1 - Yī

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From its spot in the middle of Xīng Xuán Wō's old laboratory, the rectangle of glass with its elaborate golden frame gave off a silvery glow that made Mèng Huàn's wings shiver. Shaking his head, he lit his horn, cast a heat spell, and turned back to his fellow alicorn. "A magical mirror, Bómù?"

"A portal, Mèng Huàn!" Bómù Guāng Shǎn was hopping in place, his dark purple mane bouncing along the lighter purple of his neck. "To another world! Full of ponies just like us! And I mean just like us! Their language, their culture, their magic and science, they're all remarkably similar to our own!" Bómù waved a front hoof and rolled his eyes. "Of course, they don't seem to understand the proper protocol for naming things, but, well, since they live in an alternate universe, I suppose we should allow them a few differences."

That got Mèng Huàn smiling. Bómù had been trying very hard since his coronation to leave behind the academic stodginess he'd learned as Tiān Shàng's star pupil—

And Mèng Huàn reined in that line of thinking. He had nothing but respect for his elder brother, the way Tiān Shàng had held Cōng Mǎ Guó together during the thousand years of Mèng Huàn's exile when he had called himself Mèng Yǎn Yuè and madness had flowed through his veins like blood. But the feelings Mèng Huàn held for Bómù and his five friends—barely more than colts, any of them—who'd retrieved the talismans of Hé Xié and returned Mèng Huàn to himself, well, respect wasn't nearly a strong enough word for the emotions that tightened his throat and chest when he looked at Bómù.

Shaking his head again, Mèng Huàn bowed to his young friend. "I'm certain the ponies of this other world will appreciate your understanding." He straightened and gave the glowing glass another look. "Still, I'm guessing there's some reason I've heard nothing of this project till now, and a reason I'm here instead of my brother?"

Bómù went very still, and Mèng Huàn's stomach clenched. "Forgive me, Bómù," he said quickly. "I didn't mean to upset you."

"No, no." Bómù's smile returned, and Mèng Huàn let himself relax. "I thought I was being subtle, but I can see that's a lost cause when I'm dealing with the Prince of the Night." He drew in a breath and blew it out. "It's just, well, I've been communicating for some time with the pony whose experiments on their side connected to my experiments here, and she, you see—" Bómù gave a little snort. "There's no way to say this but to say it: she is Princess Luna, your counterpart in that universe."

"Princess?" Mèng Huàn's ears folded. "I...I'm a mare in that world?"

"As is Luna's sister, Princess Celestia."

Trying to imagine Tiān Shàng, his larger-than-life, warrior-poet brother, as a mare jittered Mèng Huàn's thoughts to a halt; he had to blink several times before he could find his voice. "Allow them a few differences, I think you said earlier?"

"Exactly." Bómù gave a chuckle. "That's why Luna and I decided to keep things low-key and quiet for the first actual physical contact between our two realms. Naturally, therefore, it was to you that I had Dào Gōu send a message before I put her to bed for the evening."

Mèng Huàn eyed the mirror with more interest. "The first to set hoof in an entirely different universe? You tempt me, Bómù."

"No, no," Bómù said more quickly this time. "As the Prince of Friendship, I would be making the journey. Luna and I would be entrusting you with my counterpart, Twilight Sparkle. This first visit, we decided, would last but two hours so we can confirm the initial positive results of our compatibility tests, and that means that—"

"What?" Everything inside Mèng Huàn began tightening again. "You would be going? But— How can you be sure it's safe? Perhaps this Luna is setting a trap for you! What do you really know about—?"

"It's all right, Mèng Huàn!" Bómù sprang forward, one front hoof reaching up to touch Mèng Huàn's shoulder. "In the time I've been speaking with Luna, I've come to trust her completely. After all, she's you in many ways, and there are few ponies in Cōng Mǎ Guó that I trust more than you."

The air suddenly too warm, Mèng Huàn flared his horn to turn down the heating spell. And now that he'd had a moment to think about it, he couldn't help chuckling. "You know, it has been some time since I've played diplomat, acting as the voice of reason while Tiān Shàng hovered overhead with his warhammer at the ready. I suppose I can spare a few hours from patrolling the night to entertain an ambassador from another world." He gave Bómù a smile and a nod. "Very well. I shall endeavor not to let you or this mare-me down."

"Thank you, Mèng Huàn!" Purple fire surrounded Bómù's horn; turning, he shot a ball of it at the mirror's surface. It passed through, and almost immediately a dark blue ball of similar fire popped out. "That's Luna's signal!" Bómù leaped the few steps to where the mirror stood. "This will change both our worlds for the better, Mèng Huàn! You'll see! And thank you again!" Laughing, he pushed forward, and the mirror flowed around him like a curtain of quicksilver, drawing him in.

Frozen, Mèng Huàn watched Bómù disappear, but instantly the surface began to bulge. A purple horn poked through followed by a dark purple mane with a magenta stripe—

And an alicorn stepped out.

An alicorn mare.

An alicorn mare with Bómù's bright eyes, Bómù's enthusiastic scent, and Bómù's infectious grin. "Hi!" she said, her voice lovely and lively. "You must be Prince Mèng Huàn! I'm Twilight Sparkle, and it's such an honor to meet you!"

The reality of the situation hit Mèng Huàn like a brick through rice paper—he still recalled the dismay he'd felt over a thousand years ago when Xīng Xuán Wō had produced her exhaustively conclusive proof that only stallions could become alicorns—and all he found himself able to do for a long moment was stand and stare.

"It's simply amazing!" Twilight rested her front hooves on the top of the balcony rail, the crescent moon shining above and the garden blooming below.

Behind her, she could hear Mèng Huàn shuffling his silver shoes. "Thank you," he said, his voice as rich and quiet as a summer midnight. "And I apologize again that I have no suitable reception prepared for you, Princess—I mean, Twilight, of course."

She shook her head. "You've nothing to be sorry about." Steeling herself, she glanced over her shoulder at him, tall and dark and looking like he'd stepped off the cover of one of those books she always saw around Rarity's house, his mane a flowing nebula of silvers and dark blues. "This is absolutely beautiful," she heard herself whisper, then she snapped her head back around to face the garden before he could see her blushing. "I know that Equestria has plants like these that blossom in the moonlight," she more babbled than said, "and they'd be just the thing for Luna's side of the palace!"

Silence falling now all around, she dared another glance back, hoping she hadn't insulted him. But the prince was simply standing there, his eyes half-lidded and focused on her, a sliver of a smile drifting across his snout. "Your Highness?" she asked.

"What?" He startled backwards, almost tangled his hooves in the cloudy folds of his tail, and barely stopped himself from pitching over sideways.

Twilight blinked at him. "Is everything all right?"

"Yes!" Some of the stars in his mane and tail began twinkling so brightly, Twilight was afraid they might go supernova. "But I mean, it's simply so...so—" He waved a hoof. "I can hardly believe this is happening! Another universe? Where we all have counterparts who are mares? How is that even possible?"

She couldn't stop a smile. "After your third or fourth alternate dimension, Your Highness, it gets a little easier." That stupid warmth came back to her face, and she went on before he could open his mouth: "Except you asked me to call you Mèng Huàn, and I'm going to remember to do that from now on." With a crisp nod to mark it on her mental checklist, she moved from the railing and settled onto one of the cushions that covered the balcony. "And I have to say that this world is a lot nicer than some I've run across."

His eyes went wide. "You've traveled to other—?" He stretched himself out on a cushion as well, and Twilight had to force her eyes not to follow every smoothly flowing flex of him. She'd often thought that Luna had something cat-like about her, but seeing a stallion move that same way was proving to be very distracting. Fortunately, his horn began wavering, and a small stove that Twilight hadn't noticed till now started to glow, a teapot floating out from the prince's room behind him. "If it wouldn't be an imposition, Twilight," Mèng Huàn went on, "might I ask that you share some tea with me and tell me of your adventures?"

"Imposition?" Twilight felt like the smile was about to leap off her face. "I'd love that!" She covered her mouth with a hoof and swallowed in the hope that she could clear the sudden squeakiness from her throat. "I mean, uhh, if you'll tell me some of your adventures, too, Mèng Huàn. That way, we can share tea and stories!"

"Ah." Shadows drifted across Mèng Huàn's face like clouds over the moon, a sadness there that Twilight knew all too well from the conversations she'd had with Luna since her return from exile. "I hope you'll forgive me, Twilight, but most of my stories came attached to events of which I'm not particularly proud."

It took some effort not to slam her face into the floor; she couldn't stop a wince, though. "I'm sorry! I forgot that the parallels between your experiences and Luna's would be—" Snapping off that line of thinking, she forced another smile. "How 'bout I just tell you about another mirror universe and a friend I made there named Sunset Shimmer?"

In the light of the moon and the stove, Mèng Huàn's eyes widened as Twilight gave him a shortened version of her experiences on the other side of that first mirror she'd traveled through, and then she moved on to everything that had happened in the mirror world where Celestia's counterpart had been a villain and Celestia herself had been in love with that world's version of King Sombra. This led her to explaining about Sombra and the Crystal Empire and the—

"Oh!" Mèng Huàn had been sitting with his ears perked the whole time, asking the occasional question and refilling Twilight's teacup when it came close to running dry, but now, he leaned forward on his cushion. "The empire to the north? Then you must mean the Jīng Tǐ Guó! My brother and I fought a great battle there more than a thousand years ago against the foul Queen Yǒu Yīn Yǐng, but the witch cast one final spell that tore the entire empire from the face of the earth! It returned just after my own return, and that was when Tiān Shàng and I sent our nephew, Prince Jié Zòu, and his wife, Bómù's sister—" He stopped with a blink. "Who, I suppose, in your world would be...our niece and...your brother?"

Before she knew what she was doing, Twilight had reached out to rest her hoof on his. "It takes a little getting used to."

He had gone still at her touch, his hoof solid and warm beneath hers; she drew back, hoping she hadn't made another faux pas, but his voice came to her just as gently as before: "Then it was you who defeated the Shadow Queen, although— Bómù has a young dragon, Dào Gōu, who assists him. She was instrumental in—"

"A female Spike?" Twilight could barely keep her wings from unfurling. "Oh, I've got to meet her! Not right now, of course: it's the middle of the night, and they should both be in bed. I mean, in separate beds! I mean—" The urge to dive face-first into the floor was so strong this time that she actually had to put a hoof to her forehead to hold herself up.

But Mèng Huàn was smiling. "It takes a little getting used to, I believe you said?" His smile faded. "Still, if the parallels run true, it would have been you alone who stood against Tǐ Léi Kè. She was a fell beast who sucked the marks from our flanks and would've destroyed all we hold dear had Bómù not—"

"Tirek!" This time, Twilight didn't stop herself from leaping up, her wings spreading, her magic barely catching the teacup before it toppled over. "Even your Tirek was female?"

"While yours, I'm guessing, was male." The look on Mèng Huàn's face was like none Twilight had ever had focused on her before: an admiring sort of fascination that made her both want to take a step back and a step forward. "You are quite the formidable young lady, Twilight Sparkle." Again, his expression crumpled into something more troubled, and he bent down to fiddle with the teapot. "Forgive me, please. I...I didn't mean to be rude."

A chill rustled Twilight's pinion feathers. Because Mèng Huàn's look now was one she did recognize, one she'd seen far too often on Luna's face back before—

Lowering herself onto the cushion again, she reached out both front hoofs and caught Mèng Huàn's. He flinched, but Twilight wrapped her pasterns around his, wouldn't let him pull away. "I hope you can forgive me, Mèng Huàn," she said. "And if this is none of my business, please tell me, but, well, we've had so many other parallels..." She swallowed against the lump rising in her throat. "I'm pretty sure that, a thousand years ago, just like my friend Luna, you let your inner darkness overwhelm you."

Mèng Huàn gave a gasp as quiet as a midnight breeze.

"It's okay," Twilight said quickly. "Luna's all right now, and I know you are, too. You've been a wonderful host, and I've loved every minute we've spent together here this evening. I'm only bringing it up because—" She took a breath. "Princess Luna had constructed a nightmare she called the Tantabus so she could punish herself for deeds the rest of Equestria had already forgiven her for." Not sure she really wanted to know the answer but knowing she had to ask, she kept her gaze fixed on his wide, wide eyes. "You don't have one of those, do you?"

"I— It— The Yè Biān Zǐ." The quiver in his voice made Twilight's chest tighten. "It got away from me, but Bómù once again—every pony in the town of Xiǎo Mǎ Chéng, in fact—they helped me, showed me how to—" Tears brimmed at the corners of his eyes, and Twilight had to blink her own away, her vision trying to blur "—how to accept that I was no longer the monster that had once threatened everything and everypony with—"

A bell burst clattering into the air above him, its tone sharp and shrill; Twilight nearly jumped out of her hide, and Mèng Huàn winced. "Ah." He poked the bell with his horn, and it vanished, his magic curling down to grasp a napkin and dab it at his face. "That would mean we have fifteen minutes to return to Bómù's mirror." He took a deep breath and let it out with a quiet laugh. "Despite the soggy ending, Twilight Sparkle, I thank you for your visit. I hope—" His voice cracked before resuming as gently resonant as before. "I hope you'll consider returning some time."

"Of course I will!" Beating down the impulse to wrap a hug around him, Twilight instead flapped her wings and rose into a standing position without letting go of his hooves. This pulled him up as well, those big, downy blue feathers deploying to hold him in place and a salty scent of surprise washing over her from his coat. "I make it a point to visit my friends as often as possible," she announced with a giggle, "and you, Prince Mèng Huàn, whether you like it or not, are now one of my friends!"

The smile he gave then was the broadest she'd seen from him yet, and she couldn't help but notice that he was making no effort to pull his hooves away. "And besides," she went on, "I still need to meet your brother and all Bómù's friends and his sister and her husband." Feeling a little dizzy from the sudden exertion, she let go of his hooves, settled onto all fours, and let her wings fold against her sides. "Still, I really wish Luna had told me about this project of hers before tonight. I'll need to review the specifications to see if this is the sort of mirror universe where I can meet Bómù without causing total protonic reversal." She cocked her head at Mèng Huàn. "Or maybe you know? Can I pick your brain on the subject?"

With a more solid laugh, Mèng Huàn turned for the door leading back into his quarters. "I, too, only learned of all this tonight, I'm afraid. Long ago, our court sorceress, Xīng Xuán Wō, was wont to experiment with mirrors, I recall vaguely, but it wasn't a sort of magic I was interested in."

"Odd." Twilight forced her attention away from his toned flanks and hurried to catch up, the two of them moving out into the dimly lit corridor beyond his room. "Everything else in our universes has been the same." She rolled her eyes. "I mean, you know, other than the whole reversed gender thing. So why not mirror magic? Why haven't you ever had any, and why was Luna working on it in my universe while Bómù was working on it in yours?"

Mèng Huàn shrugged and said, "Perhaps we will find other non-parallel aspects once we begin looking." But Twilight detected a sour ripple of uneasiness in his scent, something she was fairly certain was also wafting up from her. After all, the experience with the Good Sombra universe had shown her how important balance was in these cases...

She picked up her pace just as Mèng Huàn picked up his.

Quickly taking to the air, they swooped through the hallways. "Xuán Wō's laboratory is just around the next corner," Mèng Huàn called after a few moments.

Twilight's uneasiness kicked up another notch when they rounded that corner to see nothing but a darkened doorway. Mèng Huàn shot forward, landing just ahead of Twilight in the musty stone room, and she looked past him to see the mirror still in its place—

But the silvery glow it had emitted was gone. Only their reflections in the semi-darkness looked back at her.

"Are we early?" she asked, but before Mèng Huàn could answer, another clattering bell popped into place above him; he smacked it with his horn, and it vanished, not a single sound suddenly anywhere in this entire part of the palace.

"I—" Twilight started across the room as gingerly as a cat crossing a damp meadow. "What—?" She reached the mirror, raised a hoof, and moved it forward, holding her breath.

Her hoof met the image of itself coming and stopped, the surface not budging an inch.

"What—?" Ice shivering down her back, Twilight looked over her shoulder at Mèng Huàn, the alicorn stallion looking back with wide eyes. "What's going on?"

2 - Èr

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Twilight tried several spells that she said she'd devised when working with other mirror universes, but Bómù's mirror continued to do nothing but sit silently. When Mèng Huàn began to smell the molten-metal stink of her frustration, though, the tip of her horn glowing like a white-hot ember, he touched her shoulder and asked if the mirror would be safe to move.

Panting slightly, she nodded. "I can detect a fair amount of residual magic in this room, but none of it seems to be connected to the mirror."

"Very well." Mèng Huàn lit his own horn and sent out a blue summoning sphere. "I'll have the guards take it to my laboratory. I have a few grimoires and assorted magical books, and all the libraries here in Yuè Mǎ Jīng will be at your disposal, too, of course."

"Bómù's library." Bits of the lost look that had come over her when she'd first touched the mirror still flitted about the edges of Twilight's face, but just about the edges. "I'm guessing he has a castle out in a little town not far from here?"

"In Xiǎo Mǎ Chéng," Mèng Huàn said, not sure if he was still capable of feeling surprise that she knew so much about their lives. "Any notes he made will certainly be there." And because Bómù in a situation like this would want specific problems he could focus on— "Could the spell have malfunctioned? I'm not getting any aroma of material burnout, so it can't be that the mirror cracked. But magical feedback always makes my hide tingle, and I'm not—"

"Please, Prince Mèng Huàn." She rubbed the space between her eyes. "Let's not conjecture in advance of the facts. Also, I...I need to start making some check lists as quickly as possible."

"Of course." Reaching through the spaces between space to his workroom, Mèng Huàn caused a blank notebook, a quill, and an inkwell to materialize in front of her.

"Thank you," she said tersely, and she was still writing in the book when the guards arrived. Giving them their instructions, Mèng Huàn gently herded Twilight along after them, her head down and her pen jotting the whole time.

The clock above the fireplace in Mèng Huàn's workroom was striking midnight as they entered: an hour since the mirror should have opened, and it hadn't given so much as a crackle. Mèng Huàn thanked the guards, dismissed them, turned to Twilight and asked, "What can I do to help?"

A faint smile pulled her lips, and she looked up from the notebook for the first time, about half the pages filled with a very Bómù-like scrawl. "Don't take this the wrong way, Mèng Huàn, but I think I'd be more comfortable right now if you went about your business." She raised a hoof when he opened his mouth to complain. "If you're anything like Luna, you have duties you need to see to each night, and I've been keeping you from those duties." The way she looked at the bookcases around the room made Mèng Huàn nervous, but she nodded instead of frowning. "I'd say there's enough here for me to get started, so do what you have to do, and I'll do the same."

Wanting to argue with her, he instead found that he couldn't. "Can I at least have the kitchen send up a snack for you?" he asked after silently sputtering for several heartbeats.

"Anything but quesadillas," she muttered, making notes again in the book.

He blinked at her. "What?"

She waved a hoof. "Two flat disks of cooked corn meal or wheat paste served with melted cheese between them." She shuddered.

Mèng Huàn did some more blinking. "I've never even heard of such a thing!"

Twilight's pen skittered to a stop, and the huge smile she turned toward him made his chest fill with butterflies. "Mèng Huàn, I'm liking this universe more and more."

He left her scratching away at the book, popped downstairs to ask the night chefs to send a plate of assorted dainties to his workroom, then launched himself into the dreamscape in the hopes that some nightgaunts or other bogeys might be lurking about for him to vent his frustrations upon. Or not frustrations so much as...as—

Uncertainty prickling the base of his mane, he snorted, galloping through the silver fog that separated the civilized dreams of his little ponies from the wilder lands beyond. Yes, she was the first female alicorn he'd ever even heard of, the scent of her as sweet and intoxicating as the smoothest of rice wines, but, well, she was also Bómù, wasn't she? Or not Bómù so much as an impossible reflection of him, every bit as strong and smart and accomplished as Mèng Huàn's young friend but also modest, fascinating, witty, empathetic—

A sharp odor jabbed him; flaring his nostrils, Mèng Huàn wheeled, leaped sideways, and sliced through the clouds into a darkened clearing. Whistling shrieks rose up ahead, and a dozen fire-eyed guǐ guài, each about as big as a pony's head, spun on their spidery legs away from the hole they'd been digging through the embankment Mèng Huàn had erected here specifically to keep the nasty little things out.

He let his lips pull back from his teeth, but he couldn't decide whether it was a smile or a sneer. Not that it mattered much: letting his magic blaze out through his silver shoes, he spent several wonderfully strenuous hours driving the gibbering monstrosities back into the stagnant effluvium from which they'd sprung. He didn't neglect his other duties, of course, and stretched his senses out to touch the rest of his realm every fifteen or twenty minutes during the battle just as a precaution.

Nothing reached him, however, but quiet, lolling slumber, and that was all to the good. It allowed him to be extra thorough eradicating the vermin, after all. And allowed him to focus on something other than his sudden, distracting visitor...

Still, he dealt with the infestation, shored up the barriers, and finished the whole of his rounds with two hours remaining until sun up. All else seemed well among those dreaming, so he stepped from the night's shadows into the corridor outside his workroom to see how Twilight was getting along.

The place was hardly recognizable. She seemed to have dismantled all his furniture and rebuilt it into a giant wooden, metal, and granite framework that surrounded the mirror and changed shape, he was certain, every time he glanced away from it. All his meticulously organized books had been moved into a dozen piles scattered across the floor, and Twilight herself stood before the mirror with her whole body glowing, the tip of her tongue curled out to touch her upper lip and sweat dripping from the edge of her mane.

Mèng Huàn had seen Bómù in this state more than once, so he settled beside the empty snack tray just inside the door to wait. Twilight held the pose for some minutes longer before her horn sputtered; then with a snarling sort of grunt, she wrenched herself sideways, the place where she'd been standing marked by four smoking hoofprints etched into the stone.

Refusing to let his jaw drop, Mèng Huàn conjured up a glass of water, moved quickly to her side, and offered it to her.

She nodded as if in thanks, grabbed the glass in her own magic, and swigged down its contents. "It's impossible!" she said, holding the empty glass out. "And I know impossible: I mean, the last few years, I've managed to do six or seven things that Starswirl specifically says can't be done! But that mirror—!" She waved a shaking hoof at it. "It keeps turning back on itself, every trail I follow leading me out again right where I started! I don't know if I want to collaborate on a series of treatises with this Bómù of yours or kick him in the head as hard as I can!"

It took some effort not to laugh. "You're hardly the first to feel that way." Her shoulders under her smooth hide looked as clenched and solid as stone; without thinking, Mèng Huàn draped a wing around her and began sending the warmth of sweet dreams to soothe the tension from her muscles. "I've a room you can use to get some sleep. In the morning, I'll introduce you to Tiān Shàng, then we'll head to Xiǎo Mǎ Chéng and see what we can find in Bómù's notes."

For another moment, she might as well have been a statue beneath his feathers, but with a sigh, she softened all at once and slumped against his side, every one of Mèng Huàn's nerve endings lighting up like a sky full of stars. "I'm sorry," she murmured. "But I just...I just don't understand what's going on..."

"You will." He stroked her back, suddenly realized that it was entirely inappropriate for him to be doing so, but couldn't bring himself to stop; the salty stink of her unhappiness, after all, was also softening with each stroke, and anything that helped her to relax, he thought, could only be for the good. "Don't worry," he murmured. "You'll disentangle whatever Bómù's done, open the gate, step through, and all will once again be well." The odd hollowness behind his words made his ears fold, but, well, it had been a long and eventful evening...

"Thank you." She rose to her hooves, her head drooping and her eyes closed. "Just...just an hour or two to lie down would...would be great..."

Nodding, he guided her to the guest room across the hall, Twilight clambering into bed and dropping instantly to sleep—and the silence that surrounded Mèng Huàn suddenly seemed thicker and colder than any fog he'd ever met in the darkness of the Realms Beyond. Shaking his head, he used his magic to pull a blanket over her before stepping back out into the hallway, closing the door, and rushing through the last few tasks he'd had scheduled for tonight before Bómù had thrown the entire world into such intriguing disarray.

At dawn, he arrived at Tiān Shàng's balcony just in time to lower the moon, his elder brother not saying a word till the sun was rising steadily into the warm blue of a summer morning. "Rough night?" Tiān Shàng asked then.

Mèng Huàn had been thinking for some hours how best to bring Tiān Shàng up to speed on the situation, but nothing had occurred to him except— "Bómù," he said simply and gestured for his brother to follow.

They winged across the spires of Yuè Mǎ Jīng Palace, and Mèng Huàn led the way to the room where he'd left Twilight sleeping. "I can't prepare you for this," he said and pushed open the door.

Dawn's golden light washed through the drawn curtains, the sight of Twilight relaxed in sleep making Mèng Huàn catch his breath. "That's not Bómù," Tiān Shàng rumbled softly. "And yet...she is, isn't she?"

"Exactly." Mèng Huàn told Tiān Shàng of the night's events—as much as he understood them himself, at least—and finished just as Twilight began stirring.

Tiān placed his shoulder against Mèng Huàn's chest, pushed him out into the hallway and followed, closing the door behind them. "Rule number one, little brother." Tiān Shàng tapped the tip of his horn against Mèng Huàn's. "A gentlecolt knocks before entering a mare's boudoir, especially when that mare is an unaccountably long way from home."

He gestured to the door. Mèng Huàn blinked at it. Tiān Shàng rolled his eyes, raised a hoof, mimed knocking, then pointed at the door again.

Unable to stop his blush, Mèng Huàn stepped up and rapped on the door. "Princess Twilight? It's Prince Mèng Huàn. Are you—?"

The door glowed purple and slammed open, Twilight standing there with wide eyes. "Then...it wasn't a dream? Everything really—?" She froze, her eyes going even wider, and Mèng Huàn realized that she was looking past him at Tiān Shàng.

Glancing over his shoulder, Mèng Huàn couldn't help but see his brother with new eyes: a tall, broad-chested, snow-white stallion, his mane and tail flowing with the sky blue and sunburst gold of a cloudless morning, his blonde mustache and goatee as carefully trimmed as always. He bowed his head and spoke in that resonant tenor of his: "Princess Twilight? I'm Tiān Shàng. I'm sorry that your first visit to Cōng Mǎ Guó has proven to be problematical. Rest assured, we will provide any and all assistance we can muster toward helping you resolve this situation."

A tiny flare of the old jealousy ignited in Mèng Huàn's gut, but he swallowed against it. It wasn't Tiān Shàng's fault that he was perfect in every—

Laughter barked through the hallway, and Twilight clapped a hoof over her mouth. "I...I'm sorry, Your Highness! It's just that—" Her grin grew huge and infectious. "I've got to get that portal fixed so Celestia can meet you!" She turned to Mèng Huàn, and he was sure that her eyes shone in a way they hadn't while looking at Tiān Shàng. "So! Breakfast, then Bómù's castle: is that still the plan?"

Breakfast was amazing, dumplings and sweet buns covering the round mahogany table, but Twilight found it hard to keep a straight face whenever she looked at Tiān Shàng. It was just that, while Mèng Huàn resembled Luna in a lot of ways—the starry mane and tail; the sad and serious expression that lit up every time he smiled; a stillness that Twilight found very comforting under the circumstances—the overall impression that Twilight got from him was something like Luna's brother or cousin or some other close male relative.

Tiān Shàng, on the other hoof, couldn't have been anypony other than Celestia's mirror universe duplicate. The light swirled around him the same way it swirled around her, his smile every bit as enigmatic, his voice precisely as warm and reassuring as hers. She had to get the two of them together, Twilight silently vowed, if only to sing a duet.

Fortunately, Tiān Shàng only asked a few questions during the meal, and Twilight managed to answer them without embarrassing herself. She was glad to focus on Mèng Huàn, exchanging more stories and comparisons of their worlds until Tiān Shàng rose and excused himself: "Keep me apprised of your progress, though from what I've seen here, I have every expectation that the two of you will soon have both universes set to rights." He bowed his head—wearing, Twilight couldn't help but notice, the exact pleasant-but-ultimately-unknowable expression that she'd come to know so well from her student days—and left the breakfast room.

Once she and Mèng Huàn were alone, Twilight couldn't help blowing out a breath. "Please don't take this the wrong way, Mèng Huàn, but meeting your brother was maybe the strangest thing that's ever happened to me."

"Indeed?" Mèng Huàn gave one of those slow smiles. "You've always been closer to your Princess Celestia than to your Princess Luna, I take it?"

Tightness gripped Twilight's throat, but she swallowed against it. "Celestia taught me everything I know. But Luna—" Twilight tried to find the right words. "Luna's been the one who's really shown me why Celestia taught me what she did." She shrugged. "If that makes sense."

"It does." He sighed. "I love my brother more than life itself, but our relationship has ever been one of peaks and valleys. Getting to know Tiān Shàng's student, however, from the moment that Bómù and his friends saved me to the moment of his coronation and beyond—" He stopped, dropped his gaze to focus on his puffed rice. "Well, I'm sure your Luna has let you know how much she appreciates everything you've done for her."

The silence that followed felt a little prickily. Twilight started to reach across the table to touch his hoof and ask if he'd ever let Bómù know how much he appreciated him, but then Mèng Huàn was rising from his place. "As it is, however, Twilight, we'd best be on our way. Shall I summon a chariot while you finish your breakfast?"

"Actually?" Twilight swallowed the last bite of the sticky little rice ball on her plate and stood as well. "Would it be all right if we just, well, if your Ponyville's no farther from here than the Ponyville back home, could we maybe just fly there? All the pomp and circumstance of being a princess just makes me twitch sometimes..."

After several blinks, Mèng Huàn cocked his head. "You know, I can't think of the last time I went flying during the day." He nodded crisply. "We can depart at once, then." His horn glowed, and the gauzy curtains parted from the nearest of the big windows along the side of the room; its decorated glass panels swung open, and Twilight saw blue sky outside. "After you," he said.

Twilight stepped to the window, hopped over the sill, spread her wings, took one look at the city stretching out beneath her—

And almost dropped from the sky.

"Twilight?" Mèng Huàn was beside her instantly, a piece of the night come to life in the brilliant morning sky. "Are you all right?"

"The city!" She waved a hoof at the sight before her. "It's...incredible! I mean, Canterlot is the most beautiful city in Equestria, but—" She did some more gaping: not towers of alabaster and marble like back home, but multilevel, geometric pagodas rising from tree-lined streets, pavilions of red and gold set among grassy parks, most of the buildings seeming to be made of some translucent stone. "Is that white jade?" she asked.

"It is." Quiet pride shone in Mèng Huàn's voice. "Yuè Mǎ Jīng was the most beautiful city in Cōng Mǎ Guó even before my brother made it our capital during my exile." He gestured toward the rising sun. "Of course, Xiǎo Mǎ Chéng is a lovely town as well."

"Of course." Forcing her gaze away from the dazzling sight, she swooped in the direction he indicated and glanced over at him as he fell into place beside her. "Again, I hope you don't mind me asking, but, well, I can't help wondering about the names here. I mean, it constantly astonishes me how all mirror universes I've visited have shared the same language, but your names seem to derive from some other source entirely."

"As well they should." His wings seemed more to caress the air than flap against it; Twilight found she had to make an effort to pay attention to what he was saying. "Jīng Pò Yǔ has been the language of names since before my brother and I were young. It draws upon a very deep and ancient magic, and we use is as a sign of the respect we ponies hold for each other and for the world around us." He shrugged and gave her a glancing grin. "It's also a fine way to confuse our griffon and minotaur neighbors."

Twilight couldn't stop a laugh at that. "Do griffon names here all begin with 'g,' too?"

Mèng Huàn shivered. "It's horrible! The words just lie there! It's like limp celery: no spring nor crunch nor any saltiness whatsoever!" He cocked his head. "But what did you call Yuè Mǎ Jīng? 'Canterlot'? That's got a certain ring to it..."

The discussion that followed made the rest of the flight pass so quickly, Twilight barely noticed. The subject fascinated her—she'd glanced at a few studies on the magic of names years ago but had never delved very deeply into the concepts involved—and her companion fascinated her almost as much. It was odd: lately, she'd found herself getting tongue-tied around stallions way too often, but talking to Mèng Huàn, she felt as if she'd known him for years.

Which made sense, she guessed. In a very real way, she had.

So it was with a little prickle of a frown that she looked past the forest they'd been flying beside—to her, the Everfree Forest; to him, Yǒng Yě Sēn Lín—to see several familiar-looking turrets rising up over the hills ahead. She opened her mouth to ask if that was Bómù's palace, but then they were gliding over the crest of the hill into sight of the town lying snug in the valley beyond.

The same thatched cottages, yes, but painted in colors that were more vibrant and less pastel; the same sod-covered lanes, yes, but there seemed to be more of them—and more buildings, too, now that she was looking carefully; the same mid-morning traffic, yes, but she couldn't quite recall everything being quite so bustling: it was Ponyville, yes, but not Ponyville at the same time.

But if seeing the transformed Canterlot had almost knocked her out of the sky, the changes here perked her ears and made her want to get down in the streets and explore. Especially when she heard a baritone drawl calling out from the direction of the town square, "Git'cher apples here! Straight from Tián Píng Mǔ and ready for eating!"

A large orange stallion in a battered hat stood beside a cart filled with brilliant red fruit, and Twilight couldn't keep from grinning. "Oh, now, this I've got to see!" she practically squealed.

"Twilight?" Mèng Huàn asked. "What are you—?"

But she was already diving, landing a few paces from the stallion and not bothering to stop her jaw from dropping. All she could think of was the trick they'd pulled on Trixie during the Alicorn Amulet incident, the way they'd done Big McIntosh up in Applejack's colors and cutie mark.

"Well, now!" the stallion said, pushing back his hat and turning with a grin. "Morning, Bómù, Mèng Huàn. Can't recall the last time I's seen either of you up and about this...early..." His grin began wilting, his forehead creasing.

Mèng Huàn had settled to the ground beside Twilight, but he stepped forward quickly. "Píng Guǒ Jiǔ, this is Princess Twilight Sparkle. She and Bómù are, umm..." The words petered out, more ponies glancing over from the surrounding stalls.

Thinking quickly, Twilight jumped in. "You might say that Bómù and I are doppelgangers," she said, then realized that the Applejack she knew probably wouldn't have any idea what that word meant. "You see, Prince Bómù opened a path through a magic mirror to my universe, and he's visiting there while I visit here!"

Píng Guǒ Jiǔ blinked. "Uh-huh." Tipping his head back, he shouted, "Hóng!"

"Huh?" a scratchy voice asked from above, and a rainbow streak spun down from a drifting cloud to become a sky-blue stallion standing beside the apple cart. "What's up, Píng?"

"Don't gimme that!" Píng Guǒ Jiǔ aimed a shaking hoof at Twilight. "Did you put Bómù up to this? 'Cause it's a prank stupid enough to have your dang hoofprints all over it!"

"What?" The pegasus blinked, then stared.

Mèng Huàn puffed out a sigh. "Hóng Ruì Qì, this is Princess Twilight Sparkle. She and Bómù have exchanged places in their respective universes as something of a cultural exchange. Princess, this is Hóng Ruì Qì , the head of the local weather team."

"Call me Hóng!" Hóng Ruì Qì brushed at the stripes of his unruly mane. "A lady Bómù, huh?" He waggled his eyebrows at her. "And how're you doin'?"

Twilight had felt her grin growing wider and wider as this scene had been playing out in front of her, but that was the last straw; trying to hold back her laughter just made it burst out about ten times louder than she would've liked. "Oh, my gosh! Rainbow is gonna die when I tell her about this! Just plain die!"

Both Hóng and Píng's ears folded flat against their heads, and the uncomfortable look on Mèng Huàn's face got Twilight laughing even harder, clutching her sides and stomping the ground, the citizens of Xiǎo Mǎ Chéng starting to notice. "Uh..." Hóng's voice even took on that same nasal quality as Rainbow's did when she got confused. "Is she all right?"

Laughing even harder, Twilight couldn't manage to form a single word, but Mèng Huàn seemed to have regained enough of his poise to began explaining the events of the previous night to the crowd growing around them. Unfortunately, every time Twilight felt recovered enough to step in and help, one or two reversed-gender versions of her friends would arrive. Mèng Huàn would interrupt himself to introduce them, and Twilight would find herself again grinning too broadly to even try speaking.

By the time he got to the end, though, Twilight had more or less gotten used to the strange stallions who were somehow also her dearest friends. "A moment, please," Lín Láng said, the tailor's deep blue eyes darting back and forth between Mèng Huàn and Twilight. "Surely you're not saying that Bómù's trapped in this other universe?"

"No, no, no!" Twilight scented the salty-sour stink of fear and held up a front hoof quickly, ice shivering along her spine. "Nopony's trapped anywhere! Yes, something's happened to the connection, but, well, that's always a problem when working with mirror universes! I mean, more than once, we've had to forcibly break all connections between our universe and another before everything collapsed and destroyed both!"

Lín Láng gasped. Beside him, Wēi Fēng Fǔ pressed his front hooves to his snout, the veterinarian turning an even paler shade of yellow, while Fěn Hóng Bǐng's tangled mane drooped around his shoulders like a strawberry waterfall.

A blush of realization boiled away all the ice in Twilight's body. "Not that there's any danger of that happening in this case!"

Mèng Huàn cleared his throat and spread his wings, a touch of the Canterlot voice deepening his already basso tone. "Prince Bómù is undoubtedly working with their Princess Luna just as Princess Twilight and I are working together here, and I have every confidence that all will be well! For now, however, let us extend the hoof of friendship to our visiting princess and welcome her to Cōng Mǎ Guó!"

That got ears at least partially raised around the town square, and Twilight found scores of semi-familiar ponies lining up to greet her. Mèng Huàn sat beside her the whole time as did the others of Bómù's friends, and an hour or so went by quite pleasantly, she thought. At least, the tension she'd felt earlier largely stopped tugging at her mane.

"Land sakes!" Píng Guǒ Jiǔ said when the crowd had finally thinned out—and Píng had sold most of his apples, Twilight noticed. "The things Bómù gets hisself into! Not that we ain't glad to have you, Princess, but I reckon we'll be shoving this into that boy's face for more'n a little while when he gets back."

"I'll say!" Hóng rubbed his hooves together. "No hurry, though, right?" He arched his eyebrows again. "'Cause, I mean, you need anypony to show you around, Princess, just stop by my place, and I'll be happy to give you the grand tour."

Ping scowled at the pegasus. "Simmer down, RQ."

"I'm just saying!"

Smiling, Twilight shook her head. "No matter the universe, some things are a constant." She looked over at Mèng Huàn and tried to keep her smile from fading. "And speaking of that..."

"Yes." Mèng Huàn spread his wings again. "If you'll pardon us, gentlecolts, we have to gather up Bómù's notes."

The castle looked almost exactly like hers—a little taller, maybe, but she couldn't really be sure just walking up the steps and through the front doors. Inside, though, she froze with a gasp at the sight of a little dragon, thinner and smoother than Spike but still purple and green, padding across the vestibule with a bowl of gems covered in sugar held in her claws.

"Ah." Mèng Huàn cleared his throat. "Dào Gōu, this is Princess Twilight Sparkle. She and Bómù—"

"Whoa." Dào Gōu's voice wasn't that much higher than Spike's, but her eyes seemed to open wider. "Is this some sorta mirror universe thing?"

Unable to look away from the bowl, Twilight snorted. "Never mind that!" She stomped up to Dào Gōu and glared down at her. "How much sugar do you have on there, anyway?"

"What's that s'pposed to mean?" Dào Gōu glared right back. "There's hardly any!"

"Oh, really?" Activating her horn, Twilight conjured a bubble the size of a bowling ball that sucked powder off the gems till it was nearly halfway full. "There!" Twilight nodded and sent the bubble drifting toward the kitchen. "That's more like it!"

Dào Gōu's chin jutted out for a moment, but then she gave a snort and said, "You look weird as a girl."

"Well, so do you." Twilight had to smile as she imagined how Spike might react to meeting her stallion counterpart. "But Bómù's lucky he has you to take care of him."

"Yeah, yeah." Dào Gōu turned away with a wave of her claws. "And you're lucky stuff like this happens all the time in the comics, or you might have a hard time getting ponies to believe it."

Chuckling, Twilight made a note to increase Spike's comic-buying allowance when she got back home and headed down the hallway toward the castle's east wing. Unless— She looked back at Mèng Huàn. "First door on the right for Bómù's study?"

He had that bemused little smile on his snout again. "It's as if you've been here before."

She smiled back, touched her magic to the knob, pushed the door open—

And froze again at the sight. "No!"

With a flapping of wings, Mèng Huàn was at her side immediately. "What is it, Twilight?"

Unable to find any words, she pointed at the large metal brazier standing in front of a desk that looked every bit as cluttered with books and scrolls and notebooks as hers was, the charred smell in the air and the ashes filling the thing telling her exactly what must've happened here. "He burned his notes," she whispered.

"We don't know that." Squeezing past her, Mèng Huàn advanced into the room, his horn glowing.

"What else would he burn?" She could almost hear the dominoes falling into patterns in her head, everything that had happened since last night coming clear. "He knew we'd come here after the portal failed, so he put the remains right there where we wouldn't miss them." She could barely get the words out past the tightness in her throat. "He built the mirror to work only the one time. He...he wasn't planning on coming back."

Mèng Huàn whirled on her. "We don't know that!"

The raw anger in his voice and face made her wince, and her control slipped, all the fears she'd been trying so hard to keep down—she was trapped here, would never see home again, was cut off from everything that made her life worthwhile—suddenly crashing over her. Hearing someone sob, she knew it was her and didn't even try to keep her knees from giving way and buckling her to the floor.

"Twilight!" Warmth wrapped her forelegs, and she blinked through her tears to see Mèng Huàn stretched out on the floor in front of her, his hooves holding hers. "There's got to be something we're missing! I mean, Bómù wouldn't do this! He couldn't any more than you could! It's not possible that he would lock another pony out of her world so she could never return! That's—!"

"Lock?" An entirely different set of thought-dominoes, ones Twilight hadn't even noticed till now, all toppled over at once, ideas crackling through her and making her leap up. "Of course!" Suddenly ablaze, she grabbed Mèng Huàn's head. "You're a genius, and I'm an idiot!" Without even thinking, she leaned forward, pressed her lips to his, spun away, and blasted out the strongest teleportation spell she knew.

Purple lightning enveloped her, and she became a bolt of fire and electricity arcing through the aethersphere back toward Mèng Huàn's workroom. A part of her brain made a note that this was approximately three-and-a-half times farther than she'd ever teleported before, but she couldn't focus on that now; popping into the hoofprints she'd burned into the floor last night, she faced the decryption matrix she'd built and sent one tiny glittering ball of a spell out to touch the top of the the mirror's original frame.

"Twilight?" Mèng Huàn had appeared as silently as nightfall behind her.

She nodded, her eyes fastened on the spell as it seeped into the mirror. "It's the first thing I should've tried," she said, wanting to kick herself for not thinking of it till now. "I guess I was just so excited or distracted or sleep-deprived or—"

A bell pinged from the mirror's surface, and a circle immediately appeared on the glass, a circle with regularly spaced marks along the outer rim and a pointer reaching out from the center.

Mèng Huàn took a breath. "Is that a timer?"

"Yep." Twilight turned to look at him, and the sudden memory of his lips warm and firm against hers almost made her knees buckle again. Had she really—?

No. No thinking about that right now. She took a breath of her own and went on: "Not a lot of portals use timers, but the first mirror I traveled through had one that only allowed it to open for three days every thirty moons."

"Thirty moons?" Mèng Huàn's gaze moved several times between her and the mirror, his ears flicking quickly from perked to flat to perked again, and while Twilight couldn't be sure in the ozone stink both their teleportation spells had left behind, she thought she picked up the slight musky shimmer of excitement in his scent. "Are...are you saying you'll be here with us for two-and-a-half years?"

"No, no." Again, she forced herself to stay on topic and nodded at the mirror. "From the amount of time that's ticked by since last night, I'd guess it'll open in another twenty-eight days." With a swallow and half a smile, she cocked her head at him. "Looks like I'm your Princess of Friendship for the next moon."

3 - Sān

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Mèng Huàn's immediate impulse—offering to juggle the heavens in an attempt to trick Bómù's timer—just got a smile from Twilight and a shake of her head. "Thank you," she said, her horn glowing to light various parts of the framework she'd built around the mirror. "But from what you've said, this was Bómù's first attempt at dimensional travel, and I don't remember Luna ever mentioning that she was interested in this stuff. So it might not be a good idea to push their creation anywhere near the breaking point."

She turned to look at Mèng Huàn, and while he expected to see her ears folded and her eyes wavering at the thought of being cut off from home, she instead had a small but definite smile on her muzzle. "Four weeks isn't that long," she went on. "And it's not like either Equestria or Cōng Mǎ Guó is going to be short-staffed while I'm here and he's there. It'll just be...different for a while." She shrugged.

"Yes." Mèng Huàn had to swallow, not at all sure why his throat had gone so tight. "Different." He motioned toward the doorway. "We'd best present our findings to Tiān Shàng, however."

His brother nodded gravely from the Day Throne at their report and agreed with their recommendation that they stick to Bómù's original plan: quiet and low-key. So Mèng Huàn flew with Twilight once more to Xiǎo Mǎ Chéng and announced that, as part of their cultural exchange, Twilight would be staying in the castle and carrying out Bómù's duties for the next four weeks.

That got tails tucking and even a few snorts from the townsponies gathered around them in the marketplace, but Twilight spread her wings beside him, everything about her radiating excitement and enthusiasm. "It's such a remarkable opportunity!" she said. "Your town is just so beautiful, and I can hardly wait to meet you all and learn how different and how similar it is here when compared to the Ponyville I know so well."

Smiles started appearing then, and a warmth spread through Mèng Huàn's chest the same way it did whenever Bómù began speaking about friendship. There was more to this feeling, though, and watching Twilight continue to speak, Mèng Huàn couldn't help wondering if the guǐ guài from last night might need a little more stomping.

Then the crowds were pattering their hooves against the ground in applause—Twilight had apparently finished her impromptu oration—and they began drifting away. But— "Okay!" a rough voice called out, and Hóng Ruì Qì came strutting up, Píng Guǒ Jiǔ with a half grin beside him. "This is gonna be so great!" Hóng folded one foreleg across the other, planted the tip of its hoof in the hard-packed soil, and Mèng Huàn could only stare as the wiry pegasus started flexing. "'Cause I'm betting, Twilight, that you'll be wanting to get to know some of us real well."

All the warmth vanishing around him, Mèng Huàn suddenly found that he wanted nothing more than to rear back on his hind legs and smack Hóng Ruì Qì across the face.

But Twilight's soft chuckle stopped him; she stepped up to Hóng, her eyes dancing, put a hoof on his shoulder, and said, "There's a concept we have back where I come from, and while I don't know what you might call it here, in Equestria, it's known as 'the friend zone.'"

Hóng winced, and Píng gave a big laugh. "Lemme tell you, Princess: that's one place RQ's way too familiar with."

"I dunno what it is." Hóng raised a wing and sniffed at the base. "I mean, I shower, like, every three or four days and hardly ever burp so loud I break windows." He aimed a smile, as innocent as it was phony, at Píng. "Your sister never seems to mind."

Píng grimaced and gave Twilight a sideways glance. "Hǎi Táng Huā's my older sister, and the only thing she's likely to do to RQ if'n he ever looks at her funny again is snap him half in two. Or is she don't, Grampa Bīnzǐ will."

Her grin spreading even wider, Twilight clapped her hooves. "I've got to meet them all! Oh, and your little brother, too! The one who hangs around with Lín Láng's brother and a pegasus who idolizes Hóng! The three of them even got their cutie marks all at the same time not too long ago, right?"

Their jaws dropping, both stallion began talking at once, but Mèng Huàn had ceased paying attention, still struggling to swallow his surge of anger. He'd not had many dealings with Hóng Ruì Qì, but until this very moment, he'd felt nothing but gratitude to him for his part in helping break the madness that had sent Mèng Huàn into exile— Well, gratitude and the occasional bit of wry amusement at the pegasus's antics...

Now, though, Mèng Huàn focused on his breathing and tried not to think about the anger that had gripped him in the years before he'd exploded into Mèng Yǎn Yuè, how that anger had grown in him steadily for decades a thousand years ago before the darkness had at last risen up to subsume him. Was he in danger of falling once more now that Bómù was gone? Was this the first symptom of his relapse into—?

"Mèng Huàn?" Twilight's voice made him start back. She and the two stallions were staring at him, their ears wavering. "Are you all right?" she asked.

Opening his mouth to answer but unsure what he was going to say, Mèng Huàn found his snout stretching into a giant yawn. "Excuse me!" he said when he could, blinking several times to clear the fuzziness from his vision. "I didn't mean to—"

"Oh!" Twilight rushed over to him, and the concern on her face made ever trace of his anger vanish. "I'm so sorry! I've been keeping you here when you should be in bed!" Planting three hooves in the hard-packed soil of the marketplace, she poked the other hoof into his chest. "You need to get back to Yuè Mǎ Jīng and get some sleep, or you'll be in no shape to carry out your duties tonight!"

It took another few blinks for Mèng Huàn to realize what she was saying. "I...I'm tired!" Relief swept over him, and he gave the other three a grin. "Of course! After everything last night and this morning, I simply need to get some rest!" He looked down at Twilight's smile, and his own faltered. "But I...I can't abandon you! We need to get you settled in Bómù's castle, make sure the news of your situation here gets spread all about town, see if—"

"Whoa, now." Píng Guǒ Jiǔ held up a hoof. "You done more'n your fair share, Prince Mèng Huàn. The rest of us're Bómù's friends, too, so how 'bout you let us pitch in a little afore you falls over sideways right here in the square?"

Still uncertain, Mèng Huàn looked back and forth between Píng and Twilight till Twilight said, "Thank you for everything, Mèng Huàn. I know I'll be needing more of your help over the next 28 days, but, well, you've got to take care of yourself, too."

And for the third or fourth time in the twelve or so hours since he'd met her, Mèng Huàn found that he couldn't argue her point. "Very well," he got out with some effort. "I shall call upon you this evening after I've raised the moon."

Twilight gave a nod. "It's a date!"

Hóng was rubbing his front hooves together. "And bring your party hat, Mèng Huàn! 'Cause if I know Bǐng, he'll be wanting to throw some kinda 'Welcome to Our Universe' party for you, Princess."

"Call me Twilight." She turned back to face Mèng Huàn, and that warmth came over him again. "Rest well," she said, her voice quieter and gentler. "I'll see you later."

"Yes, you will." Giving her a little bow, he leaped upward and let his wings dig into the air, let himself surge and strain till he'd gained enough altitude to feel coolness against his coat once more. The urge struck him then to just keep flying till he hit the coast, till he crossed the ocean, till everything below him became places he hadn't seen in hundreds and hundreds of years, lands that he'd known in better days.

Except that they hadn't been better days, had they? They'd been days that had driven him beyond the brink of madness, days where he'd watched himself become a pony he no longer recognized, a pony who—

He shook his head quickly, pumped his wings harder, stretched his neck and tucked his legs until he was streaming through the sky, his mane like a comet's tail behind him. The wind slicked his ears back, the roaring in his head oddly soothing, the sheer weight of sound almost the same as silence; hurtling toward Yuè Mǎ Jīng, he squinted through the blurriness, his speed causing his cheeks to dry almost before he could feel the dampness against them.

At what he judged to be the proper distance, he pulled out of his dive, angled his pinions precisely, backflapped, and flared enough magic from his horn to bend the very space around him. The shockwave of his passage wrapped around itself, the peaks interfering both constructively and destructively, and the resulting force whirled him in a cyclonic pirouette high above the city's towers before it raced away into the blue midmorning above and left him floating there alone.

Drifting down to land lightly upon the parapet of the palace, Mèng Huàn took a breath, and it seemed somehow deeper and more filling than any he'd taken in years. He turned, acknowledged the salutes of the guards along the wall, pushed the nearest doorway open, and stepped into the upper hallway—

Only to find Tiān Shàng waiting for him, his characteristic smile half-curling his perfectly trimmed moustache. "Well met, brother," he said.

"Indeed." Mèng Huàn couldn't stop a smile of his own, and what was more, he didn't want to stop it. "It's a lovely morning you and our weather teams have put together. I must remember to convey my compliments to them."

"They'll love to have them." Tiān Shàng nodded toward the doorway. "It's been some time since I last felt you essay that particular spell." He cocked his head. "Some special occasion I should know about?"

Mèng Huàn shrugged. "I merely find it suitable for clearing my mind."

"I see." Curiosity hung in the air around his brother like the scent of freshly baked cinnamon rolls, but the aroma soured quickly in Mèng Huàn's nose, Tiān Shàng turning away. "I would probe further, but perhaps it would be best that I mind my own business considering my track record of failure when it comes to you."

"Failure?" Mèng Huàn's fuzzy warmth puffed away like dandelion fluff. "When have you ever failed at anything?"

Tiān Shàng snapped his head back, a brittle sharpness in his eyes that Mèng Huàn didn't think he'd ever seen there before. "I missed every sign of your rage and despair a thousand years ago, didn't I? And even with a millennium to take that lesson to heart, I had no idea that you were continuing to punish yourself with that nightmarish Yè Biān Zǐ after your return! Bones and blood, Mèng Huàn! How can I not set these to my account as failures?"

It took Mèng Huàn several blinks to find his voice. "In the first instance, I purposefully hid my anger from you as part of my plan to depose you and take our joint kingdom to myself, and had you not contained me when you did, I would certainly have destroyed this world and all life upon it." He tried for a smile but wasn't quite sure he made it. "We should all hope for failures as successful as that, brother. And as for the Yè Biān Zǐ—"

He had to stop and swallow, the thought of how close he'd come to unleashing that darkness over the world still too freshly scabbed over. "Once again, Bómù and his friends showed me that I was in error. I don't deserve to be tortured for deeds after I have truly repented of them."

Head bowed into the silence, Mèng Huàn felt more than saw the shadows shift around him, and a warm hoof touched his shoulder. "And because I am apparently incapable of minding my own business, Mèng Huàn, I will suggest an additional point. Yes, you don't deserve to be tortured, but more than that, you deserve to be happy."

Mèng Huàn had to look up then, nothing halfway about Tiān Shàng's smile. "That is what drew me from the Throne Room this morning and brought me here to the top of the palace: the wonderful and unaccustomed scent of your happiness in the air." Tiān Shàng touched the tip of his horn to Mèng Huàn's. "Is it possible we might be getting more of that aroma in the near future?"

The laugh that bubbled up in Mèng Huàn's chest felt too good not to let out. So he did, bending his neck back and forth a few times to whap both sides of his brother's horn gently with this own. "I wouldn't be at all surprised, Tiān Shàng. I wouldn't be at all surprised."

The day in Hóng and Píng's company flew by, and more than once, Twilight almost called them Dash and AJ, they were so much like her friends back home.

Except that, at exactly the same time, they weren't like them, too. Bigger, of course, they maybe laughed a little louder, and she couldn't ignore the musky-but-not-at-all-unpleasant smell of stallion that followed everywhere they went. But trotting along the streets between them, she couldn't decide which was weirder: the similarities or the differences.

It was the same all over town. Lín Láng's tailor shop, which everyone called Jì Xiāng Yī Xuān, was set up very much like Rarity's Carousel Boutique but with fewer dresses and more suit coats. Fāng Táng Diàn, the town bakery, served a nearly identical selection of sweets and fountain drinks as Sugar Cube Corner, but looking at the short and tubby Mr. Dàn Gāo beside the tall and thin Mrs. Dàn Gāo made Twilight feel like her eyes were crossed. At city hall, the bookstore, the quill and sofa shop, all her regular haunts, she could almost imagine a quiet but insistent musical tone. Not loud or harsh enough to get her wincing, it still prodded her constantly, reminding her not only that she wasn't at home but that she wasn't even in a universe where her home existed...

So when she started feeling a little weak in the knees after lunch, she figured it was likely her own lack of sleep—Mèng Huàn's giant yawn earlier had suddenly reminded her that she'd barely shut her own eyes all night—and maybe just the slightest bit of culture shock. "Listen, guys," she told Píng and Hóng after settling their debate over who was going to pick up the check by telling the waitress to charge the meal to Bómù's account, "I think I'll try to get a nap in before Bǐng's party tonight." She gave Hóng about half a glare. "And if you make any kind of double entendre out of that..."

With a hoot, Píng smacked Hóng's shoulder. "Go on! Call her a prude like you do Bómù when he complains 'bout your stupid comments! I double dares you!"

Hóng folded his front legs across his chest. "Mare or stallion, you just don't appreciate quality humor, do you?"

"Yes." Twilight reached up and patted him between the ears. "That's exactly it." She stood to another hoot from Píng. "I'll see you later."

Crossing town, she kept the slightly out-of-focus feeling at bay by fixing her gaze as much as she could on the palace. It looked just as peculiar as her palace back in Ponyville, and that had the odd effect of steadying her steps. The front door crackled against her magic as she pushed it open just like her front door did at home, and the clean, airy scent of the crystalline foyer got the clench in her shoulders to start loosening.

"You finally back, Bómù?" a semi-familiar voice called. Dào Gōu padded around the corner and stopped, her claws scraping the floor, her eyes widening, and her face falling. "Princess? What're you—? I mean, I thought— Didn't you—? Is...is everything okay?"

The obvious distress in Dào Gōu's voice drove all thought of napping straight out of Twilight's head. "Everything's fine," she said quickly. She went on to tell the little dragon about the timer on the mirror and ended with, "It's like Bómù decided to take a vacation without telling anypony, and I'll be trying to help out around here till he gets back."

Dào Gōu was nodding, but the droop of her green spines and the way her right foreclaws plucked at the back of her left hand told Twilight all she needed to know. "Back in Ponyville," she said, bending down to nuzzle Dào Gōu's shoulder, "my friend Spike will do everything he can to keep Bómù from getting into trouble. He's always reminding me when I need to stop studying and eat, and if it wasn't for him, my castle'd be fetlock deep in dust and books I've forgotten to put away."

A tiny smile creased Dào Gōu's cheeks. "Twenty-eight days," she murmured. "That's not too long, I guess..." She pulled in a breath and blew it out. "But you should probably know that Bómù lets me have ice cream for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snack time."

"Uh-huh." Twilight poked a hoof at Dào Gōu's belly. "How 'bout this: at Fěn Hóng Bǐng's party tonight, you can have cake and ice cream, and we'll talk about the rest tomorrow." She tried to stifle a yawn and ended up making her own ears pop. "Is there anywhere I need to be today? I mean, anything on Bómù's schedule I should be taking care of?"

"Nope." Dào Gōu touched a claw to her chin. "I remember thinking it was weird that he'd clear a whole day like this."

"For me," Twilight muttered, several thoughts sparking through her head. Then realizing she'd said it out loud, she forced a laugh. "Lucky for me, I mean." She started for the west wing corridor and the stairway. "I'll just be resting in my room, but if anypony comes in with a friendship problem, let me know, okay?"

"Sure thing, Bó— Uhhh..." Dào Gōu's embarrassment smelled sharp as cayenne pepper to Twilight. "I'm sorry, but I've forgotten who you said you were again."

"Call me Twilight." She grinned back over her shoulder.

Dào Gōu's mouth went sideways. "Does everything in your world have weird names?"

"Pretty much." At the stairwell, Twilight spread her wings and flapped up to the second floor landing. Fortunately, the transitive properties of the mirror universe proved as accurate as ever: opening the first door on the right led her straight into her room.

Or rather into Bómù's room, and she stopped halfway across the carpet, part of her wondering if this counted as her first time in a stallion's bedroom. Shaking her head, she made her way to the big picture window that looked out over Ponyville—Xiǎo Mǎ Chéng, she meant, of course—where a desk that looked very much like her own sat against the wall. With a flare of her horn, she pulled open the second drawer on the left and peered in to see nothing but empty space where her journal usually sat.

With a sigh, Twilight added that to her mental list. Because as much as she didn't like thinking it, the evidence so far was pointing toward Bómù having done all this on purpose.

The timer alone didn't prove a thing. Timers were a natural part of mirror magic, after all, since they were the best way to stop two connected universes from bleeding into each other and possibly rupturing the membranes that kept all of time and space properly aligned. As far as she knew, in fact, the only two ponies who had ever built mirror portals without timers were her and Starswirl the Bearded.

Bómù clearing his schedule for the day after his transit through the mirror, on the other hoof, not to mention the way he'd burned his notes and possibly his journal...

Had he really planned this four week long switch? But why? Bómù was supposed to be her double, and she couldn't begin to imagine anything that would've led her to do all this!

Sighing again, Twilight looked at the bed, larger than hers, she thought, but with the same canopy, the same blankets and pillows as far as she could tell. A few steps brought her to it, and she climbed in, the firmness of the mattress just right, the flannel sheets every bit as soft and warm as she—

And then she was blinking awake, a tapping at her door, Spike's voice saying, "Twilight? Mèng Huàn's here, and Bǐng's party starts in, like, half an hour."

"Who?" she asked out loud before her brain kicked in and reminded her that it wasn't Spike speaking at all. "Uhh, right! Yes! Thank you, Dào Gōu! I...I'll be right down!"

A few splashes of water cleared her eyes enough so she could recognize her face in the bathroom mirror. She reached her magic out for a towel, and that was when Dào Gōu's words registered, panic quickly setting in.

Mèng Huàn was here? Now?

Rushing out into the bedroom, she threw her closet door open to grab a dress—and of course it wasn't her closet, several very nice coats and jackets hanging there, but all of them at least one size too big for her. And besides, this wasn't the sort of party where they'd all be dressed up, was it? Fěn Hóng Bǐng was Pinkie Pie here, after all, and Rarity was the only one who ever tried wearing an outfit to a Pinkie party.

But Mèng Huàn was here! And that meant she had to—!

Had to what, exactly? It wasn't like this was a date or anything!

Was it?

Did she want it to be?

"Gaaah!" Stomping all four hooves into the carpet, Twilight closed her eyes, pressed a front leg to her chest while breathing in, then swept her hoof away while breathing out. She hadn't even been here for 24 of the 672 hours she was going to be spending in Cōng Mǎ Guó: losing her mind this early on simply wasn't an option.

The thought made her smile, and she stepped to the bedroom door, opened it, flew down the hall, down the stairs, and landed outside the library, her ears pricking to Mèng Huàn's deep and silky voice: "...been so brave," he was saying. "Had I been the one thrust into the situation she now finds herself confronting, I doubt I would be reacting with anywhere near the aplomb she's so far displayed."

"The problem," Dào Gōu's squeakier voice replied, "is that you don't read enough comic books."

That got a laugh so wonderful and full rolling out over Twilight that she decided then and there that getting Mèng Huàn to laugh more often was going to be one of her missions while she was in this universe. Tucking her wings to her sides, she stepped through the doorway and nodded to the big, dark stallion and the little purple dragon. "Comic books?" She gestured to the shelves on her left. "Where I come from, those're filed under 741.5."

Instead of laughing, Mèng Huàn blushed, and Twilight very nearly decided that the second of her missions would be to make sure that happened more often. But no: knowing how seriously Luna took herself most of the time, forcing her counterpart to blush might lead to hurt feelings.

Twilight shook herself. "Sorry to keep you waiting," she said. "I wasn't sure how formal an occasion this might be, but then nothing in Bómù's closet much appealed to me anyway."

"Formal?" Dào Gōu's snout wrinkled. "Bǐng doesn't really do 'formal.'"

"Indeed," Mèng Huàn said with a smile. "Some scholars aren't certain that the things Fěn Hóng Bǐng does are entirely possible within the laws of physics as we know them."

"Okay!" Twilight looked from one to the other. "Sounds like my kinda party!"

And it was pretty fun, too. Most of the town seemed to be there, milling around Fāng Táng Diàn or dancing on the floor set up in the square, a white stallion with sunglasses and a spiky blue mane bobbing his head behind the turntables and sound system there. Twilight didn't risk it, though, especially after asking Lín Láng if Bómù was known for his dancing. "If by 'known,'" the tailor said, flicking a cake crumb from the sleeve of his dapper gray tuxedo coat, "you mean 'infamous.' I think the world of Bómù, but, well, 'four left hooves' is a euphemism when it comes to him."

Beside Twilight, Mèng Huàn nodded. "I've been meaning to ask Tiān Shàng about that. My brother's an excellent dancer, after all, and I find it difficult to fathom why he neglected training Bómù in such a basic element of proper deportment."

Laughing, Twilight levitated another cupcake from the table. "Well, in my case, Princess Celestia tried her best. But I proved to be pretty much immune to—"

A shriek from the town square, and the music scratched to a stop. Her mane bristling, Twilight dropped her cupcake and raced for the corner of the bakery, Mèng Huàn still beside her. But when they came around the corner, she had to screech to a halt at what she saw there.

A huge black dog, at least twice as big as any of the ponies backing away from it, stood at the edge of the dance floor. Silver bracelets curled in spirals around its forelegs from just above its paws to its elbows, and its eyes glowed like pale moonlight. They weren't animal eyes either, Twilight realized with a start, an intelligence in the way they moved to take in the scene before it—or 'him,' she guessed, judging by certain anatomical features she was now noticing...

"Forgive me, please!" a baritone voice called, but the dog's mouth wasn't moving. Instead, a pony stepped out from behind the dog, a unicorn stallion with a honey-gold hide. "Tiāngǒu and I didn't mean to interrupt the festivities." The stallion moved further into the light, and the red stripes in his close-cropped blonde mane made the cold around Twilight deepen. "I'm Yúhuī Yì Yào, and we're just here to pick up something my friend was promised some time ago."

"Indeed?" Mèng Huàn advanced through the crowd, his mane billowing behind him, but Twilight found her body still frozen, her mind racing. "I am Prince Mèng Huàn of Cōng Mǎ Guó," he was going on, "and if you have any petition to present, I will happily receive you when Night Court convenes later this evening."

The smile on Yúhuī Yì Yào's muzzle didn't reach his ice-blue eyes at all. "Prince Mèng Huàn." He bowed his head ever so slightly. "I was Tiān Shàng's student for many years before we had a bit of a falling-out, but then I'm sure you of all ponies understand how that can happen."

Twilight forced herself to start forward. Because without mirror magic in this world, this had to be Sunset Shimmer's counterpart, still as smart and angry and hungry for power as the Sunset Twilight had met on her first transdimensional journey. And if Tiān Shàng was as much like Celestia as he seemed—

With a snort, Mèng Huàn tossed his head. "Bómù Guāng Shǎn is the only student my brother has ever mentioned to me!"

"Yes, well." Yúhuī Yì Yào shrugged. "We both know how good Tiān Shàng is at sweeping away those subjects he finds uncomfortable. And speaking of uncomfortable..." His eyes narrowed, and Twilight could almost feel his gaze washing over her as she squeezed out of the crowd to take up a stance next to Mèng Huàn. "I've been keeping a watch on young Bómù, and the vibrations I've been picking up all day through the aethersphere have gotten me concerned as to his well-being." He waved a hoof at Twilight. "Or haven't you noticed that he is now a she?"

Mind still racing through the possibilities, Twilight couldn't figure out what this Yúhuī might want. After all, Bómù had his castle, so the local version of the Tree of Harmony must have absorbed the Elements including the equivalent of the crown Sunset Shimmer had stolen. But hadn't he mentioned something about—?

"Princess Twilight," Mèng Huàn was saying, the stars in his mane and tail shining both brighter and colder, "is of no concern to you!"

"Princess?" Yúhuī's smile seemed to tighten. "Yes, I thought I detected weakness here."

Mèng Huàn's stomped a front hoof, and as much as Twilight wanted to do the same, she instead stepped forward, tried to keep her expression soft and gentle. "This promise to your friend." She nodded to the giant dog. "We'll certainly be happy to help the two of you collect whatever you might think you're owed if you'll—"

"Not think." This time, the dog's mouth definitely moved, words coming out as rough as a rock slide. "Know. It's been a long time since I last exercised my rights, but if you look them up, you'll find that those rights are still owed to Tiāngǒu according to every law and statute in Tiān Shàng's ledgers."

His voice was so jagged, it made Twilight want to clear her own throat. "Your rights to what exactly, if I might ask, sir?"

"The moon." Tiāngǒu licked his lips. "And I'm here to collect."

4 - Sì

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It took Mèng Huàn more than a little effort not to leap to his hooves and shout, but having Twilight at the table beside him made him swallow his anger and say in what he felt was an entirely reasonable tone of voice under the circumstances, "And what exactly do you mean by that, brother?"

To any other observer, Tiān Shàng at the head of the table undoubtedly would have looked as cool and collected as he always did. But in the early morning light drifting through the yellow silk curtains of the conference room and setting the armor of the guards at the door to glowing, Mèng Huàn could clearly see the raggedness at the edge of his brother's calm demeanor. "I mean that Tiāngǒu is correct: he and I did have an arrangement at one time."

Yúhuī Yì Yào's smug expression across from Mèng Huàn and Twilight somehow got even smugger, and Tiāngǒu next to him smacked the table with a forepaw. "As I have been saying! And now that I've come, I'll be—"

"Did have an arrangement." Tiān Shàng didn't speak any louder, but his words still filled the room. "An arrangement I canceled over four hundred years ago when you violated its terms."

"Slander!" A twitch pinched the big black dog's face. "You dare imply that I was at fault?"

"And you, Yúhuī." The edges of Tiān Shàng's smile seemed to get even more ragged. "The last time we spoke, you informed me that you would never again set hoof in Yuè Mǎ Jīng as long as my hypocritical sun shone above it." Tiān Shàng's scent, usually as fresh and bracing as a spring breeze across a ripening field of wheat, became slightly damp and regretful. "May I ask what changed your mind, Yào Yào?"

While Yúhuī's eyes tightened, his smile widened. "I'm merely here as one interested in seeing justice done." He gestured to the dog still fuming on his left. "Of course, I informed my friend here that the rulers of this world wouldn't know justice if it lifted its leg in their direction and let loose a golden stream of—"

"Treachery!" Tiāngǒu smacked the table again, but this time, the whole room shook. "Our agreement, Tiān Shàng, could only be canceled if very specific conditions were met! And those conditions—!"

"I fulfilled." The force of Tiān Shàng's words again squeezed all other sounds away to nothing. "I sent the required copies of my declaration—"

"Did you?" That Yúhuī was able to interrupt Tiān Shàng made Mèng Huàn's jaw tighten: the unicorn had been bragging all night about his magical prowess, but this was the first Mèng Huàn had actually seen of it. Yúhuī again gestured to Tiāngǒu. "For my friend here never received any such declaration."

Once more, Mèng Huàn nearly leaped to his hooves with the demand that they not treat this threat to his realm, his sovereignty, and very possibly his life as a matter of misplaced paperwork. But a soft touch at his side shocked him into silence, Twilight stroking her wing against his as she stood. "Forgive me, gentlecolts," she said, her voice soft and sweet after all the barking—literal and figurative—of the last few moments, "but as an uninvolved party, I'll happily offer my services as a mediator."

Yúhuī's gaze flickered over, his snout curling like he'd smelled something foul. "You? You were my replacement, Bómù! That hardly makes you uninvolved!"

Twilight bowed her head. "Perhaps you'll recall the discussion we had about mirror magic last night? As I demonstrated then, I'm not Bómù, nor am I from this universe. So I would be able to bring an outsider's perspective to—"

At the rude noise Yúhuī made with his lips, Mèng Huàn finally did leap to his hooves, but Twilight's touching his shoulder as lightly as a butterfly landing was more than enough to tangle his tongue. "I'm sorry, Yúhuī Yì Yào," Twilight said with a smile that could've held its own against the brightest summer day. "When I showed you Bómù's mirror and explained the spell, well, if you didn't understand it, you should've said something."

"Understand?" Yúhuī's eyes widened for an instant, then his whole face clenched. "I have an understanding of magical processes second to nopony in the world! And I'll be happy to prove it by shoving you back through that looking glass if you don't learn to keep a civil tongue in your head, girl!"

Again, it was only Twilight's presence that kept Mèng Huàn from vaulting the table, and while her smile wavered, it never dropped. "Well, then!" She clapped her hooves together. "Since you agree that I'm not from here, will you accept that I can be impartial in evaluating the facts of this case?"

The continued wrinkling of Yúhuī's nose made Mèng Huàn certain the cretin was about to continue his objections, but then he cocked his head, his stormy expression clearing. "Very well," he said. "You may investigate our respective claims, Miss Sparkle." He stood and gave what could barely have been called a bow in Tiān Shàng's direction. "Tiāngǒu and I will be in the Mù Lán Shǔ Suite awaiting your apology—" He turned the non-bow toward Twilight "—your decision—" He didn't even pretend to dip his head when he came around to Mèng Huàn "—and your moon." With a tight smile, he made for the door, the big black dog padding along behind him.

The guards followed them out, and as soon as the three of them were alone, Mèng Huàn glared past Twilight at Tiān Shàng. "So. You sold off my birthright while I was away."

The sigh that Tiān Shàng heaved seemed to come all the way up from his hooves. "You know I wouldn't do that."

"Do I?" Mèng Huàn hadn't meant to snap the words so harshly—or maybe he had just for the guiltily pleasant sight of Tiān Shàng's ears folding.

The way his brother's eyes narrowed, however, was a great deal less pleasant. "Yes," Tiān Shàng more rumbled than said, waves of heat radiating from him that prickled Mèng Huàn's hide. "You do."

Mèng Huàn bared his teeth—and Twilight sprang into the air, her wings slapping together to sweep a wind through the room. "That," she announced sharply, "is more than we need of that." Settling to the floor again, she looked back and forth between Mèng Huàn and Tiān Shàng, a fierceness in her expression that Mèng Huàn hadn't even imagined she was capable of. "I told you earlier that I'd traveled through mirrors before? Well, my first trip was because of a pony named Sunset Shimmer. She was Princess Celestia's student before me, and she used a mirror to leave Equestria when Celestia pointed out to her that having powerful magic didn't mean that she got to boss everypony else around." Her gaze settled on Tiān Shàng. "I'm guessing something like that happened between you and Yúhuī Yì Yào."

For what seemed like a very long moment, Tiān Shàng didn't reply, but then he gave a single nod. "He was the greatest in a long list of my failures."

The impulse arose almost instinctually in Mèng Huàn to tell his brother that he was most definitely not a failure, but Yúhuī and Tiāngǒu's claims coupled with Tiān Shàng's partial confirmation of those claims tightened the resentment in his throat and kept him silent..

But then Twilight turned to fix that gaze on him. "Sunset had an uncanny ability to turn friends into enemies even when they'd known each other for a long, long time." Twilight set one hoof gently on the table. "But I learned that talking things through and listening with an open mind could counteract all her efforts."

His face heating up, Mèng Huàn opened his mouth to apologize, but Tiān Shàng was already muttering, "She's right, brother. Can you find it in your heart to forgive me?"

"Almost certainly." Mèng Huàn raised a hoof. "If you tell me what actually happened between you and these two—" He debated several possible ways to finish his statement before deciding to take the high road "—guests of ours."

Twilight smiled at him. "I would've gone with 'jerkwads,' myself."

Mèng Huàn had to laugh, and his mood lifted even further when he heard Tiān Shàng chuckle as well. "Well, with Yúhuī..." His brother sighed. "As Twilight has said, he was my student before Bómù came to my attention, and he did indeed abandon his studies—and all of Cōng Mǎ Guó—when I finally confronted him about his behavior toward, well, toward nearly every other pony in Yuè Mǎ Jīng." Tiān Shàng shook his head. "I'd fooled myself into thinking he was the key to bringing you back, Mèng Huàn, but—" His voice got quiet. "It turned out he had too much in common with the creature you became."

That gave Mèng Huàn a chill. The escape and dissolution of the Yè Biān Zǐ had forced him for the first time to actually face the decisions he'd made a thousand years ago, and he'd only recently begun to confront the jealousy and rage that had led him down that path without fearing he would again fall into their clutches. But if this Yúhuī indeed harbored similar feelings—

"And Tiāngǒu?" Twilight asked.

Tiān Shàng closed his eyes. "Six hundred years ago, Tiāngǒu approached me with an offer to serve as warden and custodian of the moon the same way his cousin Dìyù Quǎn guards the entrance to our underworld prison, and in yet another moment of weakness, I agreed." He turned toward Mèng Huàn, but his gaze never left the floor. "You see, I could feel you, brother, could feel the burning hatred that poured from you every time I brought on the night, and after four centuries, I...I had grown slightly weary of it."

Most of what Mèng Huàn recalled from his time on the moon merely flickered with the horrible haziness of a nightmare brought to mind the following morning. But the anger that had defined him for that entire millennium stood etched in his memory like an acid trail across a steel plate. Unable to speak, he reached out a hoof and set it atop his brother's.

With a nod, Tiān Shàng continued: "For the first two years, Tiāngǒu performed his duties in an exemplary fashion. But then notes from the palace astronomers drew my attention to fluctuations in the moon's brightness, and I observed Tiāngǒu was growing stronger. It took me a great deal of effort to uncover his deception, but he was secretly drawing from your power, taking it into himself like food, and using it for his own advantage." Sparks flashed in Tiān Shàng's eyes, and he straightened, squared his shoulders, looked again like the warrior Mèng Huàn had grown up beside. "I sent him howling from these halls with his tail between his legs and dissolved our partnership in exactly the way the contract dictated."

The smoothness of his tone convinced Mèng Huàn—all the card games he'd played with Tiān Shàng had taught him how his brother's voice roughened when he was bluffing. Taking a breath, he blew the remnants of his bad temper out and nodded to Tiān Shàng. "And you've had no dealings with him since?"

"Not a whisper." A half smile pulled at Tiān Shàng's snout. "I did get an extra few licks to the face the next time I visited Dìyù Quǎn, but whether she was apologizing for her cousin's behavior or just feeling extra playful, well, she's not the most talkative of beings, is she?"

Twilight cleared her throat gently. "Did you happen to keep copies of whatever cancellation notices you sent Tiāngǒu?"

"Somewhere, I'm sure." Tiān Shàng's smile grew. "The palace archives are entirely at your disposal." He gestured toward the door. "I've also informed the staff that you're to be given every consideration while you're here with us, Princess."

"Thank you." Standing, she grinned and wagged a schoolmarmish hoof at him before starting across the room. "But I'm pretty sure I've asked you to call me Twilight."

That got a laugh from Tiān Shàng, and Mèng Huàn joined in. Each breath he took, Twilight's lovely lilac scent still floating around him, seemed to clear his mind further, and he found himself actually starting to think again. "A moment, Twilight." He rubbed his chin, turning his sudden idea over a few times. "Knowing what we know about those two—'jerkwads,' I believe, was the term you recommended? Might there be some advantage in making them think their ploy is succeeding?

Turning her head, Twilight stopped. "Possibly. When Sunset was still acting villainously, each time she won something, she got bolder and bolder till she overreached so much, it just took one push to make all her schemes collapse around her." She cocked her head. "What've you got in mind?"

"I'll offer them a larger target." Mèng Huàn looked at Tiān Shàng. "A partnership with me to overthrow you, brother. If they agree, there's a treason charge we can hang on them right there." Certain crackly parts of his mind wanted to dwell on how trying to take over the night wasn't a treasonable offense, but he pushed them aside fairly easily. "Or who knows? Perhaps I can manage to drive a wedge between them the way they wished to drive a wedge between us."

Tiān Shàng stroked his beard, and for the briefest of instants, Mèng Huàn's crackly parts started pointing out how Tiān Shàng didn't trust him not to foment an actual rebellion. But Tiān Shàng's nod shut that line of thinking down. "Be careful, Mèng Huàn. This ploy of theirs is already aimed squarely at you, and were they somehow to take you from me again, I—" The corner of his eye twitched. "I wouldn't be responsible for my actions."

Every bit of crackling vanished in Mèng Huàn's head, and he reached across the table to poke Tiān Shàng in the shoulder. "It'll be like old times: my voice to draw our enemies out, and your hoof to pound them into the ground."

His brother's laugh this time was more of the rueful variety. "I've not done a great deal of pounding these past several centuries." Tiān Shàng shrugged and turned the movement into a warm-up stretch. "I may need a moment to recall the proper procedures."

"Very well!" Mèng Huàn leaped across the table to land beside Twilight, her grin making him feel light all over. "I to my espionage, Twilight to her files, and you to your gymnasium!" He sent a pulse through his horn to throw the door open. "And may we all meet with our own sort of success!"

Cantering out into the hallway, he took several breaths, let the simmering darkness of an oncoming thunderstorm come into the nebula of his mane and tail, and put a bit more of a stomp into his step. With the memory of Tiān Shàng and Twilight smiling to steel him, he slipped the horribly familiar mind-set of the petulant younger brother around his shoulders like a too itchy cloak, stormed into the palace's north wing, and shoved the door of the Mù Lán Shǔ Suite out of the way with a wretched excess of power. "Guards!" he shouted at the ponies in golden armor stationed on either side. "Leave us! My brother has need of your ministrations in the throne room!"

To their credit, the guards didn't hesitate to bow and march off—Mèng Huàn had prepared quite a tantrum to throw had seemed reluctant to comply with his orders. He snorted anyway, stepped into the suite, and slammed the door behind himself.

Tiāngǒu lay curled on the golden carpet before the empty fireplace to Mèng Huàn's right; the dog didn't raise his head or even open his eyes, but Mèng Huàn couldn't miss the way his ears perked. On the left side of the sitting room, Yúhuī Yì Yào reclined across one of the sofas surrounding a low table; he glanced up from the book he had floating in the pale fire of his magic, and the smile he gave seemed equal parts wary and pleased. "Your Highness," he said, setting the book down beside a bowl of fruit on the table and getting to his hooves. "What an unexpected honor."

Which meant the varlet had been expecting him. Mèng Huàn tossed his head and didn't have much trouble putting an edge in his voice. "You're seeking to put me out of business, Yúhuī. Surely you don't expect me to go down without a fight."

Yúhuī's eyebrows went up, but it was the growl from behind that claimed most of Mèng Huàn's attention. "Careful," Tiāngǒu said, and when Mèng Huàn glanced back, the dog was standing right behind him, those glowing red eyes almost on a level with Mèng Huàn's own. "Once I've had a taste of something, Moon Horse, I don't give up till I've had my fill." His nostrils flared, and he sucked a big breath through them. "And you, I could scarf all the way down to your fancy silver shoes."

Mèng Huàn could only stare, something cold and sharp as a tempered blade shivering through him; it took a fair amount of effort to roll his eyes and pretend he hadn't felt it. "Please. You can't expect me to believe you'd be willing to settle for a snack when a full, five course meal is waiting for you?"

Tiāngǒu blinked, and Mèng Huàn lowered his head and his voice. "My brother—" he began.

But Yúhuī cut him off: "—is the ruler of all Cōng Mǎ Guó. And as much as one might wish otherwise, discussing in more than general terms how he might be dislodged from that spot could be considered a crime were one to take the current statutes at face value." He began walking toward them, this gaze, as far as Mèng Huàn could tell, fixed firmly on Tiāngǒu's. "And we're a great believer in taking statutes seriously, aren't we, Tiāngǒu? It's by statute, after all, that you're entitled to custodianship of His Highness's domain." Reaching Tiāngǒu's side, Yúhuī finally raised his eyes to meet Mèng Huàn's. "Since that domain had been abandoned and left bereft by its former custodian, that is."

The mockery in Yúhuī's voice was quiet but definite, and Mèng Huàn didn't need to force the hair along his neck to bristle. "My exile—"

And again, Yúhuī cut him off, his face suddenly very close to Mèng Huàn's: "—doesn't concern me in the slightest!" the unicorn hissed. "In point of fact, sir, the only pony I can think of who's a greater fool than you is your bloated toad of a brother, and to dispose of you both, I need only sit back, enjoy the fine figs grown in the palace gardens, and read a leisurely book or two!"

The cold malice radiating from him filled Mèng Huàn even more than what he'd felt from Tiāngǒu, but then Yúhuī was turning away. "So thank you for stopping by, Your Highness. Since you showed yourself in, I believe you can show yourself out."

Like everything else in Cōng Mǎ Guó—Twilight rolled the phrase around on her tongue several times till she felt she was getting closer to pronouncing the pitch accents correctly—the palace archive was just different enough to shudder her to a stop every once in a while. Not so much because of the architecture or the color scheme or the slight alteration in the filing system, but, well, the names of the Canterlot Tower castellans and administrators, ponies whose lives she'd written reports about during her years as Celestia's student, none of them were the same. None of them!

And yes, she was expecting it. But each and every time she unrolled a scroll, her eyes jittered across the names like a poorly inked quill across parchment.

She still managed to piece things together, of course. Even though the mares she remembered were all stallions here and vice versa, they all seemed to have done pretty much the same things, and she found her way eventually to the right room and the right section and the right shelves for official government contracts from six hundred years ago.

Dusty didn't begin to describe the place, the only light creeping down from a window as narrow as a knife slit up near the ceiling. Using her own hornglow, she found the paperwork detailing Tiān Shàng's agreement with Tiāngǒu; she found the increasingly concerned notes from the palace astronomers; she found copies of the frosty correspondence Tiān Shàng had sent asking Tiāngǒu if all was well—

And that was it. The files ended there without any of the notarized documents the contract said Tiān Shàng needed to cancel the contract, no required list of grievances, nothing! She even looked through the other sections on the surrounding shelves just in case the paperwork had gotten put away in the wrong place, but she didn't find any of the forms or letters she needed to find.

Panic started tightening her stomach, but she forced it away, took a breath and a step back. A little thought brought her exactly the spell she needed, and closing her eyes, she cast it, let it expand out from her like fragrance from a flower. And when she opened her eyes, she could see the magical residue of every spell that had been cast here in the past five years, the stuff lumpy and glittery and clinging to the scrolls and the shelves.

Or rather, she couldn't help noticing, clinging to the scrolls in one particular section of shelving: the section she'd been looking through that contained everything related to Tiāngǒu. The rest of the room didn't show any signs of activity either magical or otherwise, and that made suspicious little wheels start turning in Twilight's head.

Leaving the archives, she let the motion of those wheels start other wheels, thoughts tumbling through her like a stream across a bed of stones. Unfortunately, the ideas that insisted on washing out the other end weren't any she much liked, so she kept turning and returning them, her steps carrying her out of the palace library and back upstairs to the lab where Bómù's mirror still stood embedded in the apparatus she'd built around it.

Her reflection had bags under its eyes, and she realized that she hadn't really gotten a full night's sleep since arriving in this universe. Had that really only been two days ago?

She reached out, touched the mirror's hard, cold surface, and couldn't help wondering if all this was happening in Equestria, too. Had some female sky dog shown up demanding to take control of Luna's moon? She'd certainly never heard of Celestia making a deal like Tiān Shàng had made with Tiāngǒu, but, well, even after all these years, Twilight seemed to learn new things every week or two about her former mentor and current friend....

Behind her, darkness flowed through the doorway, Mèng Huàn stepping into the room with a sinuous grace that made Twilight catch her breath. "Ah," he said with a sideways smile. "Looking for a way out?"

Heart pounding—not because he was so attractive, she told herself, but because of the plan she'd been forming on her way up from the archives—she turned around and shook her head. "I don't leave problems unsolved," she said, a little surprised at how resolute she sounded.

Mèng Huàn's ears perked, and his smile made Twilight do some inner chiding when the word 'adorable' appeared so quickly in her thoughts. "Good news, then?" Mèng Huàn asked.

"Ah." Twilight cleared her throat and told him about the missing paperwork and the magical residue, his ears slowly wilting and his expression getting blanker and blanker.

"So," he said when she'd finished. "Somepony stole the documents."

Twilight held up a hoof. "Not just anypony. Yúhuī grew up here in the palace, so I'm sure he knows the layout; I'm sure he has the power to get in and out undetected; and after his break with Tiān Shàng, I'm definitely sure he would spend some time planning his revenge. Back home in the detective stories I've read, they call that 'motive, means, and opportunity.'" She couldn't keep her own ears up. "And since you're asking, I'm going to guess you weren't able to trick them into turning on each other?"

"Alas." Mèng Huàn sat on the floor of the lab, his mane barely billowing around his shoulders. "This Yúhuī is annoyingly focused and determined." That smile pulled his muzzle again, his dark eyes growing warm. "As opposed to another pony of my recent acquaintance who is proving quite delightfully focused and determined." He nodded to her. "I'm assuming, therefore, that you have a plan."

It took some effort for Twilight to pull her gaze away from his, but even more effort for her to look back up at him again. "I know I've got no right to ask this, not with the way we've only just met, but—" She took a breath and blew it out. "Do you trust me, Mèng Huàn?"

"Unhesitatingly," he said so quickly, Twilight had to blink a few times before she could answer.

"But—" And even though it would make her plan more difficult, she still had to say it: "I'm not Bómù!"

He smirked. "Thank the midnight sky for that."

She couldn't keep from giving a little stomp. "This is serious, Mèng Huàn!"

"It is, yes." In the quiet, his voice seemed to deepen. "Bómù has saved my life, both literally and metaphorically, at least three times, and among all ponies, I love him second only to my brother. So, yes, you are not him, but I have seen and sensed your greatness and your gentleness, the qualities that earned Bómù my brother's love and earned him wings very similar to those you yourself wear so fetchingly. So, yes, Twilight Sparkle, I shall once again agree with you. You are not Bómù." The light in his eyes made Twilight never want to look away. "And I shall also say again: thank the midnight sky for that."

Everything in her shaking and whirling, Twilight couldn't keep from blurting out, "'Cause you need to give the moon to Tiāngǒu!"

"What?" The warm quiet shattered, Mèng Huàn actually leaping back from her. "You...you would have me abdicate?"

With an almost physical wrench, Twilight forced her mind toward the plan she'd come up with. "Tiāngǒu will take your power, and knowing what I know about Sunset Shimmer, I'm absolutely certain that Yúhuī already has some spell set up to transfer that power to him. And once he's shown his true self, all monstrous and stuffed full of magic and malice, that's when we'll be able to stop him, strip him of that power, and return it to you."

Mèng Huàn's jaw hung open, and the eyes that had shone so invitingly a few seconds ago were now staring at her like she'd suddenly sprouted scales. "That's madness!" he choked out.

"It's balance." Still shivering, Twilight slipped into the relative comfort of her lecture voice. "My experiences have shown again and again that the power of Harmony ebbs and flows in direct proportion to the power of Disharmony rising up against it. Harmony is a reactive force, dormant when unopposed and only responding in equal measure when it's attacked." She couldn't stop a little grin. "My friend Pinkie Pie says, 'Never play an ace when a deuce'll do,' and that seems to be how Harmony handles things. Except, well, a lot of the time it won't do anything at all till that other ace gets slapped down on the table."

The air didn't seem quite as close to shattering around them; at least Mèng Huàn was listening instead of galloping from the room. Twilight swallowed and presented her conclusion. "So I say we force the issue. Give Tiāngǒu what he wants, and when Yúhuī reveals his plan by betraying Tiāngǒu and trying to take over Cōng Mǎ Guó, we'll be able to summon up the local version of Rainbow Power and stop him."

"'We?'" Mèng Huàn asked.

Twilight blinked, the flaw in her plan suddenly jabbing her like a nutshell in her gums. Still, she went on: "Bómù's friends and I. I mean, they're practically the same as my friends back home, so we should certainly be able to...to..."

Seeing his wide eyes, more than a little white around the rims, made her voice trail off; she swallowed, stepped closer, and touched his shoulder. "I can stall Yúhuī for a day, I'm pretty sure, but then I'll have to admit that the paperwork to prove that Tiān Shàng cancelled Tiāngǒu's contract just isn't here." The muscles under his velvety hide were tense, hard as granite against her hoof, in fact, and Twilight couldn't keep from rubbing his shoulder, wanting nothing more than to soothe him. "I'll make an excuse to head back to Ponyville today—I mean, back to Xiǎo Mǎ Chéng—and I'll talk to Bómù's friends. If we can't come up with a better plan, I'll bring them back with me tomorrow, and we'll do what we always do: get the bad guy."

Mèng Huàn remained frozen; without even thinking, Twilight cast a warming spell over the hoof she was rubbing his shoulder with in the hope that it might help. His eyes rolled closed, though, and he shivered, something Twilight didn't know how to interpret. "In my head," he said quietly, "I have this voice. It's the voice that convinced me to embrace my jealousy and hatred a thousand years ago, the voice that convinced me to continue punishing myself with the Yè Biān Zǐ after my return."

Not knowing what else to do, Twilight kept caressing his shoulder, but when his eyes opened, she almost froze herself, the expression she saw there harder by far than his tense muscles. "That voice right now, Twilight, is trying to convince me that it's no coincidence that you and Yúhuī and Tiāngǒu all appeared at exactly the same time. It wants me to think that the three of you are working together, that you conspired somehow to eliminate Bómù and are now bent on destroying me and usurping my domain."

"You—" Twilight could barely get the words out. "You don't really believe that, do you?"

For half an instant, she was sure he did, was sure he was going to do something rash and terrible and that she would have to do something just as terrible to defend herself from him. But then he drew in a great, shuddering breath, everything about him relaxing as he blew it back out. "I don't," he said, and the tiny curve of his smile made Twilight feel warm all over. "I've come to the opinion that this particular voice doesn't have my best interests at heart, and I'm vowing here and now that I will no longer heed its advice." His gaze darted over to where she was still rubbing his shoulder, and his smile grew. "Thank you for that, by the way."

"Eeep!" Embarrassment flooding her, Twilight pulled her hoof away. "I'm so sorry, Mèng Huàn! I didn't mean to—!"

"To comfort me?" The smile spread to his dark eyes, and the warmth around Twilight spread, too. "To reassure me? To help me through a rough patch as friends often do?"

"Oh. Well. Yes." Twilight couldn't stop a giggle. "That. Those three things. That's exactly what I meant to do."

"Then you succeeded." He reached out and touched her hoof so gently, it felt more like the flutter of a passing bird's wing. "Still, we'd best inform Tiān Shàng."

Tiān Shàng was holding court, of course, something Twilight had watched Celestia do innumerable times. She'd even done it herself on a small scale, opening her palace in Ponyville for a few hours a couple afternoons a week so folks could stop by who might have questions or concerns about matters of friendship.

But there seemed to be a good deal more pageantry involved here. Back in Canterlot, it was pretty much just Celestia or Luna with their respective chamberlain meeting whatever ponies had sought an audience atop the throne room dais, but peering in through the back doorway of the Yuè Mǎ Jīng throne room, Twilight saw unicorns with long trumpets floating in front of them, heralds in brightly colored tunics standing at the public entrance, scribes and scholars speaking quietly to each other or working at small desks spread around the base of the throne.

"My brother," Mèng Huàn murmured behind her, a chuckle in his voice. "I can recall a time when he would've snorted roundly at such protocol." His sigh wafted across Twilight's neck and made the hair stir at the base of her mane. "At least my exile had one positive consequence."

"More than one," Twilight said quickly, looking back and up at him. "I've been researching an article for several months now that I plan to submit to the Canterlot Historical Society about the way that modern Equestria largely owes its existence to the millennium our two princesses spent apart. If Bómù was working on a similar article—" She stopped, a thought wrinkling her brow. "Though if he's been developing mirror magic, he probably hasn't had much opportunity to do much else. Still, I can look through his files and—"

"It's all right, Twilight." The twinkle in Mèng Huàn's eye got her feeling all warm again. "After we get the mirror working properly, you can send me a copy of your article once it's published." He squinted, and a bubble of light popped from the tip of his horn. "Let me get Tiān Shàng's attention, and we can begin putting your plan into action."

Doubts about her plan started bubbling louder and faster in her brain—how it wasn't so much a plan as an extended bout of wishful thinking, for instance—but she pushed them all down to watch Mèng Huàn's bubble drift almost invisibly out into the throne room. It wafted to the top of the dais and popped beside Tiān Shàng's ear just as his most recent supplicant was turning away.

Tiān Shàng's ears folded then, and he stood with a whisk of his sunrise colored tail. "Forgive me," he announced, all the courtiers' heads startling up from their work. "Some urgent business has just come to my attention, so court will stand in recess for one half of an hour." He bowed to the room, descended the steps with every bit as much elegance as Celestia, and moved in a stately fashion toward the doorway Twilight was peering through.

Stepping back, she nodded to him as he came in, closing the door behind himself. "Your message said a half hour, brother." His smile had a few more teeth in it than Twilight had ever seen from Celestia. "Will routing these villains take so short a time?"

"Not entirely, no." Mèng Huàn looked at Twilight. "Tell him what you didn't find."

"Didn't?" Tiān Shàng's ears folded again, but then his expression darkened like a stormy afternoon. "Yúhuī's taken the paperwork, I assume?"

Twilight kept her voice quiet. "The way magic loses the individual markers of the unicorn who cast it so quickly, there's no way to prove that the residue I found in the archives came from Yúhuī: it was just too old. But if I can make him think that I have a way of further testing it—" And as quickly as she could, she explained what she had in mind. "I don't like it," she finished. "But with Sunset Shimmer, we had to wait till she hit rock bottom and had actually transformed into a monster before we could show her how she was destroying herself." With a swallow, she looked up at Tiān Shàng. "So I'd be happy to hear any other idea. Any other idea at all."

For a couple breaths, Tiān Shàng remained motionless and scowling; then he turned to Mèng Huàn. "Your thoughts, brother?"

Almost hoping he would stomp in disgust and demand they come up with something better, Twilight shivered a little when Mèng Huàn just exhaled loudly through his nostrils. "I'm not fond of it either." Another of those partial smiles pulled his lips. "But I can think of no ponies into whose hoofs I would rather put my life than the two of you."

"Very well!" Tiān Shàng's wings shot open, light filling Twilight's eyes. And when they cleared, the three of them were standing in a stretch of hallway outside an ornately carved and arched door, the guards on either side straightening to attention. "Tiāngǒu!" Tiān Shàng called. "Yúhuī Yì Yào! We come with information regarding the case you've brought before us! May we enter?"

A moment of silence, then the door swung open, Tiāngǒu looming behind Yúhuī, the unicorn standing there with that smug look on his face. "Of course. I somehow suspect it'll be good news you've brought to my friend and myself."

Just the tone of his voice made Twilight want to grind her teeth, but instead, she pasted as honest a smile as she could manage over her snout and followed Tiān Shàng inside, Mèng Huàn gliding quietly in behind her. "Actually," she said, "the news is that I'll need at least till tomorrow morning to complete my task."

"What?" All Yúhuī's smugness tightened into anger. "All you had to do, girl, was look for some paperwork! Are you entirely incompetent?"

Tightening her own smile just a bit, Twilight sparked her horn. "Not entirely," she said, and knowing he would recognize it, she began spinning the residue detection spell. "It's just that I found several things I wasn't expecting in the archives, and I'd like to analyze them a bit further."

Yúhuī's brow had wrinkled at the first glimmer of Twilight's magic, but she was more than a little pleased to see his eyes go wide in what could only have been alarm as she continued demonstrating the spell. "Back home," she went on, "I have exactly the books I need in my library, so I'm hoping Bómù has similar books in his. And I'm sure you'll agree that it'd be quite a shame to taint my final decision by conducting an incomplete investigation." She looked from him to Tiāngǒu. "You've already had to go through so much to stake this claim, sir, I know you wouldn't want some last minute snag to make things even more difficult."

Tiāngǒu snorted. "Do whatever you want, pony." And when he smiled, it was nasty and greasy and made Twilight want to head for the nearest bathtub. "I always find that obstacles of this sort stimulate the appetite."

Again, she refused to show her reaction and turned her attention back to Yúhuī. His forehead was wrinkled, but Twilight could almost smell his mind spinning, trying to figure out if she really had a way of doing something as impossible as tracing old magical residue back to the spell's original caster. "Very well," he said slowly. "You may have till tomorrow's dawn, Miss Sparkle. As you say, we all want this to be done correctly. In fact—" A bit of his previous smugness returned. "Perhaps I should come with you and help you search for—"

Tiān Shàng's snort cut him off, Twilight almost shying sideways at its vehemence. "With my brother's life at stake, perhaps I should call out every professor from my university to assist! Perhaps several squadrons of the royal guard would be useful as well!"

"Or perhaps—" Mèng Huàn's silken voice drifted through the air as gentle as moonlight. "We should trust Princess Twilight to know what she's doing and how best to do it." His words took on a midnight coldness. "That is what we all agreed to in this case, is it not?"

The uncertain silence that followed almost got Twilight's wings rustling, but then Yúhuī shrugged and waved toward an alcove lined with bookshelves. "The only things I miss about Yuè Mǎ Jīng are the libraries and the kitchens, and I have no objection to indulging myself in them till tomorrow morning." He gave Tiān Shàng a scowl. "And don't be melodramatic. Tiāngǒu taking control of the moon won't endanger Mèng Huàn's life any more than you controlling it during his exile did." Shaking his head, he turned for the alcove. "So send up a steward when you go, will you? I'd like to order lunch."

A snickering drew Twilight's gaze back to Tiāngǒu. "Go on," the dog rumbled. "We'll be here when you get back."

Too busy stewing over everything that could still go wrong, Twilight didn't even notice that neither of the two princes spoke till they'd all traveled several corridors from the Mù Lán Shǔ Suite. "So," Tiān Shàng said then, startling her out of her thoughts. "I've got to get back to court. You should get some rest, brother, and Twilight, I—" He swallowed. "I'll see you tomorrow."

"You will," she said, trying to put some firmness in her voice.

Nodding, he spread his wings; light swirled around him, and he was gone.

She turned then to Mèng Huàn, and everything inside her tightened up, wanting so much to say something comforting. But— "I'll see you tomorrow, too," was all she could get out.

"You will," he replied, a calmness around the big, dark stallion that she couldn't face.

Spinning, Twilight flared her horn, teleported to a point just above the castle's highest tower, and began pumping her wings toward Xiǎo Mǎ Chéng. She would find a way to do this. She would. She would.

5 - Wǔ

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Fortunately, during his patrol that evening, Mèng Huàn sniffed out another spot in the dreamscape where the guǐ guài were beginning to bore their way through his barriers. So he was able to spend several satisfyingly crunchy hours concentrating on pest control rather than on whatever tomorrow's dawn might bring.

Not that he had lost faith in Twilight. In fact—and he tried not to think about this, too—he had perhaps too much faith in her. Because, yes, he had dealt with many a monstrous and disreputable character during his centuries serving Cōng Mǎ Guó, and yes, neither of those adjectives could apply to Twilight Sparkle in the slightest. But still—

No. That foul little voice in his head was absolutely and completely wrong. That she had appeared when Bómù had disappeared and had been followed almost immediately by Tiāngǒu and Yúhuī was utter coincidence. Of this, Mèng Huàn was more than certain.

Bringing his hoofs down smartly upon the final brace of squirming vermin, he couldn't help smiling at the thought of Twilight—

And a part of his dream sense tolled like a deep and distant bell: Twilight had just fallen asleep, he realized. The quiet gong went off again, and his ears perked up. She wasn't just asleep; she was also trying to direct her dreams toward him, her attempts to stir his realm shaky but not entirely without skill.

A conjured waterfall sluiced the bug guts from his shoes, and he whisked himself from the darker borders of his domain to the more hospitable portions near the center. Following her unmistakable lavender scent, he stepped through a shimmering wall into a dream of deep blue skies and white fluffy clouds only to see Twilight herself hovering with her eyes closed just to his left. Her head kept nodding, touching her horn to the pearlescent surface that in all actuality, she shouldn't have been able to sense in the slightest. Each touch made the whole dream waver, and each waver sent out the signal he'd been hearing.

Staring, he recognized it as a technique he'd taught to Xīng Xuán Wō more than a thousand years ago, though he couldn't recall the sorceress ever actually using it to contact him. He'd thought a few times about teaching it to Bómù, but Twilight's Princess Luna had apparently done more than just consider it...

Twilight's mouth went sideways. "C'mon, c'mon!" she muttered. Her eyes came open, and she started back. "Mèng Huàn! Is...is it you, or am I dreaming?"

Glad that his dark complexion hid his blushes so well—Tiān Shàng would surely have had something to say about how a gentlecolt shouldn't stare at a mare without her knowledge—he couldn't help cocking his head and smiling. "Am I the sort you're likely to dream about?"

That got her blushing, but she cocked her head and smiled as well. "I'll answer that if you'll tell me how long you've been standing there watching me." Her smile faded. "Seriously, though, I talked things over with Píng and Hóng and everypony, and while we're not entirely sure what we'll be able to do, we all agreed that we need to be there and ready to do something in the morning in case anything happens." Her smile came back more than a little sheepishly. "So I kind of commandeered the midnight postal express train, and we're all on route. We should be there just before dawn."

Something loosened in Mèng Huàn's chest, a tightness he hadn't even noticed till it was gone and he could take a full breath. "I shall look forward to your arrival," he decided to say instead of one of the more effusive sentiments he could feel lurking about on the back of his tongue.

"Me, too," Twilight said, and for half a heartbeat, Mèng Huàn thought she might say more. But she yawned instead, her ears folding and a hoof covering her mouth. "Oh! I'm so sorry! I just—"

"You need your sleep." He bowed to her. "You shall all have as pleasant a night as I can give you in the hope that you might be refreshed when next we meet in the waking world." He puffed a gentle breath over her; her eyes rolled closed, and one of the clouds around them drifted up so she could settle into deeper slumber atop it.

Tempted to lean down and press a gentle kiss to her forehead, Mèng Huàn instead leaped through the wall of her dream and out into the larger dreamscape, a troubling thought prodding at him for the first time.

If he was indeed forced to give up the moon, how would that affect his role here? All his duties were linked, of course, but the more he considered it now from his vantage point floating above the assembled and assorted dream worlds of his charges, he realized that he'd always seen his role as Night Bringer in a secondary light. Dream was his name, after all, and serving the ponies of Cōng Mǎ Guó as their Dream Guardian gave him a satisfaction nothing else in his long, long life ever had.

So what would happen to the dreamscape should Tiāngǒu and Yúhuī succeed?

Gritting his teeth, Mèng Huàn plunged through the aethersphere to the outer reaches of his realm. In his heart of hearts, he had to admit that he expected the next day to be fairly ugly despite all Twilight's efforts, so the best use of his time now, he felt, would be in reinforcing the boundaries and barriers around here. No matter what happened, he swore that he would return, but, well, his previous absence had lasted a thousand years, and while his brother had done what he could, Tiān Shàng was too connected to the waking world to enter here with any more force than a simple daydream. Mèng Huàn had in fact only gotten things back up and running correctly in his realm within the last dozen moons...

Time flew, Mèng Huàn circumnavigating his entire domain. At one point, he felt a rustle of something from Twilight, but when it vanished before he could begin turning his attention in that direction, he realized that she must've woken. Rising a bit closer to the waking world himself, he sensed the time for dawn approaching—

And further sensed a disturbance, something as rough and uncomfortable as sand against his inner eye. With a snort, he brought himself to full consciousness, leaped from bed, perked his ears, and held his breath.

Alarms clanged somewhere on the palace grounds; concentrating on them, Mèng Huàn let his magic carry him vapor thin and lightning fast to the guard barracks. Lights blazed from the windows, ponies inside quickly pulling on their armor while those outside loaded the emergency carts with rope and sandbags and other equipment. And with the sun not yet up, all Cōng Mǎ Guó was still under his jurisdiction.

Mèng Huàn coalesced beside the burly pegasus directing traffic from a perch above the barracks gate. "Report, captain," he said.

The captain saluted but didn't, Mèng Huàn was glad to see, cease from his duties. "Dam collapse, Your Highness, between here and Xiǎo Mǎ Chéng. Washed out the train tracks and a nearby settlement of farmers. Good thing this new Princess Twilight was right there with Prince Bómù's friends: the message we got says they're pulling folks out, rescuing cattle and sheep, and doing what they can to hold things together till we arrive." He cast a sideways glance at Mèng Huàn. "So if you'll pardon me, Your Highness?"

"Yes, of course." Mèng Huàn refused to let his voice falter and stepped back. "Carry on."

With another quick salute, the captain flapped to the top of the lead cart. "Company! Move out!" he shouted, and the ponies in harness pulled the entire convoy out of the courtyard at nearly a gallop.

His internal clock chimed; not letting himself think, he whisked away to the balcony outside Tiān Shàng's apartment.

"Brother?" Tiān Shàng asked, his brow wrinkled. "Did I hear emergency gongs?"

"You did," Mèng Huàn answered.

But before he could continue, a gruff voice said behind him, "A tragedy, really."

Whirling, he blinked to see Tiāngǒu and Yúhuī, the two of them sitting at the end of the balcony, the big dog's eyes glowing in the light from Tiān Shàng's room. "Except," Yúhuī said with the smallest of shrugs, "it could hardly be called a tragedy. Those poor farmers did nothing to bring their misfortune upon themselves."

"True." Tiāngǒu shook his head. "Perhaps an investigation of the construction company who built the dam will be in order." His smile spread jaggedly along his snout. "I'll look into it once I take my rightful place as steward of the night."

"Dam?" Tiān Shàng's mane puffed out. "Has there been an accident?"

"No." Mèng Huàn took a step toward the two and could barely keep from shouting. "If you know about it, then you were there. And that means it was no accident."

Yúhuī merely shrugged again. "I'm sure Tiāngǒu's investigation will be both complete and thorough, but for now"—he nodded toward the eastern horizon—"perhaps we could have the dawn and bring this farce to its conclusion?"

The crystal blue of Tiān Shàng's mane was absolutely bristling, something Mèng Huàn didn't think he'd seen in a dozen centuries. "What have you done, Yúhuī?"

Tiāngǒu growled, a rumble of thunder under his words. "That doesn't matter, Tiān Shàng! What matters is that I've been the very soul of patience these past two days! But I have rights under the agreements we signed, rights that you will honor!" His voice dropped. "Or you and this entire world will pay the consequences."

Tiān Shàng seemed ready to continue arguing, but Mèng Huàn lit his horn. "The rescue efforts, brother, will go much more smoothly in the light of day." He reached out, pushed the moon downward—

And felt it slip from his magical grasp like ice beneath his hooves. "Ahhh," Tiāngǒu said, his eyes slitting halfway shut. "That's what I've been missing."

The suddenness of the loss struck Mèng Huàn so squarely in the chest, it stole his breath and made him gasp. "Damn you!" Tiān Shàng shouted. "We know Yúhuī took those letters! If Twilight were here—!"

"She's not," Yúhuī said, Mèng Huàn unable to stop a shiver. "And what you know doesn't matter in the slightest if you can't prove it."

The whole world seemed to freeze then, Tiān Shàng's eyes narrowing to slits. "This is my domain," he whispered, yet the building seemed to shake.

A grin stretched tight across Yúhuī's muzzle. "You admit it, then? Should we call you Emperor Tiān Shàng now? Or perhaps you'd prefer the title of Tyrant?"

"Brother." Mèng Huàn concentrated and managed to gather enough air into his lungs. "Follow the law. Raise the sun. And trust."

For another long moment, nothing continued moving anywhere around Mèng Huàn. Then with a sigh that was very nearly a snort, Tiān Shàng bowed his head. His horn began to glow, the eastern horizon did as well, and Yúhuī gave a chuckle that to Mèng Huàn's ears contained more than a little nervous relief. "So predictable," the unicorn said, and when the first ray of morning light washed over the balcony, Yúhuī's fiery coat seemed to grab it and hold it suspended. "And as you cannot prove you ever cancelled the contract with my friend Tiāngǒu, I believe the power of the night will now devolve back to him."

Something lurched deep inside Mèng Huàn's chest, and for all that he knew resistance would prove useless, he couldn't keep from trying to clamp his teeth shut as the burning, wriggling sensation forced itself upward along his throat. The pressure built and built, his head pounding until he couldn't breathe, couldn't think, couldn't stop his jaw from popping open. Thick tendrils of silvery light spewed from his mouth in a twisting rush and burst across the balcony to smack straight into Tiāngǒu.

The dog's smile grew, the silver flow vanishing into his black hair and giving it a shimmer like oil on water.

Mèng Huàn refused to let himself collapse. "We will...appeal this," he managed to say, wincing at how hollow the words sounded.

"Of course." Yúhuī stepped toward Tiāngǒu, his horn flaring with the beginning of a spell. "But without copies of those letters or some other proof, I can't imagine you'll have a leg to stand on. Speaking of which"—lightning arched from him to Tiāngǒu—"why don't you sit, boy?"

The foul stink of Yúhuī's horrible magic made Mèng Huàn gasp—

But the lightning fizzled as it stuck Tiāngǒu. "Ah." The big dog turned his grin toward Yúhuī. "Sweet treachery." He smacked his lips, reached a paw up to his own neck, and made a jerking motion.

A tube of light suddenly appeared squirming between Tiāngǒu and Yúhuī, Tiāngǒu holding one end of it and detaching it from himself with an audible pop. "Speaking of predictable," he said, and flexing his foreleg, he whipped the tube of light into motion, cracking it out to wrap several coils around Yúhuī's neck.

The unicorn's gasp choked off, and Tiāngǒu wrenched the coils tighter, hauling Yúhuī partly into the brightening air. "Astonishing." The dog shook his head and turned to face Tiān Shàng. "In all my long, long life, I've never come across any being—pony, minotaur, griffon, or otherwise—who has hated another as much as this one hates you." He raised the tether a bit further, Yúhuī's eyes bulging and his front hooves scrabbling at the glowing coils. "He even cast a concealed siphon spell on me about two minutes after we first met, I assume in anticipation of this very moment when he planned to betray me."

Yúhuī's face turning redder and redder, Tiāngǒu shoved his snarling snout into it. "You truly thought I wouldn't feel such powerful and grotesque magic, fool? And now that you've actually activated it, you've rendered the agreement we signed null and void under the 'partners attacking partners' clause. Which means I have no further obligations to follow our contract's strictures either." Exposing most of his teeth, Tiāngǒu tossed his end of the glowing tether over the balcony rail. "A pleasure doing business with you, Yúhuī Yì Yào." The rest of the tether followed, yanking Yúhuī off his hooves; without another sound, the unicorn was hauled over the edge and vanished from sight.

Tiān Shàng reared back on his hind legs, unfurled his wings, shouted, "Yúhuī!" and leaped off the balcony after his former student.

Tiāngǒu either didn't notice or didn't care, those hungry, glowing eyes never straying from Mèng Huàn's. "And now for the rest of you," Tiāngǒu growled.

Summoning his remaining strength, Mèng Huàn leaped from the material realm into his true domain. Of course, ponies were waking up all over Cōng Mǎ Guó, lessening the dream world with each departure and thinning the power he could draw upon. Still, he could perhaps gather himself together here, then return to—

A huff of breath behind him, and something large and solid swept his hind legs out from under him. Trying to roll, he ended up tumbling instead, exhaustion making his wings flail rather than flap; he sprawled sideways, the cloudscape rough as gravel against his hide, and when he looked up, all he could see were Tiāngǒu's white teeth and red gaze. "Oh, yes." That voice, also rough as gravel, ground into his ears. "This is the tastiest part of all."

"How?" was all Mèng Huàn could squeeze out.

The dog shrugged his big shoulders. "When Tiān Shàng gave me the night to run, I sensed this realm just beyond my grasp. I tried to take more of your power so I could enter here, but Tiān Shàng fired me before I could manage it. For centuries, I brooded, then that fool Yúhuī appeared with the letters he'd stolen and asked me if I wanted another chance." Fire licked from Tiāngǒu's eye sockets. "And once I've taken over their dreams, the ponies will either make me the sort of god you and your brother so stupidly refuse to be, or I will destroy them."

Planting his hooves, Mèng Huàn pushed himself up, lowered his head, and gave the only possible response: "No."

Somehow, Tiāngǒu's grin widened even further. "Good," he said. "The meat's always sweeter when it tries fighting back."

"Go!" Píng shouted below her. He gave the rope holding the retaining wall in place another tug. "We got this!"

Water thundered past, the flood deflecting off the barricade Twilight had thrown into place using chunks from the shattered dam. A quick glance upriver and back down again showed her the immediate threat was over—the amount of water still left in the reservoir and the height of the makeshift levees they'd constructed made her almost certain the town was safe—but still she hesitated. "You're sure?" she called back.

"One hundred percent!" Hóng swooped in to hover beside her, either sweat or water dripping from his mane. "Whatever's happening with Mèng Huàn, it's happening right now, and you're the only one who can get there in time! So buck those jerks in the teeth, and we'll be along quick as we can!"

Nodding, panting, her horn already buzzing with low-level exhaustion, Twilight closed her eyes, visualized the tower of the palace at Yuè Mǎ Jīng, and cast her teleportation spell.

Her ears popped at the change in altitude, but it was the magical turbulence in the area that nearly spun her around. Focusing on the center of the roiling waves of energy, she dove for what had to be Tiān Shàng's balcony, the construction and position reminding her of the spot back home where Luna and Celestia got together every morning to lower the night and raise the day.

Two figures lay sprawled across the balcony: one large and white, the other smaller and golden-yellow. Fear drove her to steepen her dive, questions bursting through her, but when she pulled up to land, she saw the glow of Tiān Shàng's magic surrounding Yúhuī, angry red burns all around the unicorn's throat.

Without another thought, Twilight rushed forward, added her magic to the mix, and slowly the marks faded, Yúhuī's ragged breathing smoothing out.

Only then did Tiān Shàng settle back, everything about him as brittle as ancient porcelain. "Twilight," he said, his voice hollow. "The dam collapse. All's well?"

"As well as we could manage." Twilight could barely keep from yelling. "Where's Mèng Huàn? What happened?"

"Tiāngǒu." Tiān Shàng nodded to Yúhuī, motionless other than his sides rising and falling. "Yúhuī did exactly as you thought, but Tiāngǒu was prepared. He...he strangled Yúhuī in his own spell, threw him off the balcony, then leaped for Mèng Huàn, and I...I—" Tiān Shàng's ears folded, and Twilight realized he was trembling. "I didn't even think. I dove off after Yúhuī and left my brother to that...that—"

"Why?" a quiet and rasping voice asked. Twilight snapped her head over and saw Yúhuī pushing himself into a sitting position, his expression wavering every bit as much as Tiān Shàng's. "Why would you—? After everything I— You should've let me—" He put a hoof to his throat, his eyes wide and locked on Tiān Shàng. "Why?"

Tiān Shàng shrugged, the normally elegant motion jittery. "I've failed you so many times before, Yào Yào, I...I couldn't let myself fail you again."

Yúhuī's jaw dropped, and as much as Twilight didn't want to risk trampling the first budding blossoms of rapprochement she could practically smell flowering here— "Mèng Huàn," she said, forcing herself not to stomp the floor with all her might. "Where would Tiāngǒu have taken him?"

"The dreamscape." Yúhuī's gaze darted back and forth between Tiān Shàng and Twilight. "When I...I stole the paperwork from the archives and tracked him down to...to start all this, he said getting control of the dreamscape was his ultimate goal." His breathing began speeding up. "I didn't pay any attention since I planned to steal Mèng Huàn's power from him as soon as he took it in, but if that cur actually does take over the Realms of Dreams..." For the first time since Twilight had met him, every bit of smugness drained from Yúhuī Yì Yào.

Anger began darkening Tiān Shàng's face. "The dreamscape. Of course. The one place I cannot follow."

"I can." Twilight leaped up, her knees wobbling just a bit at the plan that sprang into her mind. "Kind of. But listen." She took Tiān Shàng's front hooves in hers. "You need to get to the scene of the dam collapse and get my friends—I mean Bómù's friends—I mean—" She shook her head quickly. "You know who I mean. Bring them back here as fast as you can so they can be standing by to use Rainbow Power or whatever you call it here." If we can even do it, she pointedly didn't say out loud: Tiān Shàng was looking unstable enough without bringing that up.

Another shake of her head, and she turned to Yúhuī with a swallow. "The only way I know to get into the dreamscape is by going to sleep. So when I confront Tiāngǒu there, the first thing he'll do is lash out to attack my body here." And for all that Twilight wasn't sure that this was the right way to go, she really didn't have any other choice at this point. She took a deep breath, her tired muscles twinging. "You're the only one who'll be strong enough to stop him from getting to me. Because if he so much as wakes me up, he'll have won, and none of us wants that."

"You—" Another layer of astonishment plastered itself over Yúhuī, then he blinked, and all his shivering firmed up. "I will not fail," he said with a nod.

Wishing she had time to think of something else, Twilight instead nodded back and turned to Tiān Shàng, the alicorn's scent a strange mix of sour and sweet, of fear and hope. "Then go," Twilight said to him, and pushing aside her doubts, she cast the dreamwalking spell Luna had been teaching her.

She'd almost gotten used to the initial swirl of disorientation—she could feel her physical self slump into a sleeping heap at the same time as she felt her immaterial self whisk away through the latticework of atoms and energy and into the tenuous uncertainty of the dreamworld. Forcing her inner eyes to open, she found herself standing on a cloud in the same infinite blue sky she always visualized at the beginning of any dream spell. With a focusing breath, she slid deeper into the magic, opened her inner eyes a second time, and saw the wall of her own personal dreamspace right beside her, the usually invisible partition curving now like a pane of glass up, down, and all around.

Tapping on this surface would get Luna's attention—and Mèng Huàn's as well, she'd discovered earlier. But attention wasn't her goal this time; the breath she took quivered in her lungs, and she had to take another before she could focus enough to sink even deeper into the magic. Opening her inner eyes a third time, she watched the glass soften and shimmer till it became something much more like a gigantic soap bubble enclosing her.

One more breath, and spreading her wings, she sparked her horn and threw herself with all her strength at the bubble's surface.

It popped, and so did the whole world, darkness crashing over her. Driving winds slammed her first one way, then the other, but following Luna's directions, she didn't tense up, didn't fight, didn't try for any sort of control. Instead, she imagined her muscles turning to butter, to ice cream, to flowing hot fudge—they'd been having dessert when Luna had explained this part of the spell to her the first time....

The memory made Twilight laugh, let her relax even further, and the winds were suddenly gusting through her rather than against her. Breathing the tumult in and blowing it out, she lowered herself along the slope into the last level of the spell.

The winds wheeled around once more until they were traveling with her, and opening her inner eyes the fourth and final time, she saw a world of silver, gray, and black, clouds like the palest possible cotton candy mounting to unimaginable heights and plunging to unfathomable depths.

And directly ahead, in a space that seemed to be both empty air and limpid water, two dark figures lunged and circled, spun and attacked: Tiāngǒu as black as the bottom of a mine shaft, forest fire red streaming from his eyes and snarls bursting past his bared teeth; and Mèng Huàn as black as a winter midnight sky, the starlight gleaming from his mane and tail as sharp as pinpricks.

Mèng Huàn was obviously lathered as well, his silver shoes striking the big dog but with less force each time. Gritting her teeth, Twilight rushed toward them, her horn protesting after the workout she'd already given it this morning, and fired the crystal entombment spell she'd learned from Starlight Glimmer at Tiāngǒu.

The spell flashed but not fast enough, the fight shifting so that the blast just grazed Tiāngǒu's left rear paw; the sudden weight of the crystal that formed around his leg, though, threw him off-balance, and Mèng Huàn's next kick flipped the dog over and sent him sprawling across the cloudscape.

The relief that gleamed in Mèng Huàn's eyes when he snapped his head around and his gaze met hers made Twilight want to start singing, and when he called her name, she drank it in as thick and nourishing as hot soup. She didn't dare let herself get lost in the sensation, though, and taking her stance beside him, she turned to where Tiāngǒu was climbing back to his paws.

"Princess?" The big dog's lips curled back. "You're a fool to come here." He stomped, and a shock wave roiled the thick air.

With a wince, Twilight tensed, hoping she'd read Yúhuī right. And when she didn't wake up—or get dragged screaming back to her squished and burning body—she let the hope she'd kept banked in her heart flare into a brighter flame. "Maybe I am," she said. "But you're the bigger one if you think you can get away with this."

Tiāngǒu roared and leaped, Twilight lighting her horn at the same time as Mèng Huàn. Their magic twined together, and it was like nothing Twilight had ever felt. Yes, she'd shared magic before with Celestia and Luna and even Tiān Shàng not too many minutes ago. But the silken smoothness of Mèng Huàn's power seemed to caress hers, seemed to touch parts of her nopony had ever touched, and her exhaustion fled, refreshed by the wonder that surrounded her.

"It's over!" she couldn't help crowing, directing their combined spell like a meteor straight at Tiāngǒu. "Yúhuī admitted to stealing the documents, so you've no right to Mèng Huàn's moon! No right at all!"

Her words seemed to strengthen the blast, and when it slammed into Tiāngǒu, the dog howled like an avalanche. The spell smacked him backwards, tumbling head over tail, and crashing into the invisible wall of the dreamscape, he smashed right through, the dimness shattering to the light of early morning.

With a gasp, Twilight sat up, a flickering dome of protection magic around her, Yúhuī hunkered down on the balcony floor next to her with his eyes clenched, his horn sparking, and sweat streaming down his face. Beyond the dome, she could make out ponies in motion—two large, five regular-sized—and one figure that had to be Tiāngǒu. "We're out!" she shouted. "Yúhuī! Drop your shield! Hurry!"

Yúhuī started back, his eyes snapping open, and the dome crumbled to sparks. Pushing herself to her hooves, Twilight sprinted for the others. "Hóng! Píng! Everypony! Rainbow Power! Now!"

"You got it!" she heard as well as "Yee-hah!" and "Whoo-hoo!" and "I should say so!" and "Oh, my!" Sliding into a spot between Fěn Hóng Bǐng and Lín Láng, Twilight gasped as light struck her from above, and while the multi-colored stripes and sigils that spread over the stallions beside her didn't look exactly like the ones she was used to, strength still flooded into her every bit as invigoratingly as it did back home.

Feeling grateful and angry and powerful and right, she rose into the air, her new friends who were also her old friends rising along with her. "Tiāngǒu!" she called in a voice that reverberated as if from unseen mountains. She turned her attention to the big black dog just climbing to his paws at the far end of Tiān Shàng's balcony and pointed a hoof at him. "You've got as much to unlearn as you do to learn, so how about we start you over from the beginning and see if you'll maybe turn out better this time?"

"What nonsense—?" Tiāngǒu started to shout.

But Twilight's idea had already rippled out through her connection to the others, all of them agreeing instantly—especially Wēi Fēng Fǔ, the veterinarian clapping his hooves together and declaring, "That'll be perfect!"

With one motion, they let the power of the rainbow arch upward, over, and down to inundate the still sputtering Tiāngǒu. "—is this?" came a squeakier voice, the colorful stripes swirling away to reveal a tiny black puppy running in circles. "No, no, no!" A silver mist drifted up and away from him, the puppy leaping on stubby legs and flailing his paws at it. "Mine, mine, mine!"

"Now, Tiāngǒu." Wēi Fēng Fǔ stepped forward and scooped the puppy into the crook of his foreleg. "You'll be coming with me to my house, and we'll see if we can't teach you some better manners."

The puppy gave a high-pitched growl and started gnawing on the tip of Fēng's hoof, but Twilight was focused more on the mist hanging in the air at the end of the balcony. If that was the power Tiāngǒu had taken from Mèng Huàn, why wasn't it going back to him?

For that matter, where was—?

Spinning, Twilight felt her throat constrict at the sight of Tiān Shàng standing as still as a marble statue over the collapsed form of—

"No!" Twilight crossed the balcony with one flap and slid to Mèng Huàn's side. Some of her panic puffed away when she saw his sides fluttering with his breath, but— "Why is he unconscious?" She tore her gaze away and looked up at Tiān Shàng.

The air around Tiān Shàng seemed to tremble. "His injuries," the elder alicorn said, his voice like the faintest breeze rustling a pine tree. "When Tiāngǒu tore his power from him, and whatever happened in the dream realm, he—"

"No!" Cradling his head in her wings, Twilight touched her front hooves to his muzzle, his eyes closed, much too much gray in his hide. "'Cause we won, Mèng Huàn! We stopped Tiāngǒu! Your power's right there! You just have to...have to wake up and take it back!" Not wanting to risk shaking him, not sure what to do, not able to see clearly with so much water filling her vision all of a sudden, Twilight leaned closer, Mèng Huàn's slightly parted lips right in front of her.

Without another thought, she pressed her lips to his, bent to touch her horn to his, wrapped her forelegs around him, willed the power flowing through her to cross over into him by any available method.

He stirred beneath her, and she pressed herself closer. "Mmmm," came a gentle growl from his throat, then his lips were moving against her, his forelegs and wings embracing her, drawing her even closer—

After that, she seemed to lose track of things for a while: how many minutes went by before she drew back to take a breath, she couldn't begin to imagine. All she knew was that her whole body tingled as she looked down at Mèng Huàn smiling up at her. "Good morning," he said, his words sweeter than cherry custard. She felt his hoof fluffing her mane where it spilled along the side of neck. "I've never cared for this 'rainbow power' look." His wings brushed hers, and she never wanted them to stop. "I must admit, though: you pull it off much better than Bómù does."

Giving him about a quarter of a glare, Twilight leaned forward to meet his lips again, the air around her alive with the whistles and woops of her friends.

6 - Liù

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Dear Prince Bómù—

Twilight smiled as she always did at the little notebook, her quill pen's two shadows wavering over its final page in the light cast by her horn and by the candle on her desk. Originally, she'd planned on writing these notes to Celestia as a way of keeping herself connected to home, but the more she'd thought about it in the days following Tiāngǒu's defeat and Yúhuī's return to the palace as Tiān Shàng's student, the more appropriate it had seemed for her to buy a diary of the sort she always kept in her desk at home, fill it out, then leave it in the drawer for Bómù to find after he got back...

According to the mirror gate's timer, the way between our universes will open once again in less than an hour. The pages of this notebook will tell you many of the adventures I've shared with our mutual friends here over the past twenty-seven days—

Though not all the adventures, she had to admit with another smile and a certain amount of warm tingling. She'd heard Rarity talk about how a lady didn't kiss and tell, and now that Twilight had done some kissing of her own, she found herself agreeing entirely.

—but I look forward to meeting you in person to review the many notes I'm certain you've made concerning your stay in Equestria.

She hesitated a moment, then wrote:

Your soon-to-be friend,

And signed it. She'd almost given in to her first urge and written "Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you" over and over across the remaining space at the bottom of the page. But this was a document for posterity, she couldn't forget, and—

"Twilight?" a hesitant voice called from the doorway, and Twilight glanced over to see Dào Gōu peering in. "You busy?"

"Just finishing up." Flexing her magic, Twilight tucked her quill into the inkwell, pulled open the drawer of Bómù's desk, and set the diary into the empty space where his should've been. "But you should be in bed, Gōu Gōu." With a grin, she wagged a hoof at the little dragon. "I don't want Bómù thinking I let you stay up till the middle of the night."

"I'm going, I'm going." Dào Gōu's annoyed look faded almost immediately. "I just...what you said at Bǐng's party earlier, how it wasn't really a going away party 'cause you're just gonna be in the universe next door and can come through the mirror anytime after you show Bómù how to fix it..." Dào Gōu's claws scritch-scratched the crystal floor as she shifted in place. "Did you mean that?"

"Well, of course!" Twilight couldn't keep from spreading her wings, hopping over, and giving Dào Gōu a hug. "I've had a wonderful time here this past moon, and my examination of Bómù's spell shows it to be remarkably stable for his first try at a mirror portal. Once we get the timing issues worked out, it shouldn't be any problem to maintain the connection. You could even come over and meet Spike!" Taking a step back, Twilight touched Dào Gōu's nose. "Though I don't know if any one universe could survive with both of you inside it."

"Ha, ha." Dào Gōu folded her arms, then started running her claws up and down along her shoulder scales. "But really, I— I mean, Bómù's great, and it'll be great having him back, but— Ever since Jīng Yíng Jiă married Prince Jié Zòu and moved up north, I...I've kinda missed having a sister, y'know? So these past couple weeks've been—" Her usual hot, dry scent grew humid in Twilight's nose, and she cleared her throat. "Anyway, I'm gonna make you your own bedroom down the hall so you'll have a place to stay any time you want to come visit."

Twilight had to clear her own throat before wrapping Dào Gōu in another hug. "Thanks, Gōu Gōu."

This time, it was Dào Gōu who pushed away. "And don't tell Bómù I let you call me that! 'Cause no one but him can call me that! And he can't, either!" She turned and stomped off down the hall as loudly as her little claws could manage. "Yeesh! Some ponies!"

A deep, wonderful chuckle behind her sent warm shivers rustling up Twilight's spine; she smiled, took a breath, and turned to see Mèng Huàn sitting with his legs tucked under himself on the balcony outside the open double doors, the moonlight shining soft and silver in his coat. "Might one be so bold as to say that you seem to have made some friends during your stay?"

And as much as she wanted to fly to him for a more interesting sort of hugging, she instead put on a semi-annoyed expression. "You mean the kind who spy on me through my bedroom window?"

Mèng Huàn blew loudly through his lips. "Amateurs! Those of us who really care for you spy on you in your dreams."

At that, she couldn't keep from jumping across the room to taste those lips, his perfect wings taking her and holding her. "You're lucky you're so cute," she said when she could. "Because otherwise, you'd be pretty creepy."

"Well?" He shrugged, her wings riding up and down where they rested on his shoulders. "I am a fiendish creature of the night, after all."

"Speaking of which—" She tapped his chest. "I stopped by Fēng's cottage this afternoon before Bǐng's party to check on Tiāngǒu. He's getting along well with the other puppies, but I...I'm pretty sure he still remembers everything that happened." She couldn't stop a shiver. "We'll need to work extra hard to make sure he doesn't grow up just as mean this time as he did the last time."

"Indeed." Mèng Huàn cocked his head. "Perhaps I should consider adopting him. Wēi Fēng Fǔ is an excellent veterinarian, of course, but I'm led to understand that a permanent home is much more conducive to a youngster turning out right."

Twilight blinked, the idea feeling absolutely right to her. "Of course! And having a pet'll be great for you, too! Why, Luna's opossum Tiberius is—" Saying Luna's name made Twilight's voice freeze, her thoughts snapping back to how soon the mirror was going to open and—

And send her home.

She looked past Mèng Huàn at Xiǎo Mǎ Chéng, the windows mostly dark, the town and the woods beyond bathed in moonlight.

"Twilight?" Mèng Huàn nuzzled her neck. "Is everything all right?"

"Yes, but—" She pressed the side of her head against his. "I don't want to go."

"You're not really going." His lips found her ear, and she had to close her eyes as he gave it a little nibble, his next words coming to her as the slightest of whispers: "That's what I've been telling myself all week so I wouldn't fall weeping into my oatmeal every morning. We'll be just steps away from each other. Just steps."

"I know, I know!" Unable to keep still, Twilight leaped from his embrace and started pacing back and forth across the balcony. "But we'll still have so many tests to run on the mirror's interfacial mechanisms! And even if they are as stable as they seem to be, it'd be sheer foolishness to risk multiple crossings! I mean, the passage between the universe where King Sombra was good and Celestia and Luna were evil stayed open for more than a thousand years, sure, but only because hardly anypony ever crossed through! And even then, every time Celestia used it, it grew more and more imbalanced till the flux rate ratios finally caused it to—!"

Mèng Huàn loomed up before her and gently pressed a hoof to her lips. "You'll fix it," he said, the confidence in his voice making Twilight's heart flutter. "You and Bómù together, I'm firmly convinced, will be well on your way to solving every problem in every possible universe before the next week is out."

Smiling, she gave his hoof a kiss. "I don't know, though." She put on her best phony pout. "I'm still thinking I might have to kick him in the head first."

"Always a popular option." He stepped back and spread his wings. "Still, we do have an appointment."

Twilight nodded, and looking up at her coltfriend, she had to swallow against the tightness in her throat. Four weeks ago, the idea of being in love had rarely if ever tickled its way into her thoughts. But now?

Now she couldn't imagine living another moment of her life without this amazing pony beside her.

And if she everything went right, she wouldn't have to. Spreading her own wings, she leaped into the night sky, felt him rising with her, his magic reaching out. She met it, twined her magic with his, and together they slipped into the spaces between space.

And so it came down to this in the end.

No, not the end! Mèng Huàn could barely stop himself from stomping the floor of his workshop. This was only the beginning, and barely even that!

Standing beside him, Twilight glanced up. "Looks like it's my turn to ask," she said, turning her attention back to the mirror, the timer floating above the glass having swept its pointer nearly all the way around its entire circle over the course of the previous four weeks. "Is everything all right?"

"It is." He draped a wing across the sweet curve of her back, felt the tension there, began stroking his feathers back and forth in a way he knew she enjoyed. "I do have to wonder, however, why you're so determined to play this out in this fashion. If your theory is correct, then you know why they did it, so you've no reason to—"

"I know, I know!" She squirmed under his wing, but then he felt her shoulders relax; with a sigh, she leaned against him. "I just want to hear them say it. That's all."

He nodded, and something pinged from the mirror. Looking forward, he watched the same silvery glow come over the reflective surface that he'd seen there four weeks—and a lifetime—ago.

This time, though, the glow began to ripple, and as he watched, it whisked away like a morning dew, the frame becoming a doorway into a room beyond. That room looked very much like his own workroom, Mèng Huàn could see, and in it stood a tall, dark, alicorn mare—Princess Luna, he assumed—with her wing brushing Bómù in almost exactly the same way that he was brushing Twilight.

Stepping away from him, Twilight stomped across the room and through the portal, Mèng Huàn following her. And while nopony said a word, when Mèng Huàn met Bómù's eyes, his friend's gaze darted away more quickly than any hummingbird.

Twilight settled to the floor like a thundercloud just inside the other workroom, Mèng Huàn sitting beside her and trying very hard not to let his astonishment show. He'd thought, after all, that getting to know Twilight and coming to appreciate the wonderful differences between her and Bómù would've prepared him for meeting his own doppelganger.

But instead of the sort of distorted reflection of himself that he'd expected, he found himself blinking at a flesh-and-blood pony. Yes, she was an alicorn mare, but Twilight had gotten him used to that once novel idea, and yes, her magic crackled the air around her in ways he'd never felt before. Still, his overall impression was less of meeting his mirror universe duplicate than of meeting a sister he'd never known he had...

The silence continued to thicken, Mèng Huàn keeping his promise not to say a word, then— "How?" Twilight asked.

Bómù glanced up at Luna, and she stuck her chin out. "I take full responsibility for what occurred, Twilight Sparkle, and I'll not have you placing any blame upon—"

"Umm, hello?" Bómù raised a front hoof. "Co-conspirator right here."

"Nonsense." Luna sniffed. "I instigated the crime; therefore, my guilt is greater."

"Not necessarily." Puffing out his chest, Bómù tapped it. "Without my technical know-how, none of this would've been possible."

Luna rolled her eyes. "Please. You were at most an enabler of my—"

Twilight cleared her throat with a volume and precision that Mèng Huàn had never heard before, and the mouths of the other two snapped shut with a simultaneous clicking of teeth. "Once again," Twilight said, her own teeth clenched, "I'm asking 'how'?"

The two swallowed so loudly, Mèng Huàn could hear it. Then Luna stepped forward, her head bowed. "I began researching mirror universe magic after we all returned from our adventure in the Crystal Empire during which the love of the unicorn Radiant Hope revivified that arch-fiend Sombra and began the process of his reformation. I could see how this silently tore at Celestia: the love of her life, after all, had been the Sombra of Starswirl's now inaccessible mirror universe. So I sought to discover a mirror realm where a third Sombra might be found with whom my sister could perhaps strike up some sort of correspondence."

With a sigh, Luna raised her head. "Casting about the universes, however, brought me nothing but silence. I was almost convinced that I'd somehow fumbled the spell until—" She looked down at Bómù, and Mèng Huàn recognized all too well the shimmering smile in her eyes. "Until I met Bómù's spell coming the other direction. And he— That is, I—" Her gaze fell to the floor again, all trace of a smile gone. "I'd had these dreams, Twilight, ever since you returned me to myself from the depths of the Nightmare, dreams where you...where I...where we—"

"Yes," Mèng Huàn said, knowing exactly what Luna didn't want to say. "Twilight and I have discussed my similar dreams concerning myself and Bómù."

Luna nodded, and Bómù blushed. "The more Bómù and I talked through the interface, the more intrigued I became by him. And I knew that I had to—that we had to..." She scratched one front hoof over the stone floor.

Nuzzling the side of her neck, Bómù gave his familiar sideways grin. "Just my luck, right, Mèng Huàn? The mare of my dreams, and she lived in another dimension."

More silence settled over them, and Mèng Huàn struggled not to break it. Even Twilight seemed to be wavering beside him, the storminess she'd been projecting slowly breaking up. "And?" she asked almost gently.

With a stomp, Luna gave a snort. "And we needed to maintain the balance! That was what doomed Celestia's romance with the alternate Sombra: the imbalance it caused between the universes! So for Bómù and I to be together, we...we had to...to—"

"To get us together," Twilight finished, poking Mèng Huàn in the side.

Bómù sighed. "It was the only way." His voice broke. "Luna said you thrived in adversity, Twilight, and Mèng Huàn's never happier than when he's helping someone in distress. So Luna and I, we engineered the mirror to strand you there, and...and..." He trailed off.

At this point, Mèng Huàn was finding it almost impossible to keep a straight face. Looking down, he was relieved to see Twilight finally smiling. "All right," she said. "But you owe us! And I mean a double date! With all the trimmings! Right now! At Pony Joe's!" She leaped forward to wrap a hug around the startled Luna. "And thank you! Thank you! Thank you!"

Letting all the laughter he'd been holding in burst out, Mèng Huàn leaped right behind her and scooped Bómù up in his magic. "Change the worlds for the better, I believe was the last thing you said to me!" He spun the younger alicorn around. "It's a good thing you so often know what you're talking about, Bómù Guāng Shǎn: that's all I've got to say!"

Wànlǐ Chángchéng / A Great Wall

by Baal Bunny

1 - Yī

2 - Èr

3 - Sān

4 - Sì

5 - Wǔ

6 - Liù

Appendix - Bèi Kǎo (The Names)