by deity
Lai, Achachak, Zhani and Ana watch as two more of their colleagues disappear through the modem port. Most of the guardians have returned and only these four remain in the cyber-realm after Dean and Mruyadgi’s recent encounter.
‘I’m sure the problem is no great concern or danger, this is probably more a precautionary move than anything’ Lai says to his colleagues across their psychic link.
Achachak is not convinced, he has never been at ease in this realm and he certainly isn’t now. They know something has happened from Peta's warning but what? The imagination can be a horrible thing sometimes. Ana and Zhani share a worried glance however it vanishes when the lights of two more modems fade, signifying they are empty.
‘At last! Safety!’ thinks Ana, who is next in line with Lai. The red tinge of her astral form, caused by the worry of this situation, diminishes upon seeing the modem become available for them.
Noting the unease of his colleagues Lai offers the next port to them and they begin the uneasy process of working out who wants to leave the most. The four planars are discussing these options next to the ports when from nowhere gigantic metallic jaws enclose them, in an instant they are surrounded with daunting, thick walls and engulfed into darkness aside from the red glow of worry and fear on their astral profiles.
Zhani and Achachak bash against barricade with all the force of their astral forms but to no avail. Meanwhile Ana has found the two modem ports. They’re caught by the jaws of the walls enclosing them but the terminal ends have squeezed inside. They wriggle and writh in her hands.
‘Lai, look I have the two modems’,
They sense movement above them, a mechanical whirr made more ominous by their cramped dark surrounds, which prevents them from clearly seeing what is creating the noise and has joined them in their ?confined cell?.
The planars instinctively look to Lai, who seems just as worried and helpless as they are. The noise above changes, they look to it. At first there seems to be nothing above until a faint pinprick of light appears. It is soon brighter and accompanied by a sharp, needle-like appendage which creeps within along with the sliver of light. The ominous sound even more discomforting now they can see its source.
Lai reacts grabbing the two nearest to the modem, Ana and Zhani and shoves them within it. The modems continue wriggling making the tight fit even more difficult but with Achachak‘s help Lai manages to make Ana and Zhani disappear. The intrusive needle continues to whirr above them, while the two guardians in the modem ports still appear stuck, have they made it back to base? Lai wonders but only for a moment, he and Achachak have concerns of their own. His fellow guardian has begun struggling with the walls that have entrapped them.
‘Achachak, STOP! Take this pose it is our only hope’ Lai says and his humanoid astral form unravels and forms a tightly coiled ball of energy. The needle is no longer moving inward but is now flashing it seems it will take action any second though what it will do and how it will affect the two trapped guardians was still unknown.
‘Hurry’ resonates in Achachak's mind and he does the same. But his form is looser, an ungainly ball of string to Lai’s sphere of perfection. A huge blast of energy emits from the needle and fills the room. Blinding light and agonizing pain consume them. Moans and screams escape as their senses are flooded. The physical element of the realm is brought home as pain burns upon every tissue and limb, the combination of the physical and astral debilitating to their very core, their mind and spirit are tweaked from their lifeforce.
The needle leaves and the barricade dismantles. Little evidence of the two planars remains. This place has been laid to waste, devoid of light, of movement, of life. Even the robotic datatrails steer clear, these lifeless droids seemingly driven away from such destruction by what we would term instinct.
Through the dimness something stirs. Faint at first it grows stronger and then can be seen at the barren scene. It’s a web-robot and it has been sent by Peta, arriving outside the port where the attack took place, it is followed by a similar web-robot for Yachi and some others.
They find nothing, a depressing void of noise and activity all the more disconcerting because it was so recently buzzing with motion and industry. The barricades that Ana told them of
are gone. All that remains is a blackened sphere, throbbing erratically and a small pile of detritus.
Yachi speaks ‘Peta, give me an empty modem port, we must get all that remains back with us, What can you see?’
‘MMM, Not sure. There, well, there seems to be nothing here. None of the structures that house the internet are discernible. What you call cyberspheres and web-hubs. There’s no traffic or Datatrails. Nothing’
‘What of Lai and Achachak?’
‘Their connections to our network were lost and once that’s cut off we can get little or no information of them directly’
Yet another thing that Yachi didn't know of or understand in this cyber-realm. Moments earlier when it seemed all the guardians would return without any more problems he had been asking question after question to Peta trying to grasp the essence of this internet that was now intertwined with the astra, but so far it was all in vain. And without this basis he had little hope to understand how all these interconnected computers from all corners of the world link to the new astral realm developing before them. While he could see that this mesh of communication lines was becoming, or in fact already was, an astral realm. He could not comprehend how this came to be?
The modem ports arrive back in the network room and Peta downloads all that was left of their companions. They were now just one of countless files on a network server. It was sickening to think that their strong, ever-reliable leader had been reduced to this though Peta demonstrated that there was even less hope for Achachak. The size of his file was apparently significantly smaller than Lai's.
Yachi had to tell the other guardians and particularly members of the high council what they had done with the remnants of their colleagues and then they would need to discuss what to do next. But first he had to try to understand what all this meant,
He stares at the PC screen and the two unremarkable lines which now represented all that remained of the two guardians, two of his dearest and eldest friends. Clearly this would take some explaining. This was all that remained of their astral forms, of their life-force. Achachak's was clearly not complete as it was much smaller than Lai's but what did that mean? Could it still function in some way if it was returned to his body on the other side of the world? Could his physical body be reunited with this file on the computer before him? It seemed a problem far removed from the astral world they were familiar with yet that is what led them to this predicament.
Undoubtedly, many of his colleagues would be wondering as Yachi did now; what were they involved in here? What was attacking them? And no answers were forthcoming, in fact wherever they looked whether in this network room, in the cyber-realm, in the fate of their recently attacked friends, there were only more unanswered questions.
Yachi's train of thought was distracted by a psychic link attempting to engage his mind. The force of the link confirmed his first intuition that it was the high council. They would have many questions for him and while he was sure he would only have a few answers there would still be much of this unbelievable situation to discuss. What were they to do? How would they lead the rest of the guardians? And they had to decide quickly as things were getting more and more critical.