As the last of the machine’s organs were punctured, a stillness filled the air as the clamour of battle was replaced by an eerie silence that rang heavy in our ears. Our connection severed - it spoke to us no longer, and our visions remained our own as we turned numbly to face one another, stunned in the wake of what we had done.

Any triumph we may have felt was snatched away in an instant as the transformations that now wracked the chamber rendered even its previous seizures benign in their intensity. An ice-cold gust filled the air, as the outside world was revealed to us through a pulsating seam.

It was towards this crimson orifice we now ran as the machine tore itself asunder, seemingly devouring itself in its hurry to eject us from its bloated body.

We emerged - blinded by the rays of light refracted from the snow, hazarding a final backwards glance to see the passage morph and reseal, fleshy protrusions petrifying as they again took on the form of mute stone.

Silence reigned at first, each of us lost in the reverie of questions with which we had been left. Then slowly, those questions turned to conversation. Wide-eyed exclamations poured from us then, and laughter, too. Such a human thing. Disbelief mingled with daring as we recounted our story, almost to assure one another that what we had witnessed was real.

It was many years before we could come to grips with what had transpired. As we lay our heads upon the pillows that granted us relief from our labours, we returned to the question of what it was to be human. That frail and imperfect thing we had striven so hard to preserve as eternity had beckoned. That cruel and self-centred thing that conjured acts of war against its own. That enchanted thing that bent its will to create the miraculous. That stunted thing that soiled the earth and waters as it did so.

Whether in death or hibernation, the Machina Arcana now lay dormant, and we were left with the more pedestrian perils of a life that continued regardless. We found meaning where we could now, as one-by-one, age rose to claim us - and we went gently into the arms of a very different kind of eternity indeed.