Algraves hopped back a few paces on those short, crow-like retreat steps he was still getting used to. As he moved, the last shreds of whatever veil had been hiding his opponent finally tore away and dispersed, like mist burned off by the morning sun.

  A woman stood in front of him.

  She had the kind of average wuxia beauty you saw in old movies: straight black hair tied back in a loose tail, sharp cheekbones, dark eyes that watched everything. Dirt smeared her face and neck, and her traveling clothes were stained and frayed at the edges, but there was an air of refinement clinging to her all the same. The way she held herself, the way the air seemed to bend around her, marked her as a cultivator.

  And from the way the bandits were flowing around the camp and glancing toward her, definitely their leader.

  He took in the scene behind her in a heartbeat. The bandits were everywhere, maybe twenty of them in total, mixing with the caravan guard lines in messy knots of steel and shouting. This attack had been planned with confidence. A full crew of brigands and a cultivator leader against simple merchants and mortals.

  Easy money.

  At least, that had probably been the plan.

  She stared at him for a heartbeat, eyes narrowing.

  “Who are you?” she hissed.

  “I’m Batman,” he said automatically.

  She blinked at him, expression going flat in a way that told him she had absolutely no reference for what he had just said.

  He grimaced. “Right. Stupid crossovers. Would’ve been funny otherwise.”

  Her lip curled.

  Then she moved.

  Her attack came in a blur, fast and precise, all sharp angles and fluid lines. Her footwork was smooth, like she was gliding over the ground, and her hands and feet snapped out with vicious efficiency. This was not some drunk bar-brawler style. This was a polished, flowing martial path honed over years.

  He caught the first strike on his forearm, twisting aside, and immediately felt the pressure behind it. She hit hard.

  Algraves slid back, feet doing that not-quite-natural shuffle-hop he was still learning. His body wanted to move like a crow on the ground, jerky and stuttering, then darting and smooth. His training told him one thing, instinct nudged another, and he let instinct have more say this time.

  He snapped a low kick toward her knee. She turned with it, hand coming down at his throat.

  That was when the sound hit him.

  Behind him, just off to his right, he heard running footsteps. Heavy. Close. The kind of sound that screamed someone was about to tackle him from behind.

  His body tried to pivot to meet the threat.

  Nothing was there.

  Her palm skimmed past his jaw instead of crushing his windpipe, but only because he leaned farther than was safe and let his feet go out from under him. He half-fell, half-rolled in that ugly, drunken motion he had been practicing, dirt scraping his shoulder as her follow-up kick missed his ribs by an inch.

  “What the hell,” he muttered, pushing himself back to his feet.

  Ahead of him, metal rang on metal. To his left, something shrieked like a blade cutting the air. To his right, another set of charging footsteps.

  None of it matched what he could see.

  He frowned. “Sound tricks,” he realized. “Great.”

  Her cultivation was based around sound, then. Not just noise, but control of it. She could throw phantom footsteps and phantom weapon swings into his ears, stir up false threats and hide real ones. The world around him turned into a confusing mess of half-real cues, all designed to make him misstep.

  It might have worked completely if he had been who he was before.

  But now there was something else under his skin. His connection to the world, that thin, strange sense that let him feel when something was off in the air around him, tugged at him. Where his ears lied, that other sense nudged him the right way. He leaned into it.

  And into the Corvid.

  He lowered his stance, shoulders loose, and let his feet do those ugly crow hops again. Short darting steps, then sudden stillness. Sudden dips, then lunges.

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  Her fist flashed toward his face.

  He slid under it at the last second, not because he heard it, but because the air in front of him felt wrong. His shoulder brushed past her ribs. He twisted, elbow driving toward her side, but she jammed a knee up and intercepted, the impact reverberating up his arm.

  They broke apart. She frowned now, just a little.

  Around them, chaos.

  The sounds of battle swelled and fractured: shouts, grunts, screams. Somewhere to his right, a man hollered in pain. To his left, somebody laughed the wild, hysterical laugh of a bandit who thought he had the upper hand. Steel clanged. Fire popped. The night seethed.

  And over all of that, layered like an off-key song, were her illusions. Footsteps that did not match bodies. Weapon swishes with no blades attached. The soft sound of someone breathing behind him when he knew no one was there.

  If not for the low, constant awareness of the world’s energy brushing against his skin, he would have been hopelessly lost.

  She attacked again, taking advantage of the distraction. Her style flowed like water: feints, flicks, and sharp jabs, combined with low sweeping kicks that tried to take his legs out from under him. It was beautiful in a way. Efficient. Controlled.

  He answered with awkwardness.

  At least, that was what it looked like on the outside.

  He stepped where her feet wanted him to be, then tripped himself into a sideways roll, letting her punch whistle over his head. He stumbled forward in what looked like a botched lunge, only to twist and rake a knife across where her arm had been a breath before. She kept missing his vitals by hair-thin margins, and he kept missing hers by a little more.

  Corvid style, he thought grimly. Stub your toe on purpose and hope the idiot trying to stomp you trips over it.

  They ranged across the edge of the camp, weaving between wagons. A bandit lunged toward him once, sword raised, only for her to snarl, “Stay back,” and slam a kick into the man’s stomach without even looking. He went flying.

  So, she was arrogant too. Good to know.

  They darted under a wagon, Algraves ducking low and sliding in the dirt, her following with feline ease. A box toppled from the wagon bed between them, and she used it as a springboard, foot slamming down where his head had been just a heartbeat earlier. He rolled, shoulders scraping ground, pulled himself up the other side, and lashed out with a backhand slash.

  Claw kissed cloth. A line of red opened on her forearm. He was glad he had thought to make these knifes.

  She hissed, more in outrage than pain.

  Then the fight spilled back into the open, near the cook fires.

  They both stopped there, not by agreement, but because their bodies demanded it. Their breath steamed in the cool night air. The camp firelight painted her in gold and shadow, casting her eyes into black pits. His shoulders rose and fell. His ribs ached. His forearms burned from blocked strikes.

  He took stock with the fast, ruthless assessment drilled into him over decades.

  He was hurt. Bruised for sure, maybe a cracked rib. There was a cut along his thigh that stung with every step and blood trickling down his side from where one of her palm strikes had half-landed. His qi was flagging, stretched thin. His new Realm 1 foundation gave him more stamina than a normal man, but this woman was pressing him hard.

  She, on the other hand, had a bleeding arm and a few shallow cuts. Superficial. Nothing he could see that would slow her down much.

  She has to be five or six ranks above me, he thought. Maybe even a whole realm.

  “I do not know who you are,” she said, chest rising and falling. Her voice was calmer now, edged with curiosity and contempt. “But this does not concern you. Walk away and I will let you live.”

  Behind them, the battle roared on.

  Hu Bo bellowed somewhere near the rear line. Algraves risked a glance.

  The guard captain was in the thick of it, wielding a massive wolf-tooth club, the heavy iron-studded head whistling through the air with every swing. Three bandits circled him at once, blades flashing, but he fought like a man who had lived his whole life on the road. He stepped just enough to let one attack pass, turned his shoulders to bleed the force off another, and then let the club do the talking. One bandit’s arm crumpled at an unnatural angle. Another took the club to the chest and folded around it, hitting the ground with a wet cough.

  Elsewhere, guards fought in pairs, backs nearly touching, moving in practiced patterns. One would parry, the other would stab. They called warnings, shifted positions, and covered each other’s blind spots. Wounds were appearing, yes, but no guard had fallen yet.

  The bandits were not so lucky.

  They were a ragged lot, more used to bullying merchants and farmers than facing disciplined fighters. They swung too wide, overextended, underestimated the resolve of men and women who had been doing this for a decade. More than one bandit ended up with a knife in the ribs because he assumed his opponent would break and run.

  Closer to the wagons, Ren Cai and Yon Cai stood shoulder to shoulder, each gripping a short sword that looked like it had seen more maintenance than use. Their footwork was clumsy compared to the guards, but desperation made up for a lot. Together, they held off two bandits who were trying to force their way toward the wagons where the rest of the family hid. The older man took a shallow cut along the arm, grunted, and answered with a stab that drove his blade into a bandit’s thigh. Yon Cai finished that one while his father fended off the other.

  They were not winning gracefully, but they were holding.

  Algraves brought his focus back to the cultivator woman. He did not answer her offer.

  He knew he could not just walk away. Even if he did, she would not let the caravan live. That was not how people like this worked. He had seen her type too many times in too many worlds.

  He rolled his shoulders, feeling the fatigue digging into his limbs. I am not going to win this straight up, he admitted to himself. Not without something stupid. Or something worse.

  She flicked her fingers. The space between them filled with a low, thrumming hum that set his teeth on edge. His hearing wobbled. For a second, all the noise of battle dropped away, replaced with a muffled silence that made his stomach lurch.

  Then, from behind him, he heard Hu Bo scream in pain.

  He flinched, half-turning.

  Her leg whipped up and caught him in the ribs. He felt something give. He flew sideways, skidding across the dirt and rolling dangerously close to one of the cook fires. Heat seared his arm as he came to a stop.

  The scream cut off as if it had never been there.

  Sound illusion. Again.

  He groaned, pushed himself up onto hands and knees, vision swimming.

  "Okay. I am officially outmatched."