It was both an eternity and an instant later that we found ourselves once more standing on the firmament of reality, as we barrelled headlong from the cosmic rift to gaze blinking upon sights and signs unknown.

The same otherworldly technology we had first discovered within the bowels of the crater stretched here too in all directions, wrought in complicated frameworks that formed the boundaries of our new copper canopy.

Could we have somehow travelled to the realm that first gave birth to these mysteries? How distant our home seemed now, as we trained the first set of human eyes to view this scene in search of answers.

Here too were the same strange portals that had flung forth the misshapen aberrations with which we had battled. Perhaps here also their activation would offer us passage?

Like blind men we raced to rattle the levers and contraptions that furnished this odd cogwheel structure, our digits clumsy with panic as we realised what may yet burst forth at any moment.