The muscular warrior and his new friend are preparing for the worst in a fantasy version of Ancient China.

In the early versions of my prompt, this concept started out rather differently. For one thing, I was assuming the man in the foreground --- a muscular barbarian warrior, as I described him -- would be protecting the lovely Chinese girl from a gang of bandits. But the AI kept putting a sword in her hand, too, so I finally decided to have them be working as comrades-in-arms against a common threat. Then I started activating "prompt magic," and it made some further changes, some of which I chose to run with. (I had never mentioned any tigers, for instance. And even now, I'm not sure whether the tigers are metaphorical, or are supernatural friends of this couple, or what!) After some inpainting, I decided this version was "good enough," and published it.

P.S. My prompts, as I evolved this, consistently called for the style of Boris Vallejo, working in watercolor.