His eyes go wide when he sees Ko'rish crumple to the ground. Abandoning his attempts to stabilize the platform, he makes a split second decision.

Lifting his staff, he slams it in to platform. A shock wave spreads out from the point of impact, dulling all the remaining ichor at once. The portals at either end wink out, and the platform crumbles all at once, falling into the endless space below.

Everyone who isn't attached to a different platform in some form, or otherwise lacks ways of resisting gravity (whatever that may mean in this place) will start tumbling downward. The space between platforms is over a 100 feet, and none of them are directly below you while falling.

The cultists will now fall! One of them manages to grab onto the ladder after a few seconds, but neglects to account for having already fallen for a few seconds, and is now falling again with a broken hand.

That's not fair! She spent a lot of time making sure her fingers looked realistic.

Aaaand this particular very sad cultist is also falling, while still being tied to someone.

Yan pays attention to Eric as they climb down.

Words "very nonmagical homeworld" fail to compute for a while. It's a bit like saying "a world without any highest mountain" or "a world where nobody ever said a palindromic word". Why would they not designate anything as magic? How do they know that gyroscopes are not magic if nobody has any magic sight, which itself would be magic? Or, if they have magic as a specific concept, taken from popular fiction for example, how can they be sure that no one has it? If Yan was the only person in the world with a magicka, he would exploit it in total secrecy. Like he is already It doesn't even matter anymore, nobody here can tell the difference.

For now Yan just rounds it to "nobody gets magickas". Seems depressing.

"I'm from Earth! Blue and green and two ice caps, one Moon. I'm from the largest landmass called Eurasia. Less than one billion people for now but we are working on it. I recognize Albert Einstein and Jesus, I think. Albert Einstein is a researcher who found out something important about space travel and Jesus walked on water and started a cult. They are both fictional, are the rest of them supposed to be fictional? Or maybe the translation is messing with me, mapping to the closest concept. Everyone has magic - you've seen pretty much everything I can do, other people can do much more. We have teleportation, but it doesn't work on people and kills fish. Right now we need to coordinate strategy..."

The ladder started falling when they are almost to the safe platform. Some of the ladder's tendrils come alive and tightly grab Sparkly and Eric. This a very bad solution because now they are screwed if Yan falls or is teleported away, but it's the only one he could think of in a split second.

They swing under the platform, now upside down, not being able to reorient because of tendrils. Also their circulation might be cut off.

On a swing back Yan shoots upwards, anchors himself on the new platform with more tendrils and starts pulling up and untangling people on the ladder, however many there are.

He sees more people falling - one breaks some bones, judging by the sound. He can't save them.

Well, that's not true. He can save one of them - jump after them, grab, try to find a good angle to cancel momentum with a swing. Probably die in the process.

He doesn't want to pay the cost of saving them. Cultists can portal teleport, they will be fine.

Shard of Research will then be yanked into the void, making his patients feel I-want-to-help-him-he-was-in-the-middle-of-helping-me onto his three patients for all of two seconds before he is out of range and ever accelerating further away.

The platform had seemed to be collapsing slowly enough to make worth it to wait out the chaos near the ladder and for the several people on it to finish the climb before going himself. A terrible mistake, in retrospect!

Mordi plunges into the void with a yell, flailing and battered by crumbling remains of platform and arcane forces. His hands work rapidly through a spell, trying desperately to slow the fall. It works, he feels the spell biting deep into his remaining mana, and the mage slows down to "maybe still break a bone" speed instead of "go splat" speed. Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be anything to land on down here. Just endless inky black all around him as the bright portals and luckier victims far above shrink smaller and smaller. 

Gods, I'd take the high pass over this! he thinks.

And almost as soon as he thinks the thought, he lands in a snowbank with a thump.

The shock of cold jolts Mordi and he kicks and flails against the snow, taking a few long seconds to pop his head up into the air.

When he does he stares around in stunned silence, trying to comprehend what he's looking at. How is this possible? Were there more portals below and he hit one? He glaces up and sees no sky, just endless black unmarked by stars. Just the distant portals and platforms. He looks down again and to all appearances he's right back where he started from, in the high pass through the Yellow Peaks. Or at least, on one of the actual mountains overlooking the pass. He thinks he can see the remains of the cabin he took shelter in earlier today, far down below. 

"What the hells??"

If those who were lucky enough to find a place to hang on or get caught by someone else look down, it will seem like a slice of mountain range has appeared in the void far below. Two lines of mountains flanking a narrow valley through which a road runs. The valley is clear and could be called passable, if it was running to or from anywhere rather than trailing off into void. The mountains are dotted with trees and towards their peaks covered in late fall snow. 

"I think we might be from... different Earths?" Is Yan from... an alternate universe where magic exists? How the hell would Albert Einstein be a fictional character there, though? Earth's future, where Einstein is only a legend? A secret magical society of a billion people who know very little about the Muggle world?

Aaand now he's tied to a ladder and swinging below the platform. Oh, good, Yan's bringing him back up.

The moment the platform crumbles, Soqol and Yosh both tap their braces. It's a reflex really, drilled into them through a rather perverse schedule of being repeatedly dropped into endless space, till the sensation of your stomach rising into your throat corresponds to your hand crossing toward your opposite wrist.

They appear on the nearest platform, coincidentally the one with three people dangling from it.

In the mean time, the blue glow in the distance winked out the second people started accelerating into the abyss.

[Blink]

Shard of Research appears on the platform.

[Blink]

So does Iranik.

[Blink]

And Sidh'ne.

A second later, she appears in the snow in front of Mordi. Her face is an impassive mask, eyes glazed over, empty. Staring.

Her movements are elegant, fingers lithe as she draws a small oval in the air between them. A larger portal appears between you, as a mirror to it open up in the middle of the platform above.

"Your choice", she says in a slow whisper.

Then she vanishes.

Soqol looks very unhappy ...

if only I had a good facecast of this XD

"You've broken Eshik...", she says softly. "All the portals are falling. Those farther away from the temple fall first."

She removes five overlapping braces from her arms and places them at her feet.

"Take these and fix Eshik. Or come back to the temple and give your life to stabilize the portal that broke it -- Your choice."

Then she disappears again.

Soqol and Yosh had their heads bowed in shame the entire time. As Lady Ustari disappears, so do they.

Five braces lay on the platform. They seem to be made of a dull metal, though surprisingly light when lifted. On the inside (wrist-side) of each brace, one can see the four-sided circle of Eshik.

Additionally, there are two portals on this platform, on either end. They are nice and stable portals. Apart from this fact - and it being an entirely solid piece of stone  without any crumbling, rumbling, or dropping you in to an endless abyss - this platform is remarkably similar to the last one.

Attention, readers (and writers?): if you have been keeping up with this story so far, there have been / will be retcons, mostly of the "removing earlier tags" variety. Discussion of said retcons was in part in Dark's channel on the glowfic Discord.