Yan can actually turn off pain! He is not even thinking about that as a special ability - to him, this is what pain is: it's a strong signal that something is wrong with your body. It's very unpleasant for a moment. Аnd then you tell it that you are working on the problem and it shuts off. If it didn't shut off, it would impede you in fixing yourself! That would be horrible design! Yan knew that magic works differently in other worlds, but he didn't expect other people's pain to not have an off switch any more than he expected lamps not to have it.

And yet sparkly woman and smart guy are in pain and do not stop being in pain. Using drugs and unbelievably messed up procedures to take away someone's natural ability to pause pain is a legal definition of torture. His friends potential minions are being tortured and he can do nothing. Two bearded cultists would be hitting the floor with their faces about now but Yan saw that their magic requires visible action and they have done nothing visible to cause this.

Ability to pause pain doesn't mean ability to escape all the side effects of psychic shock. Yan can barely see and can't concentrate. He doesn't need concentration to maintain his tendrils - they are almost mundane objects, not active spells. He doesn't need concentration to summon new ones... for reasons. He still needs it to be able to perform complex aerial maneuvers with nine bodies on a moment's notice.

Yan is in PANIC.

Some people are seemingly engaging in complex mental actions. For good reasons, he assumes. Even in panic and shock, Yan can still grab people from the crumbling edge and move them closer to the ladder (upper part of the ladder is fused with a large stretch of stone, it's not gonna detach until the whole platform disappears). He grabs women a bit slower, looking for signs of discomfort, in case they are from a culture where if a man touches their waist they have to marry him else commit suicide. Or something.

Oh, look, two fallen guys are here, landed on the blue one. They are not dead. Good.

Why did they portal back to danger? Did someone said something about not being able to leave? Man, it would be much easier to think about without that psychic shock.

Smart guy seems to have recovered! "It's going to last for hours! Everyone - either climb down right now, or stick near me, I can't catch you if you are in the middle part when the platform fully crumbles!"

There's a very specific range of tunnel vision that is optimal when operating.

That range excludes out a lot of things, like being aware of getting stabbed in a non-vital area, being aware people are dying all around you, being aware how long you have before you pass out of fatigue or hunger, but one thing it does not exclude is the patient's innards that you are tampering with.

Determined Rebel's thoughts are specific, and repeated, and have attached to them a wish to be transmitted, but they are not transmitting even when this Shard of Research has brought all the threads together and Quarter merged them. Like having opened a man's chest and seeing his heart beat with desperate effort but be devoid of blood to give so it just keeps twitching, it speaks to something primal within him that says this is Wrong.

If he wasn't suppressed right now, he would be paralyzed with grief. If he was suppressed but not focusing right now, he would feel a familiar spasm on his shoulders he's learned is a side effect of the suppression system working overtime.

As it stands, he takes it as an opportunity to experimentally open a psion channel and see what gets transmitted.

This is, to anyone born in Shard of Research's homeland, a diagnostic tool. To call it telepathy would be like calling a diabetes test a blood donation, and it roughly volumetrically tracks when Considering the difference in psion channels.

To anyone not so familiar though, congratulations, you have voices in your head. Strictly one word voices, and barely not monosyllabic, this is a single psion channel people. But should someone be thinking something specific and simple enough for a 2 year old and tagged as "transmit this" then the rest of your Hive mates will feel like doing so. 

in this case, Determined Rebel wants them to "Come" so Cost-Avoidance and Efficient Problem Solver will get an emotion of wishing to reposition closer to Determined Rebel. Should one be inclined to track their emotions, see where they're coming from, how they were formed, why they feel like doing something, then trying to do so here will cause some mild vertigo, like looking down at a completely straight drop from a 50 story building, and notice the glaringly obvious fact that it didn't track from anything inside their skull, it wasn't born out of a conscious or subconscious thought and the qualia of the feeling is different in a way no emotion they've felt before is different. It's recognizable as what it is, it's legible, but it's like two different handwritings writing the same word.

Should one be inclined instead to trust their well-honed Instincts and gut feelings in times of crisis, this emission's effect becomes less that of communication and more that of a hypnotic suggestion, as the feeling is salient, and it's clear, and it's simple, and it's repeating, and thus has the rare directness of instinct that separates it from careful meticulous thought. This is famously very easily confusable with instinct to the inexperienced, where Shard of Research is from.

(Also, this Shard of Research will, of course, also get closer to Determined Rebel. The concept of personal space isn't a thing where Shard of Research comes from so Yan now has a tall spindly blue man literally rubbing shoulders with him while very intensely looking at a point of empty space triangulated between him and his hivemates)

The concept of personal space is a thing for Yan, but very low in priority now. It's only going to be a problem if they all start touching him and restrict his field of vision ("near me" meant "where I can see you", not "where I can smell you").

"And just to be clear, climbing on your own is vastly safer if you can do it and not fall!"

The ladder is made from thin, bendy black tendrils, and goes down at an angle for more stories than they ever build where he is from. It wobbles. It's a challenge not everyone can do. Yan would be improvising safety harnesses if he had any spare attention.

Nuance is a thing in this Shard of Research's culture. Nuance in thought emission is very very important!

One psion channel is not enough for Nuance. One psion channel isn't really enough for a full word of command but receiving brains have been proven to work overtime to fill in the gaps. The signal transmitted will be something to the effect of "Come", hopefully with a directional sense pointing to Determined Rebel. 

This Shard of Research acknowledges and would-be-deeply-sorry (a special tense, indicating suppression) for the low fidelity on offer right now but he is really trying to fix that as fast as he safely can.

That said, anyone listening will probably fill in the gap much better as they already had a frame for the emotion they get after

The lack of Nuance means that Eric, who is already several dozen feet down the ladder, doesn't hear "For those of you who are on the edges of the platform where you might fall as it disintegrates, you should come closer to Yan and possibly start climbing down the ladder!" but simply "Come." Eric obediently stops climbing down and starts climbing back up towards Yan.

Shouldn't he be going down the ladder? Well, Yan said something about safety, and it's kind of wobbly; that's probably why he's climbing up.

"I'd still like an explanation as to how I arrived here!" he says as he makes his way back up. "Or how any of us arrived here. Would the people in the red robes - does anyone here other than Yan have a name, I'm Eric - like to tell us anything?"

All right, not a smart guy. Eric.

"Why would you come back?!" he screeches, getting more and more desperate at solving this without casualties.

Wait, this is way too stupid even for the slowest in class. Psychic shock.

 "Something is messing with our thinking! With agony and in more subtle ways!"

There is a checklist he is supposed to run. Children learn it in school. One problem - the checklist is made for situations like "the person you are selling you house to is too charismatic and you don't remember deciding to sign and yet you are holding a pen", not whatever he's in. It takes minutes to get useful results.

Suspects: sparkly woman who is concentrating on something - why? Cultists - how, if their magic is visible? Blue guy, who was accused of something by Screamy - but it's weird that he wants everyone here and in pain - but he is himself weird.

Yan takes several steps away.

"It's probably weird blue guy else cultists. Anyone competent to resolve that?"

Yosh gives up. She just lost all chances of ever being a functional member of the community by this point.

She sighs.

"It's the blue guy. We don't have psychic powers. We have a bunch of rules, that Soqol there has broken, and doomed us all to never opening any portal AGAIN.", by this point she is clearly very angry.

She pauses a moment, collecting herself as best an angry teenager can manage. She balls her fists with the effort.

"Sorry for botching this ... I really thought we were doing something important here. Uncle, can we plea-ease just teleport back to the temple?"

She is very annoyed but not particularly bothered by the disintegrating platform.

"Oh, you... you can't actually fall to your death. One of us can always teleport in and save you. Just takes longer the farther you fall..."

Well, she's heading down the ladder, once that other guy came back up, and then the other other guy said that something was messing with their thinking to prevent them from going down the ladder.  Heading down ladders isn't complicated, she can do it while running a lot of self-checks.

oh come on he was almost back to the top of the ladder he will get back to going down.

Oh. Wait, never mind, it is a good idea to come back up! ...stoppit brain, no it isn't. Ignore that and keep going down.

"bwah, let them take a long walk off a short platform. We are not going to get another chance at this portal! Just tether them on the way down."

He plants his staff on the ground again and looks around expectantly.

"They are sentient, uncle!"

He looks at her with pity and some measure of condescension...

"You seem a step lost on the summoning process, child."

He then proceeds to mutter a few words and a portal appears before him, while a second portal covers the entire midway point of the tendril ladder.

"If everyone could please return. You won't die. You won't fall. Apologies for the rocky experience so far. Normally guests arrive in stasis. And normally summoning a new portal does not destabilize the entire platform, nor does it allow for more guests to arrive. I will need some steps of your life force to reinforce the portal. This WILL NOT hurt ... honestly you should very much be asleep right now. All this talking and moving is very upsetting. We will fix this now or Lady Ustari will crush us."

He looks around again.

"Now approach an Isheki and let them tether you so we can begin."

About a quarter of the platform has fallen away by now. The wobbling portal is now floating out in space, a few feet from the remainder of the rocky ground you stand on. The tendril ladder still holds, though there is no obvious way to traverse it without touching the portal that covers its entirety and seems to be anchored to it in some manner. The other side of the portal opens up right in front of Soqol.

In the mean while, a blue light like a frozen sun is slowly brightening the sky in the presumed direction of the temple.

The cultist who was previously holding Mordi starts to extend his lightning thread towards Mordi again, thinks better of it, and decides to tether the blue person instead.

"Do not resist," he says in a voice that sounds like it could hurt his throat.

This Shard of Research will not feel the sleepiness and fatigue. He will keep working, same as before, on the procedure handed off to him and then forgotten because that's how this works, that much is obvious.

That is not to say, though, that he's unaffected. The lightning spell has its grip on him, sapping his energy, reducing his tactile acuity, and if and when he runs out of energy he will turn off like a lightbulb and gracelessly collapse in a heap without warning.

How long would you think he has for that to happen, given that he hasn't exercised a single day in his life but has been through maximally rigorous mental stamina training since the day he was born?

In Yan's world they also have a kind of energy that exist in any human and can fuel powerful magic. It's called soul, and that is how "life force" is translated to him by whatever is doing translation.

Don't let cultists consume their soul and someone called Lady Ustari will crush them. Got it.

Yan jumps off the platform, not in the direction of the ladder. Hopefully cultists will look over the edge to try to spot him and teleport him back and that time would be enough to get out of their range.

In freefall, Yan stabs several tendrils in the underside of the platform, shortens them to lift himself and crawls, upside down, to the opposite edge, then slides down the ladder (not recommended for people who do not control said ladder).

The blue psychic torture guy is now cultists' problem.

Upon reaching the obstacle Yan starts weaving a new ladder that goes to a different part of the same lower platform, bypassing a portal.

Maybe they can't open a lot of portals? If they do, there will have to be more violence ending with cultists disarmed, bound and gagged. But for now, the plan is just to get to safe ground there they will not have time pressure, cultists will, and then start negotiations.

The original directive was a will to synchronize, and his job thus to facilitate it. That's priority 1.

Secondary directive was stay close to Determined Rebel, obviously as long as it doesn't contradict with priority 1. That's priority 2.

All three of the syncing operatives are going down the ladder so the triangulation point is getting further away from him and his priority 2 is getting violated, both of which can be solved by the same action, which is to follow the three operatives.

Is the ladder still unstable? Bodies made for Shards of Research are made for slow and precise motions, ergo they have balance enough to tightrope walk without ever swinging side to side, but they can most definitely not keep up with 3 bodies creating violent oscillations on an unstable rope that he will have to rebalance on. Additionally, his limbs are being even less responsive than usual and his sense of touch is losing fidelity.

He will follow anyway, survival is not in his directives, has never been one of his directives, and very soon they will be out of his range if this keeps up. How unstable of a bridge are we talking?

Not that unstable. It won't throw off a reasonably fit person. The main challenges are to keep a tight grip on finger-thin rungs long enough and to resist a normal human urge to panic when the only thing between you and the abyss feels so flimsy.

Besides occular malfunction that would qualify for blindness, this Shard of Research's spatial awareness is concentrated on a narrow enough circle that you could hug it. The Abyss might as well be in another continent.

He follows, still connected to the numbing lightning, until he passes out, his limbs give out and he falls, or his priority 1 is complete and he goes into reorientation mode

The cultist Iranik will keep hanging on and drawing energy from him! It'll take several minutes before he'll actually pass out. Also, after he's climbed down about a dozen feet the rope will pull taut and he won't be able to go further down unless he's strong enough to win a tug-of-war with Iranik.

"So," says Eric to the others as they climb down, "I seem to have gotten here by teleporting from my very nonmagical homeworld, where teleportation doesn't exist - has never been previously confirmed to exist. Not sure what the premise of this dream is, with regard to your species and planets - are any of you from Earth? Big blue and green almost-spherical planet, revolves around one sun and has one gray natural satellite, has about eight billion people of my species, surface is mostly water with a few large landmasses... geography's hard to describe without a map. How about I say enough famous names that people from anywhere on Earth will recognize some. Joe Biden, Rishi Sunak, Xi Jinping, Vladimir Putin, Albert Einstein, Jesus, Buddha, Mahatma Gandhi, Adolf Hitler, it's depressing that last one's even on the list. Any of those names sound familiar?"

A dozen feet down then he'll get stuck! Despite his height, he's unlikely to win a tug-of-war against a particularly athletic preteen human, and more importantly "Solve your problems through physical force" is not in first-order solution flowchart.

Recounting: His patients are getting out of his range. He's physically being stopped from following.

Widening awareness to troubleshoot: He notices a thread that of thought trying to convey to him to stay back. 

Imagine the emotion a person would feel hearing the heart-wrenching cry of a mother trying to grab her baby out of the way from a charging truck. Imagine how rotten you would feel if you had to grab hold of the mother and stop her from saving her baby as she watched it. This Shard of Research will grab hold of the thread trying to emit to him to stay and transmit back this rotten self-loathing emotion at full force.

This, to be clear, is not an attack from Shard of Research's perspective. This is efficient communication, conveying indelible nuance about severity to a another well intentioned agent who has misunderstood the priority of operations, as he views it.

Unless the Binder though has experience with telepathic communication, that intensity will still hit like a punch to the nose.

[to be replaced, but for plot posterity, platform is destroyed in the process]

The blue glow in the distance swells further.

He doubles over from the pain and crumples to the ground in shock. Three breaths later he simply disappears, without any noticeable effects before or after his departure. Even if you were staring straight at him at the moment of disappearance, it would have seemed that you must have imagined him.