"I see. This could be the opportunity I have been waiting for." The Necromancer said with a grin as he ended the memory gaze spell on one of his changeling thralls. Raising his staff up, it glowed a dark and ominous purple and spread around the room like mist. Revealing thousands of undead. Some like Zombies, while some others were fully skeletal.

"Troops. Our opportunity is soon. The Changelings have been planning an invasion of Canterlot for some time. I say we use this to our advantage. But for now. Head to the outside of the everfree, along the edges. Gather as many ponies and other races within the forest that you can. We will need as much as we can if we are to take Canterlot. But try and not attract to much attention."

The undead shambled and left their underground lair. Intent on increasing their numbers according to the will of their master.

The past few days have been a real strange few, but that's what Daniel came to expect from ponyville by now. From a pair of bothers who ran bad business to a moody donkey who wanted to be left alone and not that long ago, Fluttershy was trying out for some kind of weather team, the past few days were certainly an adventure.

Daniel had to talk to a few of his friends at times. Like to Pinkie to tell her the harsh truth that not everyone wants to be friends or that 2 individuals might just be incompatible. She didn't like the idea and even denied it for a while but soon came to accept it. It did upset her for a while but not long later she returned to her old self after having her hair flat for about a day or 2.

There was also that fiasco with the news a while ago where a lot of ponies were outraged by what was being written, but Daniel managed to hide who he really was and not much cover was given to him but his friends were a different story. Turns out it was the 3 crusaders who had been spying on ponies to get almost private information on them and they soon learned not to do that.

Daniel didn't change his regular process of training in the slightest, if anything he increased how much he trained with Nature and pushed himself more often. The closer it got to the day that the Sphere would arrive only made him more anxious and desperate to destroy it so he was motivated to push himself further. This worked for the most part as he was able to pass most tests that Nature threw his way with flying colours, but he still felt like it wasn't enough.

One thing Daniel was surprised with was that Thorax and a few changelings had separated themselves from the Queen and decided to live with him. He spent that day looking through the forest to find them somewhere they could make a home and then linked it up to his lab with the other 2 doors. Thorax was thrilled and counting the changelings with him there was a total of 200. He learned this wasn't even a fraction of the whole hive's number but he was happy they managed to find their own way. Thorax took over as leader of that hive. Even if it was small he would try his best to rebuild it.

That was 1 week ago. Today Daniel received a letter sent by Celestia, asking him to meet her in person. She didn't say what but he was currently on his way to Canterlot to meet with her. All he had to do was teleport there after he made sure his house was in order and secure. He placed a bolted lock on the door leading to the basement so it could only be opened from inside the house on the forests side.

Another thing that happened that was a little strange was that Xaveroth seemed to have vanished. He did see him around every now and then, fooling around in the sky or around the forest but now he was gone completely. This made Daniel worried as the last time he saw him was before he went to the 5th dimension. He hasn't seen him since.

As he teleported into the throne room where Celestia sat she smiled and walked down to meet him. The guards were on alert at first but when they saw him they lowered their guard. As Celestia approached him he didn't see Luna and he felt bad as he has tried to find her possible apprentice who has probably became a necromancer in his spare time. But searching the forest proved futile as he found almost nothing. The only thing he found was little pockets of dark magic in different locations but nothing else.

He decided to ask Luna if she knew what they were and if she knew what to do. But for now he listened to what Celestia's request was for him.

"Morning Celestia." He said and bowed to say in character.

"Morning Cosmos. I assume you came because you got my message?" He nodded and she used her head to indicate to the right. "Then follow me. I have something to discuss with you." Looking at a guard at her throne door she gave an order. "Tell those who wish for an audience that I am in the middle of something important. Only come and find me if it's a threat to Canterlot or Equestria as a whole."

Walking down the hall with Celestia they decided to speak.

"What I am about to tell you I don't want you to tell Twilight. She will find out soon, but not now."

"What's happened?" She smiled

"Do you remember Shining armour and Princess cadence?" Daniel vaguely remembered another alicorn and a white unicorn that he remembered was Twilights older brother.

"Yes. Barely."

"Well they are getting married." She said looking out the window with a smile.

"Well, congrats. I'm sure Twilight will be thrilled to hear that." Celestia looked back at Daniel.

"So I have something to ask you. Since this will be a royal wedding, would you please help make sure everything goes smoothly? Normally I wouldn't ask this of anyone but you have proven to be loyal and you are strong enough to even keep Discord in line, which I admit even I can't do alone."

"So you want me to be a sort of guard? Well...when is the wedding?" He asked to see if he could make rom for it.

"In 2 days." His eyes widened and his jaw almost dropped.

"2 Days? That soon? I..." He didn't know what to say.

"I know it's sudden. I understand if you are busy."

"No...I can take that day off. Just a little more of a warning next time please." He took a moment to calm down and then asked Celestia where Luna was.

"Oh Luna? She will be away for a while, getting the gifts ready." Daniel remembered Luna telling him she wanted to do this without Celestia knowing so he just thanked Celestia and decided to head home. He didm't have a plan to train more with Nature but the more he thought about it the more he realised he had sort of been neglecting Annabelle as they never really played together anymore. Perhaps that was cause she was almost a teenager.

That part hit him when he realised that. She wasn't 10 years old or even 11. She was almost at that age where she would be doing things on her own. He himself started to feel old now that his little sister is close to her teen years and then 5 more years would make her an adult.

He shook his head as he knew he couldn't linger on such thoughts for long. He would ask her if she wanted to play and if she didn't then he would resume his training.

Thinking it over his plan was to get this wedding over and done with. He would then ask Luna to follow him to the forest to show her what he found and hopefully find this necromancer. After that he wouldn't have much longer until the sphere arrives. He knew he had around 8 days left and he was terrified for not just himself but for this planet. He didn't want it to suffer the same fate as Earth and he would die defending it if he had to.

Sighing he teleported home and checked the bolts on his door and saw they were still intact. Looking around he saw Annabelle in his PC again and he walked up to her.

"Annabelle." She took off her headset and turned to him.

"Yes?"

"Do you want to spend time together? Perhaps go out to the forest?" She looked at her game and nodded. Walking out to the forest he asked her if she knew what to do.

"Yes I remember bro. Shoot up a beam if I get lost." Smiling he let her choose what to play and she chose hide and seek. Daniel grinned and planned to use his shapeshifting to make it more of a fun activity. As Annabelle turned her back to count, Daniel quickly thought of something and turned into a rock silently. To say he felt strange was an understatement but he remained focused and waited for her to stop counting and he quietly followed her as she searched for him.

He kept a slow pace behind her. Using his powers to lift things up and drop them to get her attention and soon he decided to turn back and hide behind a tree. Within a few moments she found him and they then swapped turns. She hid and he looked for her. This repeated in a cycle for a while as he would take different forms to hid from her when she was seeking and would casually seek her out when she was hiding.

As he walked around the forest to find Annabelle he couldn't help but shake the feeling that something was wrong, like the forest felt more hostile than normal. Looking at the trees he saw they were different. They were darker than he remembered them and they looked like they were dying.

"What the..." Daniel felt his heart tighten but also increase in speed as he still hadn't found Annabelle yet. Getting a little worried he thought about sending up a blast for her to see but as he was powering up one he saw one in the sky. Annabelle sent one out and Daniel rushed over to her as fast as he could.

Rushing over to her and when he arrived she looked shaken up.

"Daniel." She rushed over to him and threw herself around him.

"What happened?"

"I don't feel safe. The forest, something's wrong." Daniel looked around and he could see what she meant, the forest was much darker than normal. He didn't have trouble seeing around at night but he had been in the forest many times before at night and it was never this dark. Even stranger is that there seemed to be a sort of mist that made it even harder to see.

"Perhaps Barak knows what's wrong. He and the treeminders live here and are more connected to the forest than me." Daniel picked her up and was about to leave until he heard a branch break which caused him to turn. A tree was moving and as he watched it move it soon took on an appearance he knew. It was one of the treeminders. Smiling, he tried to asked he or it, where Barak was.

"Excuse me. Do you know where Barak is?" When it didn't respond Daniel got a bit worried. He was certain that the treeminders knew who he was. "Hello?"

The tree approached him slowly, barely walking at it did. Daniel lifted up his hand a prepared an energy blast. "Stay back." He said threateningly but as the blast lit up the area he saw the tree's eye were milky, no pupils at all. With a realisation that he might be facing an undead he activated his spectral vision and he saw a ghostly version of the tree trapped in a dark bubble purple field around the chest area.

"Annabelle. Head home. I don't want you to see this." Annabelle wasted no time taking off in the other direction from him. She took flight and went over the trees to avoid any other encounters.

The tree reached for him but Daniel fired his energy blast, turning the treeminder to ashes. He looked as the ghost version in the energy bubble wasn't set free but instead it started to glow and the ashes started to raise up again into an ash zombie.

With a sigh, Daniel thought about controlling the wind and with a slap of his hand there was a large gust, sending the ash everywhere. Before anything could happen, Daniel reached for the energy field around the ghostly treeminder. He felt it sting as he touched it but he didn't care, he was determined to set this soul free. Putting extra power into his hand, he was able to crush the energy field and disperse it with a glass shattering sound.

Before the ghostly treeminder fell to the ground he was caught by Daniel. "I got you." This is when Daniel felt his heart sink. He knew what was going to happen and he himself was to blame. The treeminder would soon pass on just as he learned from Death. He had no way to rebuild it's body so it was only a matter of time. The most he could do is comfort this soul before he moves on.

"Daniel you fool. Why didn't you break the field first? You didn't need to attack and destroy the body." He didn't think and acted on instinct. This option only appeared in his mind after it was set free. He would have done it if he knew it would be that simple.

"Thank you. It was a nightmare there." He looked at the soul in his hands as it thanked him.

"You're welcome. What happened to you?" He decided to try and get as much information he could before it passed on.

"How did I become like this? Well from what I remember I was wondering around the lake north of here and a saw a pony. The pony was male and he looked like he had some kind of skin condition, I didn't get a good look of his face from the cloak he was wearing but then I saw there was another pony and one of those Changelings with him that seemed to have the same condition as him."

Daniel frowned as he looked to the side. How many undead puppets did this necromancer have?

"What happened after that?"

"The staff he was carrying. It was like a twisted tree branch and at the top of it was a dark jewel. A blood diamond. He just took one look at me and smiled. He aimed his staff at me and then a tentacle pierced my chest. Next thing I knew I was watching my body move without my control. It felt really bad around a week after this happened to me. Like I lost the connection with my body completely."

"I see. I'm sorry this happened to you." Daniel said as he saw the soul was starting to fade.

"Daniel. Please promise me you will stop that pony. Don't let him keep doing this." Daniel frowned and he felt his anger raise.

"I swear. I will destroy him if I have to. But from what's happening I guess I will have to." The soul was almost completely faded and all Daniel could do is watch as the treeminder stopped moving and then his soul was gone.

"The lake." He heard a whisper just before the soul disappeared completely.

Daniel stood up and headed north for a few moments and he arrived at a large lake. To the west was a large waterfall and the lake broke off into 3 streams. One going south, the others heading east and northeast.

He felt nervous as Luna wasn't with him and she wanted to talk to him but if what was done to that treeminder is done to more then he needs to eliminate this threat as soon as he can.

"Well...I better get searching." Daniel turned off his spectral vision and checked the lake to see if there was anything like a cave entrance under it. After around 10 minutes of searching he decided to leave it and check around the edges of the lake but also found nothing.

Looking at the waterfall, he wondered if there was something behind it and he found a large cave behind it. Gathering up energy in his hand he threw it to the ceiling and it made a light which illuminated the entire cave. One thing that immediately caught his attention was something in the centre of the cave, it was a puddle of black and purple ooze that bubbled and rose up and down.

Daniel approached the puddle and dipped his finger in it. As he pulled his finger back out he saw the ooze drip off and his finger was unchanged. He looked for something to touch it with to see if there was a different effect and he saw a small flower next to him. Picking it he touched the ooze with it and the flower started to wilt and die as a stream of blue energy left it and went into the ooze.

"What the..." He placed his hand back in it and then pulled it out but as the ooze fell off and his hand was unchanged. He was left at a dilemma, he wanted to jump in and solve this but at the same time, lives were on the line if he messed up and he didn't know if they were all the same as the treeminder he saved. Not only that but this was powerful magic and magic was not his strong suit.

"Well it is tomorrow, as of now as it just passed midnight. I might meet Luna again and she can help me with it and I might be able to help more with her than I would without her." He left the cave and as he flew up he made a mental note to where the cave was. Taking off towards his house he landed at the door and entered to see Annabelle then jump out with an energy blast ready but she made it vanish when she saw it was him.

"Are you alright?" He asked.

"The forest outside is still darker than normal." Looking outside Daniel saw that the forest itself around his house was indeed more darker than he remembered it being. He started to worry for Annabelle and for his kids. For the covenant as a whole.

Tomorrow he needed to warn them and tell them to be on a lockdown until the necromancer issue was settled. He also wanted to do this himself as he didn't always want to rely on Nature to help him so he would get to work the moment the wedding was finished.

"Try to get some sleep. I have a feeling tomorrow will be a tough day for us both. Don't worry. I will keep watch."

Annabelle slept on the couch as she felt safer when she was closer to Daniel.

"Freddy!" He shouted a little quietly, trying not to wake her.

"Yes Daddy?"

"I need you to tell Alpha, Thag and Brago to lock down their homes. Something is wrong with the forest and until it's made right they should stay inside."

"What's wrong?" Daniel spent a few minutes explaining to Freddy what was happening, from the Necromancer and how it seems to be effecting the forest. "So go. Tell them." Freddy took off as fast as he could.

As Daniel stood there and thought about what to do he realised that he could ask Thag if he knew a way to break this undead magic which was spreading through the forest. He was connected to it on a deep level so he might know what to do. But at the same time if he didn't then he didn't want to risk him dying, especially if the wolfs saw him as a father figure.

Sighing he decided that the moment the wedding was over he would get to work. With or without Luna. Hopefully with her but if she doesn't show up then he will deal with the necromancer himself.

After days of wandering through the everfree the pony who broke into Daniel's house was overjoyed to see ponyville on the horizon. She managed to find a lake in the forest and filled it with water from the spare bottle she had after she poured the poison joke on patch of grass in a clearing she found. She barely ate anything in her time in the forest but she finally managed to find her way to ponyville.

"Finally. I can report back to the others." She started to try and run but she fell over. She was famished and needed energy.

"Oh my. Are you alright?" A grey Pegasus with blond hair flew down to her and helped her to her feet.

"Food. Please." The Pegasus pulled a muffin out from...somewhere and fed it to her. "Thanks. Miss..."

"Ditzy." She said happily. Her eyes looking in different directions.

"Thanks Ditzy. But I really need to get back to my home. I have friends waiting for me." She stood up slowly and started to walk down the path.

"Wait. What about your friend?" She asked. This caused her to tense up as she was alone. Looking behind her she saw another pony who was collapsed at the forest's edge. He was wearing a cloak, looked injured and was carrying a large walking stick.

"A little help?" He asked weakly. Ditzy went to help him but she remained where she was. How did she not know she was being followed?

Shrugging it off she decided to go and help Ditzy with the pony. As she got closer she saw the pony seemed to have a horrible skin condition as his face looked shredded and his walking stick was large enough to be a staff. But she then saw the end of it was twisted in a clockwise direction and the bark wrapped around a red diamond on the top.

"Thanks for the help. You will make good additions to the army." He said sinisterly and with that his staff lit up. The area turned dark and a purple mist rolled in within a moment.

"Hey. What are you..." Ditzy didn't finish what she was asking as the pony she helped before was stabbed in the chest by a black tendril coming off of the staff. The pony turned to look at her and smiled. "You're turn."

Daniel appeared in the throne room with Annabelle who was still a little shaken up about yesterday. He didn't have to look for Celestia as she was sitting on her throne like normal.

"Hello Celestia." With a smile she got off her throne and walked down to him.

"Welcome Cosmo. I trust the field wasn't too hard to pass?"

"What field?" This seemed to surprise her a little.

"You didn't have trouble getting here? Not even a slight feeling of resistance?" He shook his head.

"Nope. I didn't feel a thing." Celestia just smiled at him.

"I have little doubt that with you here things will go smoothly." Celestia asked Daniel if he remembered who was getting married and he nodded. It was Cadence and Twilight's older brother, Shining Armour. But he himself still wanted to talk to Luna as soon as he could so he couldn't help but ask.

"Celestia. When will Luna be back?" She looked to the ceiling, lost in thought.

"Not until after the wedding. But your friends will be here soon." Celestia looked out the window at an approaching train with a smile. "That's them. Why don't you go and say hi?"

Daniel walked out of the front door and down to the train station. All of his friends, besides Twilight looked very happy to be here.

"Hi Girls. Nice to see you." Annabelle perked up when they were here with her.

"When did you get here?" Dash asked.

"Just a few moments ago. But that's not important right now. We have a wedding to set up, and Twilight has am older brother she needs to go and see." He said with a smile and Twilight took off away from the rest of them, intent to find Shining Armour but from the look on her face, it wasn't a happy one and they all could see this.

"What about you Coz?" Applejack asked as she looked at Twilight a little worried that she would perhaps take something a little to far.

"I'm to keep watch. Making sure this wedding runs smoothly. Annabelle. What do you want to do?"

"Can I go around with them?" Daniel nodded and she went over to the 5 of them.

"Take care." With a smile he went for a walk around Canterlot. Walking around the street the only thing that seemed out of place was the amount of guards that were there and that a few gave him looks like they knew who he was. But that was to be expected as he is one of the elements of harmony. Which he still found a little strange as the tree of harmony seemed to have grown from the power radiating form one of the heart pieces inside it. So were these Elements extensions of the 1st heart or were they there own thing?

Sighing he knew there was things he would never get the answer to so he got back to the task at hand as he wandered the streets to see if there was anything out of place. As he wandered around, the result was the same as it was before. Nothing was out of place. Sighing he decided to return to the castle and Celestia was telling the staff what to do to prepare for the wedding.

"Cosmo. Anything?" He shook his head.

"So far, nothing. Did you always have this amount of guards here?"

"I brought in some others from other locations, as well as put some reserves on duty." She explained.

"I see. Well I will be waiting in the main hall if you need me."

Daniel went to the main hall and sat down. He passed the time by playing around with his powers. He would take a glass of water and pour the water out of it as it fell and then turned into a rock. The rock would then split into other rocks before moulding together and making a small human like figure which would then do silly dances before becoming water again and going back into the cup.

There was some guards in the room who gave him awkward looks as he did that but at the moment he was bored and was willing to do just about anything to kill the boredom.

He soon heard the door open and saw Shining Armour and Cadence walk into the room. Smiling, he waved to them and while Shining waved back with a smile, Cadence looked at him and turned almost pale white. But she managed to get a small wave off while sweating a little.

This wasn't lost on Daniel but he didn't know why she was acting like this. Perhaps she knows what he is capable off and worried her wedding might not be normal?

"My King!" Scar the Timberwolf ran into the throne room.

"Calm down Scar. What's wrong?" Thag tried to calm Scar down, but to no avail.

"Sir. An undead army is on the move." Thag stood up when he heard this.

"Where are they going?"

"The necromancer is currently viewing canterlot through the eyes of one of his puppets. He is planning to open a portal to Canterlot." All the timberwolves in the room looked to Thag for guidance.

"Summon Brago and Thorax. We need to have a meeting. Where is Daniel?" Scar ran to the door that lead to Daniel's home and entered into his lab.

"Daniel!" He looked around frantically for him.

"He's not here." Scar looked over to see Alpha.

"Where is he then?"

"Last I heard. In Canterlot." Scar felt his wooden heart sink when he heard that. "Why do you ask?"

"We have a problem. We need to talk to you."

Scar went to get Brago and Thag came through the door. Soon all 4 leaders. Thag, Brago, Alpha and Thorax were in the same room.

"So what's happening?" Alpha wasted no time getting down to what was needed to know.

"An undead army is planning to attack Canterlot. From what my scouts have said. They number in thousands. Most of them are made out of the long dead." Thag looked around and saw Thorax looking pale.

"He can't be planning to..."

"To what? Attack Canterlot?" Throax shook his head.

"When we left the hive it shrank by a good bit. Many of our best experts saw what the queen was doing was stupidity born from a lust of revenge. So most of the best command left."

"So you thought she wouldn't attack Canterlot in such a weakened state." Brago finished.

"Yes. We didn't expect her to go through with it. But if this is a powerful necromancer then if he attacks after the battle is almost over..."

"His numbers will greatly increase and Canterlot might very well fall." Thag looked worried but stood strong.

"What do we do? Can Daniel handle all that?"

"I...have no clue. We are talking about powerful magic. And magic is something he is still a total novice at. He might not have a way to deal with the Necromancer. Or he might go overboard if he is pushed too far. Not to mention this is death magic. One of the top 5 strongest in all of existence." Brago then jumped when he realised something.

"Daniel is training with that Flower girl a lot. What if he leave the wedding thinking everything is ok then the attack happens?" They all remained silent for a moment.

"We don't want war. We have been hiding from the ponies because they might see our alliance as a threat. If we try to stop the army now we wont win. The magic the necromancer has it too much. Even for me." Thag admitted with his head held low.

"But if we don't do anything then if Canterlot falls...the ponies will scatter, leave their towns and try to find a home elsewhere. Your alliance will likely be discovered eventually."

"And they will probably blame us for not helping." Thorax and the Changelings who were listening didn't like the idea of fighting after just finding a new home and making new friends.

"We wont always have Daniel around to ask for his opinion. There might come a time where he moves on to working with Nature and forget about us. We need to start making our own decisions and paying the consequences of them ourselves." Alpha told them and they all knew it was the truth. Daniel likely won't always be here and they would need to learn to operate as allies by themselves.

"How will we get to Canterlot?" Alpha grinned.

"I have just the thing. Follow me." They followed Alpha to a large circular machine that lay across a large amount of ground. Tesla coils were around it and the Centre was a spiral of shiny grey wires.

"This is a teleporter I had constructed. When Daniel told me a battle would likely happen I didn't know where it would be. So I had this build and also made this." Alpha held a small disk with a blue jewel in the middle of it. It was made of dark green stone with golden lines along the edges. "Plant this down. Press the gem and we can go right there. I will have one of the bots go to Canterlot and place this on the outside. Make sure you are all ready, this battle will be a large one."

"I will get all the wolves around the forest in nest outposts to return home." Thag was about to leave when he saw Scar again.

"Sir...someone wants to meet you. He wants to know if out alliance is still accepting new members." Thag and the others looked as a tree entered the lab. Thag instantly realised who it was.

"Barak."

As Thag talked with Barak, Alpha was over with Freddy, telling him of the task he had to do.

"Do you understand?" Freddy nodded as he took the disk. "When you are just outside Canterlot, find a safe location to put the disk down and activate it."

"What do I do if I get spotted?" Alpha looked to the side.

"Nopony should believe if just 1 sees you, but try your best to remain hidden. I might be able to make a cloak out of a bedsheet quickly but you need to get there within a day. You need to run with all the energy you have Freddy."

Alpha managed to quickly make a simple cloak that covered Freddy. Freddy turned off the lights on his body to stay hidden and started to make his way to Canterlot as fast as he could.

"Strange. Cadance knows who I am, so why is she so...fearful of me?" Daniel was wondering what he should do to make Cadance feel ok around him. She wasn't like this before and it was starting to bother him. Perhaps he should just leave? He didn't want to be a bad distraction but Celestia asked him to keep guard and this was the wedding of Twilight's brother so it wouldn't be nice if he just left.

He decided to talk to Celestia about this so he went to find her. He found her about to turn in for the night and as she lowered the sun the moon was raised.

"Good. Luna remembered." Daniel cleared his throat. "Sorry Cosmos." Celestia held her head low, her eyes barely open.

"Celestia. I need to talk to you about Cadance." Celestia yawned and smiled at him, barely keeping her balance. She was clearly not going to be able to stay awake long. "Never mind. I will tell you in the morning."

"You're lucky you don't need sleep." She said and she slowly walked off to her bedroom.

Annabelle walked up to him, looking a little rough around the eyes and he smiled at her.

"Perhaps you should rest up too." Annabelle went off to a room she was given which was where his friends were currently.

"New Bridesmaids!? What happened to her old ones?!" Daniel chuckled when he heard Twilight shout that. It was like her to want to make sure everything was in order and by the sounds of it, it wasn't.

Knocking on the door it was opened a moment later by Pinkie.

"Hi Cosmo." Smiling he entered the room and thinking everything would be alright, he changed back into his normal human form and stretched his back.

"So is everything ready for tomorrow?"

"Yes. All my birds have their tunes perfected." The girls started to list off everything that they done and it all seemed in place. Looking over at Twilight he saw her turn around and walk out.

"Twilight. Wait." He turned back into his pony form and he walked outside to stand with her. "What's wrong?"

"What's wrong? What's right? I have known Cadence ever since I was a foal and she has completely changed. You believe me...don't you?"

"I don't know Cadence as much as you do but I do know that something is strange about her. She looked at me with fear even when she's met me before and knows..." Daniel looked around and over the edge to make sure no others were listening. "That I'm a human."

"So even you can tell something's off?" He nodded and she sighed with a smile on her face. "Well that's a relief."

"What do you plan to do?"

"I don't know. But I can't be Shining's best mare tomorrow. But I know she's not good. I saw her put some kind of spell on my brother."

"Do you have any idea what kind of spell?" Twilight looked down to the ground.

"No. I don't." Twilight yawned and her eyes started to get heavy. "I...need to rest on it. Night Cosmos."

"Night...Twilight." As she entered the room and the lights turned off Daniel was left alone. The only ones awake at this time were night guards and maids who cleaned the halls at night. He was the only none staff member currently awake for the next few hours. Times like this is what he hated but also loved the most. Mostly cause he could play around with his powers, but also cause he was alone and had to be quiet.

"How do I get rid of him?" Cadence went back and forth in her room frantically. "If he is here then the likelihood of this invasion working are slim to none." She thought over a few things.

Taking his sister prisoner. But she was also insanely strong by comparison and she likely couldn't harm her so any threat would be an empty one.

Sending his sister away and he would follow. That wouldn't work as the moment he found her he would be back. "Wait...that might work. If I can take over Canterlot in time so he is alone. Then with our numbers we might stand a chance." She slammed her hoof on the ground. "It was either be in his alliance and eat the same kind of emotional food over and over again for goodness knew how long or take this chance to secure a large multi food source."

As she thought about it there was a voice in the back of her head telling her to just return cadence and ask to re-join his alliance but she pushed that aside.

"No. We won't be some race on the side. We will be the dominant one and get revenge for what the ponies did to us." She said, her mind made up. Turning into a guard she walked down the hallway and headed to Annabelles room which she found with a simple question.

Arriving at the room she opened the door and gently shook Annabelle.

"Strawberry." She said softly as she woke up.

"What?" Annabelle sat up with a yawn.

"Your brother sent me to tell you that you should teleport home. He said he doesn't feel like it's safe here." She was very tire and got out of the bed.

"Fine. Tell him I will wait for him." With her eyes closed and a yawn. She herself teleported back to her house. The guard hen turned back into Cadance and had a smile on her face as she headed back to the bedroom.

Everything was in place, all for tomorrow.

Daniel waited on the balcony as he overlooked the city. It was quite a nice view from where he was. As he watched he heard winds gather up around him and turned around to see someone he was happy to see. Death.

"How's life treating you." He said with a grin.

"Quite ni-...oh haha." Death caught his joke.

"Sorry. I couldn't resist. So how is the search going? Did you find my parents yet?" Daniel asked, hopeful he could finally see his parents again, even if it was just for a short time.

"About that...Daniel. I have news for you. I looked all over the spirit realm but..."

"What?" He was concerned when he heard deaths tone of voice.

"I can't find them at all."

"You can't? Does that mean...their souls are...are..." He felt his heart sink and tears swell up when he thought that his parents were gone for good.

"No...there is no known force that can destroy a soul. At least according to us and what we have found so far. But the point is...I can't find your parents in the realm of the dead. So I got curious. I asked humans who were dead if they know who they were. Some did and I also asked them what was the last thing they remember. And get this. None of them said they remember about a 'Dark sphere' as I mentioned it."

Daniel was getting more curious now than ever before, but he let Death finish speaking.

"Daniel. If they aren't in the realm of the dead then there is only 1 explanation. They aren't dead."

Author's Notes:

I did a timeskip as most chapters involving normal episodes would mostly be a repeat and I felt like I did enough for my readers to know what was happening.