one image would loom lastingly within reach and then recede to distant frontiers , fading awayboth visually and aurallyas it echoed through forgotten corridors , only to reverberate back and emerge again before the minds eye in a completely new form , in a completely different incarnation of itself , having shed awaylike a serpentthe extraneous skins of its previous life , and yet , having somehow remained oddly connected to all which it had once been .