Sen tried to work up some anger, but all that he could come up with was an overwhelming sense of not caring. He shook his head.

“I’ve been working on being a fraction more diplomatic,” said Sen, “so please just say what you need to say and be done with it. I still have more work to do.”

“So, you don’t mean to heed my words even after I speak them.”

“Of course not. That’s what being diplomatic is. I pretend to listen so you can’t pretend offense. Then, I do what I was going to do anyway.”

“That isn’t what being diplomatic means,” said the stranger in a very unamused tone.

“Isn’t it? Well, I guess I could have thrown in something about lying a lot, but I haven’t gotten to that yet. I’m still working on pretending to care. So, I’ll listen to your story.”

“You aren’t taking this seriously.”

“I always take it seriously when assassins come calling,” said Sen.

“I’m not an assassin.”

“Yeah, they never are. It’s totally normal and nonthreatening to sneak up on someone in a wildly hostile environment.”

The stranger gave Sen a narrow-eyed look. “You were hiding your presence.”

“Sure, from spirit beasts and that enormous mass of evil roaming around out there,” said Sen, waving in the general direction of the temple. “You were hiding from me. There is a difference.”

“You’re trying to distract me.”

“No, I’m trying to make this conversation so aggravating that you give up and leave. Believe it or not, this is actually an improvement over what I used to do.”

The androgynous stranger seemed to weigh those words. “What did you used to do?”

“Instant hostility. Threats of violence. Actual violence. You know, the usual.”

“You don’t consider that lightning-infused sword hostile or a threat?”

“I haven’t stabbed you with it, have I? I even said I’d pretend to listen.”

“I don’t want you to pretend to listen. I want you to actually listen.”

“No. That isn’t what you want. That’s never what anyone like you wants. At the end of all of this, you want me to do what you want. The problem is that I don’t know you, which means I have no reason to trust you.”

“You don’t know him either. So, why does he get to skate on the whole trust thing?”

“First, I don’t owe you that explanation. Second, what in the thousand hells is a skate?”

“Oh, come on. It’s when you slack off from…” the stranger trailed off as an expression of understanding dawned on Sen’s face.

“Oh. I get it. You’re a fox as well. Fantastic. Like I didn’t have enough problems with just one of you running around out here. I take back the part about pretending to listen.”

“Wait. What? Why?”

“You’re a victim of your kind’s reputation. All that lying, deceit, and betrayal doesn’t really paint you as someone I should listen to.”

“But you’ll listen to him?”

“He needs me. Plus, he has very good reasons not to betray me.”

The stranger rolled their eyes. “This isn’t getting us anywhere.”

“You’re completely right. It’s not. You should give up and leave.”

“You don’t honestly expect that, do you?”

“No. I expect that this is where we get to the whole assassin part.”

“I’m not an assassin.”

“You came all this way to maybe convince me but probably to kill me, right? That makes you an assassin.”

“I can’t let him succeed,” said the stranger.

Sen loosened his shoulders a little, which made the stranger tense up.

“Yeah, and I suppose it doesn’t matter who you need to go through to make that happen.”

Sen had never gotten any formal training in fighting illusions. It hadn’t been something his teachers had known much about, having encountered it infrequently themselves. Still, he had been giving it some thought once he started traveling with a fox. Despite his words to the stranger, Sen had been considering contingencies for the possibility that Laughing River did turn on him. He knew that foxes preferred illusion and subterfuge. So, he’d spent most of his time trying to figure out how he would fight against illusions. He’d made the assumption that he wouldn’t be able to trust any of his senses, even his spiritual sense, because any illusions that didn’t account for those senses would be useless against cultivators.

That didn’t leave him a lot of options other than blindly throwing techniques around. He didn’t want to do that for fear of attracting the attention of the horde. In fact, he didn’t want to do anything flashy if he could avoid it. He just had to hope that the fox felt like they were in the same situation. Of course, limited options didn’t mean no options. He just needed to see what the fox would do. They drew a jian, although the design was a little strange. It looked a little heavier and shorter than the ones Sen was used to using. The fox took a step forward and there were three of them. Another step and there were six. The foxes scattered in several directions. They repeatedly crossed each other’s paths before forming a loose ring. They all moved their swords threateningly and threw out comments. Sen frowned. Well, it is an effective way to disguise which one is real, he thought.Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Sen started with what he expected would be the simplest way to expose the true fox. He blanketed the immediate area with his killing intent. Five of them froze in place while one off to Sen’s left cried out and stumbled back. Sen darted toward that one, bringing his jian around in a short, efficient slash. He had to give the fox credit. They got their jian up in time to deflect the blow. At least, that’s what Sen thought would happen. Instead, his sword passed through the illusory fox. Sen let his momentum spin him around. He felt a hot pain across his shoulder but didn’t let it distract him. As his spin brought him completely around, he thrust at where he knew the fox had to be. The fox looked shocked that Sen was counterattacking so fast, but it might have been residual pain from Sen’s killing intent. There was blood running from the corners of the fox’s eyes.

The fox lurched to one side, avoiding a lethal strike in favor of a shallower cut on an arm. Both were off balance and took a few stumbling steps away from each other. The fox eyed Sen warily as it took on a more stable stance.

“That was clever,” said Sen. “You used my expectations against me.”

“That’s me,” said the fox. “Clever. Doesn’t seem to hold up well against that kind of speed. Body cultivator?”

Sen shrugged. “Oh, you know us cultivators. We’re just full of tricks.”

Sen launched an earth qi attack that had served him very well on more than one occasion. Slender spears of rock lanced upward where the fox was supposed to be standing. They passed straight through the illusion. Damn it, thought Sen. This is going to be more work than I thought. The illusion grinned at him.

“You didn’t think it’d be that easy, did you?”

“A boy can dream,” said Sen.

As that illusion vanished, Sen scanned the area around him. The other illusions were gone. All he saw was undisturbed forest around him. Playing a hunch, Sen cycled for water and sent a spray out in every direction, then leapt straight up to catch a limb overhead. For a split second, he saw a figure outlined in water. Switching to wind qi, he sent a small wind blade at that spot. There was a muted grunt of pain and a small splash of red, but even that splash of red disappeared before long. That gave Sen pause. It was one thing to hide yourself, but something else entirely to mask environmental features. Sen realized that the way he was managing the fight wasn’t going to work. Everything was too static. He needed to keep the conditions shifting. Force the fox to continually adapt to new environments. Force flaws in the illusion. Most importantly, he needed to create a situation where he could put his hands on the fox.

Sen pulled himself up onto the limb and then started leaping from tree to tree, using his qinggong technique to effectively bounce from trunks and limbs. Moving targets were harder to hit if you didn’t want to throw around big techniques. It was also an opportunity to put some distance between them and the horde. Mostly, though, he needed to find a better place to fight someone that used illusions. He needed somewhere with debris. To make matters worse, Sen couldn’t take his time scouting for the right spot. True or not, he had to assume that the fox was at least as fast as he was moving through the forest. Assuming otherwise would be a great way to get himself killed. He followed a zigzagging path away from the ruins, his eyes and senses desperately searching for the right environment.

He almost missed it but launched himself in a clumsy dive at the last second. He crashed into the ground in a stand of evergreens. There were dead needles everywhere. He took one second to push himself to a standing position and then sent wind racing around the stand of trees. The wind picked up the dead needles and sent them spiraling up and around the trees and Sen. He was hoping the chaos would prove too complex for the fox to mimic immediately. It also helped that his qi was suffusing the area. It turned out that his lead was a little larger than he’d thought. It was almost ten full seconds before he saw the disruption in the needles. They slapped up against something that was about the right size. Sen was moving immediately. It seemed that the fox was so distracted by the constant pelting and trying to enforce a fresh illusion, that they didn’t realize that Sen was closing on them at breakneck speeds until the very last second.

Sen saw the fox’s eyes go wide, and they tried to intercept him with their jian. It was too little, too late. Sen caught the fox’s wrist and used his accumulated speed to carry the fox against a nearby tree. He slammed the fox’s wrist against the tree over their heads and noted the jian fall away to the side in his peripheral vision. While the fox seemed stunned by the impact with the tree, they went for a dagger with their other hand. Sen caught that wrist and squeezed until the fox cried out and dropped the weapon. The other wrist joined the first over their heads. The fox’s eyes danced with something. Fear. Excitement. Both. Sen wasn’t sure. Their faces were mere inches apart.

“Enough,” said Sen.

“Well now,” said the fox. “Isn’t this sexy?”

Without any warning, the fox leaned in and kissed Sen hard on the mouth. It was so far outside of Sen’s expectations that he jerked back from the fox. He’d almost instinctively loosened his grip on the fox’s wrists. Before he had a chance to gather his wits, the fox had ripped one hand free and jabbed him with something. He felt his body instantly react and try to fend off whatever he’d been dosed with, but the battle between whatever alchemical recipe or poison the fox had used and his body robbed him of his equilibrium. He staggered back, reaching for his jian, and trying to think of what might be in his storage rings to counteract whatever the fox had used. He didn’t manage to pull his jian from its scabbard or summon anything from his storage ring before the fox hit him in the side of the head with something hard.

He felt himself falling, but it was disjointed, slow, and then the ground caught his body. He tried to push himself up, but his limbs only reacted with the occasional twitch or jerk. He tried to speak, but only slurred nonsense came out. There was a terrible moment of vertigo as he was flipped onto his back. His vision spun for a while before it finally came back into something akin to focus. He saw the vast limbs of the evergreens overhead and mere hints of the darkening sky through the canopy. Then, there was a weight on top of him. He managed to move his eyes enough to see the fox had straddled him and was leaning down to look at his face. That same unidentifiable something he’d seen before was dancing in the fox’s eyes. Sen tried to speak, but the fox put a finger on his lips.

“Shhhhh. There’s no point in trying to talk right now.”

The fox leaned forward a bit more, planted an elbow on Sen’s chest, and put their chin in their palm. They seemed to be studying him, although Sen felt himself slipping further away from true consciousness with every second.

“I really should kill you,” said the fox conversationally. “You’re ridiculously dangerous, even for a cultivator. I mean, you had me dead to rights there. Do you have any idea how rarely that happens to a fox? That trick with the pine needles was inspired. I’ll need to think long and hard about how to counter something like that in the future. I suppose I should be grateful that you showed me one of my weaknesses. Yeah, killing you would be the smart thing to do. Otherwise, you’ll probably wake up and make it your life’s work to track me down and end me. Still, you’re just too damned pretty to murder out here in this godsforsaken place. So, you take yourself a little nap while I go kill that awful old man.”

The last thing Sen remembered was a pair of lips pressing against his own and an amused whisper. “That’s how you do diplomacy. With a kiss and an ambush.”