks away. Because of that, they faced no difficulty finding themselves rooms at a good inn, and booked those rooms for at least the following month.

The moment they walked into their rooms, everyone in the group other than Cal and Kino just dropped onto their beds, and mere seconds later, snoring could be heard from within their rooms.