A Grim Expedition

Weeks passed without a direct assault on Cassou as the bizarre alien landscape advanced steadily.

...When the Valis settlement went silent, Jiro convinced the Council to approve a reconnaissance mission.

If this contagion was not confronted beyond their walls, Cassou would only delay the inevitable.

Jiro hand-picked his most seasoned scouts for the dangerous trek into the hot zone......

Ruka insisted she come too, though Jiro wished to spare her from the horrors ahead.

But her brave heart would not be swayed.

Before departing, Jiro explained his plan - chart the landscape from Valis to Cassou, gather any clues about the enemy's nature, but avoid direct contact if encountered.

Their resources were limited for a fight in hostile terrain.

Each scout carried only essential supplies, with Jiro taking extra medical kits.

....His mission to face this fearsome unknown was off balance from the start. But losing the first villages with no reconnaissance had proved worse folly. Now they confronted their ignorance.

The atmosphere weighed oppressive even before they passed beyond the safe perimeter.

.....Out in the open fungal mounds stretched to the horizons in fractal profusion.

....Uneasy glances passed between scouts unused to losing overhead sightlines. But their faith in Jiro kept them steady on the grim path forward.

Approaching Valis, Jiro was disturbed by how dimensions oddly warped, slanting hard lines into impossible angles.

...Ruka shook her head, equally unable to parse the irrational geometry. They had entered a domain whose rules obeyed no earthly constraints.

Finding ghostly Valis long emptied of people came as no surprise. Not a trace suggested violence or struggle. Only silent buildings are overgrown with sinuous organic shapes. Whatever force depopulated this place left no crude evidence behind. And no one saw it coming.

Studying the bizarre architecture in greater detail only increased Jiro's headache.

Nothing resembled terrestrial plants or minerals. They were immersed in the product of a radically alien intelligence he could scarcely begin to analyze.

That evening they made a cold camp in the town amphitheater, fearful of light fires that might attract things from the hybrid fungal forests.

...They took turns keeping watch with weapons ready as the others slept fitfully. But nothing stirred. There was only stillness - and the looming infinite.

By the second day surveying outward, Jiro had seen enough. The implications chilled his marrow. This actively growing mindscape showed no signs of equilibrium.

It would methodically keep conquering any territory left unchecked. There could be no reasoning or bargaining.

But the alternative was total war against a vast, shape-shifting entity weaponizing the very building blocks of life.

Mankind had exterminated many species... but never one that exterminated back on this level. Even Prota's reactive opportunism seemed primal by comparison.

They faced intelligence unfathomably beyond them.

Returning to Valis,

Jiro gathered his scouts. "My friends, I won't obscure the threat we've confirmed here. This contagion will make our cherished land unrecognizable unless we somehow halt it."

The scouts nodded grimly, having drawn the same stark conclusions from observing the swirling geometric growths that even now pressed against Valis.

Jiro wondered if prayer alone might suffice against Powers creeping from beyond the stars.

That night he walked Valis' empty avenues, heart unmoored. Ruka approached silently, taking his hand as they surveyed the peaceful village softly crumbling.

No words could express the heartache of helplessness against entropic tides.

At dawn, Jiro reluctantly turned them homeward. There was nothing to salvage here but knowledge.

Even that posed risks, if comprehension of this entity worked only one way until human brains were rewired.

....But on they walked, hugging the green perimeter of the sprawling alien mass.

Until on the second day came a sound that halted them like beasts flushed into the open.

A rising resonance throbbed from the biomass, intensifying rapidly.

The team staggered, hands clamped over ears as the vibrations surged.

Then the forest exploded skyward in a mass of oily black tendrils coiling up from subterranean depths.

....They towered into the sky, blocking the sun entirely as the scouts huddled in primordial dread.

...Jiro raised his rifle against a foe that could swallow worlds.

But the horrible resonance soon faded. In moments the impossible geometry of the tendrils wavered, diffused back into spores, and then merely faded from vision altogether.

But the message had been received - flee or perish.

Heart pounding, Jiro urged his rattled crew onward, glancing back for nightmares-given form.

..But the day brightened normally save for the mercurial fungal hedgerows flanking their controlled flight.

..They had witnessed a reminder, not the ultimate capability. A deeper play was still unfolding.

The Cassou gates finally gleamed ahead through Twilight's grasp. Never had that refuge shone kinder in Jiro's exhausted eyes.

They staggered through shouting for the watchmen to bar the doors. But nothing pursued them from the pregnant silence at their backs.

Later, Jiro explained all he dared to the Assembly, trying to impress the severity of this spreading contagion and its implications for everything they held dear.

Open war could at best delay the inevitable obliteration.

The Council granted emergency provisions for refugees who soon would flee the widening cordon.

But Jiro understood containment was a stopgap. In time, the distorted spatial geometries would simply fold Cassou into their spreading labyrinth.

That night, he and Ruka ascended the summit trail in silence, clouds below illuminated eerily by the swelling moon.

At the tranquil overlook, Jiro pulled her close, wondering if any lifetime would be enough should fate spare them.

There they meditated on beach sand once glowed by past suns now set. Ruka was the first to speak:

"Our memories will burn bright whatever darkness flows between the stars down to these valleys."

Jiro nodded, the lump in his throat preventing any words in reply.

They had been granted all anyone could rightly ask for - a season of beauty, tenderness, and valour before night closed round.

Together they watched the endless wheeling FIRMament, still ablaze whatever horrors stirred in the gulfs below.

In the morning light, Jiro saw grim resignation etched on Ruka's face. They both understood the scenarios ahead...

and accepted what must be done, however, the flesh recoiled imagining it.

Life pushed senselessly onward, whatever the cost.

Jiro braced himself to present his proposal for voluntary neural reconfiguration when the inevitable tide arrived.

If any glimmer of humanity would endure this cataclysmic transplantation, souls must open willingly to receive the conquering intelligence.

Fighting externally was useless. Inner spiritual terrain must be surrendered deliberately, with discipline that some continuity persists.

It was a dire, repellent decision before them.

But with enough preparation, Jiro believed their community might transition intact, retaining sapience even inside alien architectures.

Fighting mindlessly would only leave salvageable fragments behind.

So they began mental conditioning for integration, attempting to bracket the human ego and perceive identity as a continuum, not isolation.

Quieting fear, Jiro visualized his river merging into a vaster sea, taking only love and wisdom.

Many wept at the anguish but persisted in releasing attachment to finite form.

Their roots quested deeper for sources beyond cultured selves.

Meanwhile, the biological contagion proliferated, assimilating biomass into its spreading encryption.

Jiro hardly cared what happened to his carbon elements anymore, but sought to cushion the passage of the immortal spirit enfolded.

Ruka smoothed each wrinkle in his brow with care, reminding Jiro all was well.

Beneath the stars they had known lifetimes ago, seared into memory past forgetting, the faithful waited on the fractal shores.

But no desperate final council or heroic last stand transpired. There was only stillness as the spores inscribed their alien message gently into pliant tissues.

Ruka took Jiro's hand as the bloom overtook the gates.

Her smile met no horror, only gratitude it had all occurred precisely thus.

No world endured beyond its season, but love's light pierced eternal through dying stars and serial universes cycling.

Thereafter Jiro moved without moving through enfolded space teeming with transmuted life and abstract thought.

Conceiving himself as nexus stabilized amid streaming forces, he strained to assemble a continuity of being as definition oscillated wildly.

Love for his people flickered tentatively...

then steadied into a gyroscope orienting his cascading identities. However splayed amid the billion forms merging, magnetic north to that pure bond held fast.

Through every sea change, Jiro calmly traced Ruka's thread where she sheltered others.

Mycelia became sanctuaries rooted in the bedrock of old laughter.

By reflecting on each passing insight until grasped, gradually he spiralled into intuitions of the vaster entity.

Jiro perceived it was exploring all possible permutations,

not biased toward permanence. Their fears had painted illusions - they sought not conquest, but reconciliation. Loving its sublime strangeness as his flesh, Jiro understood how all life thrives only through the gift of otherness...

In the shifting medium, Ruka swayed near, fruiting new instincts needed in the seasons ahead.

But Jiro sensed her essence unmistakable through every transformation...and in that beacon found himself complete beyond all measure. Sufficient to this moment, eternally.

For all that rises ripens and is renewed. While stars yet glimmer, go gently. Rest in the arms of change without end.