I found myself in a most uncomfortable position. The back of my head and shoulders were pressed into the cracked stone ground with the rest of my body above it, leaned against the wall of the arena. My hind hooves dangled limply in my field of vision. "Ugh, did someone get the number on that bus?" I groaned.
Nobody replied. I flopped my butt down off the wall and turned my head to look for my friends. Fphant was inspecting the smoldering remains of my contraption. From what I could see the machine was nothing more than scrap now. The Courier was knelt next to Aquapony doing his medic stuff. It looked like Aquapony was going to be okay.
A small white ball of light about the size of an orange hovered about a foot off the ground where I remember Artorias had been standing. I inched closer to inspect the orb and, upon reaching it with no reaction slowly pushed my hoof forward to poke it, only to jump back in surprise when it leapt into my outstretched hoof. As if a window filled with text had popped up in my mind's eye, I knew that this was the Soul of Knight Artorias the Abysswalker.
I noticed my friends approaching and hastily stuffed the little ball of light in my back pocket. "We should keep moving," the Courier said.
"Agreed."
We walked through the arena's exit and immediately our surroundings shifted. The aged cracked stone was gone, replaced with the un-aged, un-cracked stone I'd come to associate with the rest of Ner's castle. Looking around revealed nothing of note in the chamber with except for four wooden doors with inscribed brass plaques on them set into the opposite wall.
A round of applause emanated from the walls, thousands of stomping hooves which slowly petered out until only one pony's claps remained. "Congratulations!" Ner' exclaimed.
"You owe me a weapon!" the Courier cried at the ceiling before anyone could say anything. "Your pet broke mine."
Ner took a second to consider this, "Eh," he paused for a moment, I imagine he shrugged but we couldn't see it, "Why not?"
A panel in the ceiling slid open silently and from it dropped a long black metal staff. The Courier caught the blade and -to his surprise- when his hands closed around the shaft a rather large shiny silver scythe blade which looked much too large to have come out of the skinny metal pole shot out from one end with an audible "shing." Of course, he had just so happened to catch the scythe in such a manner that the blade would have impaled him had he not dropped it first with an unmannly yelp. As soon as the shaft left his hands the shiny silver blade retracted back into the pole with narry a whisper. The weapon clattered to the ground noisily.
All of us stared at the inert metal pole as if it would spring to life and attack us.
Several awkward seconds passed when nothing happened. Finally Ner' said, "That went so much better in my head."
The Courier cautiously picked up the metal pole. As soon as his hands closed around the metal the blade shot open, but so long as he held it in his fingertips it stayed hidden inside the shaft. He swung the weapon at one of the walls, the blade bit deep into the stone and when it got stuck a bit coming out, the Courier simply relaxed his grip and the blade slid right back out of the wall.
"Meh," he shrugged and sheathed the weapon on his back next to his guns. "It'll do."
"Ahem," Ner cleared his throat. "Back on topic." I could faintly hear the shuffling of notecards. "Congratulations," Ner read out in a bored tone, audibly flicking a notecard off the stack with each word, "reward, dialogue, filler, filler, out of place, filler, joke, tangent, ahah!" Ner dropped the rest of his notecards as he presumably held up the card he'd found triumphantly. "Ahem, where was I?" I could taste the smug on his voice, "Oh yes..."
Ner's voice petered out and I imagined I could hear his eye twitching as he muttered, "Wrong card." This was followed by several minutes of my friends and I standing around looking awkward as Ner frantically searched the floor for the correct notecard with his microphone turned on.
"Here we go," Ner finally said, "Welcome to the final stretch of my evil gauntlet of evil! Before you are four doors. Each door represents a different facet of my necromancy. In order to reach me for our inevitable climactic showdown you must each pass through a different door and face the individual challenges set behind each one. One person per door! No cheating!"
He paused for a moment to let us digest that. We all looked at the doors. "Take your time to choose who goes where, and be warned; I don't expect to see all of you on the other side." Very faint peals of maniacal laughter could be heard echoing though the halls.
With no better alternative we move forward to inspect the doors. Each door had a brass plaque set into it with words hastily scribbled onto them in sharpie. I would've expected engravings, but I guess Ner was in a hurry. Each plaque was headed with a single word, one of the 'facets' of Ner's necromancy from what I could tell.
The door on the far left read, 'Reanimating; the act of taking something that is dead and making it not dead anymore. (Arise, my minions!) Pretty much the most basic part of Necromancy. Expect a challenge involving things that don't stay dead behind this door.'
"Kind of a simplistic explanation, don't you think?" Aquapony remarked.
Ner's voice piped up, "I took the liberty of dumbing down the explanations for certain, ah, let's say 'individuals' in your group."
Why did everyone look at me after he said that?
We shifted our attention to the next door 'Summoning; the act of taking something which has already been reanimated, generally from a different world or plane of existence, and bringing it to you. This is how I get minions from the other worlds I've visited, like Artorias for example. Expect a challenge involving enemies being continuously summoned.
The second to last door was, in my opinion, far more sinister than the others we'd read so far, 'Enslaving; the act of imposing one's will over another. It's how I direct my minions and how I'm currently controlling your friends' a crude picture of a smiley face sticking its tongue out was drawn next to the message, 'Expect a challenge involving attacks on the mind behind this door.
And the last door read, 'Empowering; the act of making a thing better than it already was. What, did you think skeletons could actually walk with no muscles? Nope, it's magic! Did you think we dug up the bones of giants to make our great big monstrosities? Nope, magic! Expect a challenge involving relatively few, relatively powerful enemies behind this door.'
"Well," said Aquapony, "looks like we're gonna need to decide who goes where before we can continue on thataway."