"An Ancestral Tree… Leru lay here. She was swift, agile, used to cut through the air."—Sein
"Come on, Gumo! Hurry!" Leru shouted. There was an ominous creaking noise from higher in Forlorn Spires. Behind her a worried Gumon crept its way through the collapsed pillars. Farther down the tunnel more Gumon were holding the remaining supports up.
Ahead there was a spot of light coming from a hole in the tunnel. Leru leaped through the hole at the end of the tunnel onto a bank of soft grass. She rolled over, staring back at the entrance to the tunnel.
Secretly, she was glad to be out of the danger. Sometimes she even wished she wasn't ever made the Ambassador to the Gumon.
Gumo sprang out of the tunnel, long arms flailing behind him as he jumped. He landed beside Leru.
Leru gasped. The tunnel started to wobble. Then it began to crack.
"No!" Leru and Gumo shouted at the same time.
The tunnel and a wall of Forlorn Spires collapsed, spraying dust on the surrounding plains. Leru looked up. The once radiant tower was now encapsulated in shades of somber blue. The machines had stopped working and the Gumon were trapped.
What had happened to cause such a disaster, they didn't really know. All they had seen was the Spirit Tree flash blue in the distance and all the Light stopped flowing from Hollow Grove. The Spirit Tree's sudden void of Light had turned off the Element of Winds. Being that the Gumon derived the energy for their machines from the Element of Winds, all the machines had stopped working and the spire had gradually started to collapse.
Gumo ran frantically to the pile of stones that had once been the tunnel. Leru had to dodge as he threw aside multiple small stones haphazardly. But when he reached the bigger stones, he could not lift them.
Leru crawled over to Gumo. She put her paw on his arm and looked sadly at the collapsed tunnel. "There's nothing we can do for them, Gumo. But the rest of the spire we may be able to save.
"Yes," Gumo said hoarsely.
But neither of them had any idea how to free the rest of the Gumon trapped in the Forlorn Spire. They built a hideaway where they were safe. They fought off the Decay that came often to the clearing, and this came easy working together.
Still, it wasn't long before the grass wasn't as soft and the sky wasn't as clear. Slowly the plants died and the pond outside the spire was not clear but murky with shadows that darted through the deep waters.
The land looked like a swamp after a fortnight. The plants were all wilted and the grounds sopping wet from rain as thunder banged overhead. The pond was even murkier now, and Leru was certain the Decay had found an escape in its dark waters.
Gumo sat by the pond, gazing into its depths. They still hadn't heard a sound from the Gumon trapped inside Forlorn Spires.
"We'll free them someday, Gumo," Leru encouraged as she bounded up on a rock to get a better look at the dreary towers. It was then that she saw an open window. It was some twenty feet in the air, but if Leru had some sort of ladder…
"I've got an idea," Leru announced.
And so, for a few weeks they cut trees and strung vines around cut planks and branches. But the wood was brittle and hard to work with. The air steadily got colder, even though the winds had stopped blowing.
It was another fortnight later when snow began to pile itself over the clearing and the lake froze. The skies had clouded grey and white. The air was chilly cold now, and Leru shivered even within her cozy hideaway.
In a month, the Forlorn Spires had turned into a ruin of stagnant air and frost.
"Do you really think this will work, Leru?" Gumo asked in his deep, throaty voice. He had perched the ladder next to the spires. It only went up to a rim on the edge, but that was enough for Leru.
"Mostly," Leru said brightly as she began to climb to the rim. Her back-paws were freezing on the icy stone. Once Leru was firmly on the rim, Gumo pushed the ladder and Leru grabbed it. She set the bottom stilts on the rim so that the top rung reached the next rim above. A biting wind blew.
Leru bounded up the rungs again, her front paws stiff. Now she perched on the second rim. She looked upwards. The spire seemed to go on forever, but the open window was only a rim above her.
"Uh, Gumo, I'm not sure I can reach quite that high," Leru said uncertainly.
"Just go for it!" Gumo called.
Leru nodded and jumped. She fell back onto the rim below and rolled, almost falling off.
"Leru, the rest of the Gumon are in there. You must get in!" Gumo yelled, frantically jumping up and down.
"I know," Leru said softly but determinedly. Again, she jumped. She felt herself start to fall, but noticed an uneven brick in the wall right above her. Then, with thoughts of her Gumon friends swirling in her mind, she miraculously jumped again in midair. Leru grabbed onto the brick and hoisted herself up.
"That was amazing!" Gumo encouraged far away from the ground. His voice was muffled by the chilling silence of the snow.
Leru jumped again. The rim was just within her reach as she started to descend. No, Leru thought. She did the midair jump again, and reached the third rim. Leru dove through the dark window of Forlorn Spires.
The inside did not look promising. It was dark and snowflakes were floating softly from upper levels. Snow was heaped on the ground, and ice coated the walls. The Gumon's inventions were layered in thick frost.
Leru stomped in the snow to a door at one side of the room. She could hear distant voices somewhere further. The door was broken; it was mechanical. Leru still pushed her way through against the cold metal.
I wonder what's going on at home, Leru thought. Is it wrong to seek help for the Gumon and ignore the Spirits? I am the Ambassador to the Gumon, but I am a Spirit as well. Leru looked to a fallen pillar within the corridors of the spires. How did the Spirit Tree even lose its light?
Leru continued through the darkness, the voices growing louder and clearer. She sprinted to another small room where a door on a far wall had completely frozen over.
"Hello?" Leru asked, pushing her ears to the door.
"Leru?" the voice of a Gumon asked. "Is that you?"
"Yes. Are you alright?" Leru asked in turn.
"We're fine as can be. All the entrances are shut, and our life and energy supplies are running short. How is Gumo?"
"Fine."
A new voice joined the conversation. This one Leru knew well as an elder Gumon, leader in their society.
"Why aren't you with the Spirits?"
"I'm trying to free you."
"Forget about us! Gumo can take care of us. Your people need you, Leru. You should be with them right now," the elder Gumon scolded.
"But—"
"Go!"
Leru stepped away from the door, her heart beating fast. "If you insist." She turned and ran back through the doors. What could have happened back home? Leru worried as she climbed down the ladder against the spire. Deep inside, she knew all along she had been waiting for an excuse.
Gumo was waiting eagerly for her at the foot of the spire.
"Gumo," Leru announced. "I spoke to one of your elders. He made me realize that I need to go back home, to my people. It would be betraying them, wouldn't it, if I stayed here? I'm afraid the fate of the Gumon rests with you. All the doors out are sealed. The Gumon sounded well enough for now."
"What?" Gumo asked. "What do you mean you're going? How can I free the Gumon by myself?"
"I trust you," Leru said before turning and sprinting off towards the Valley of the Wind. Oh, why did I stay at Forlorn Spires for so long?
As Leru made her way through the cold caves, she fully beheld what had happened to her home. Several times she had to dart out of the way of Decay monstrosities. The plants were wilted, the ground dusty, and the air still.
A few days after she had started home, when she had scaled a ledge with her amazing new jumping ability, she heard a deep voice calling for help behind her.
Leru bounded off the cliff and backtracked until she stumbled upon a grey, stoney hand hanging onto the side of a cliff.
Leru tugged onto the hand, her Light rebelling as she used what little strength she had to help the creature up. She could only pull up a few inches, but that was enough for whoever she helped to haul itself up from the ground.
A Gumon Leru knew dearly collapsed into a soft nest of wilting ferns.
"Gumo! Are you alright?" Leru asked.
"Yes," he said, rolling backwards.
"What are you doing here?"
"Following you, of course."
"What about the other Gumon?"
Gumo looked down. "The Decay descended upon the spire. None of them are quite hurt yet, so I fled. The elder Gumon said that they would probably be alright… And also, I'm not going to abandon you to make your way out here all alone."
"Oh, Gumo!" Leru threw her arms around the stoney creature. "You really didn't have to come, but I'm so glad you did. It was beginning to be a very lonely journey."
So Leru and Gumo set off together to journey the Valley of the Wind. At the top Leru restored her life and energy at an ancient Spirit Well. Gumo looked across to the Misty Woods that were spewing fog into the cascading waterfalls that fell below.
"The Misty Woods!" Leru shouted, leaping up and down. "The Gumon Seal is inside. If we could retrieve it, we could free the Gumon, assuming we could both fight off the Decay. But I think we could manage, don't you? And if we get the—What's wrong, Gumo?"
Gumo's mouth was drawn in a long line. He sighed, sat down, and draped his legs over the bridgeless ledge. "No bridge, Leru. I see the pieces of wood below in the pond. If only someone else could have brought it over sooner."
Leru looked at the large gap between the two sides. "Oh…"
No bridge. Why? Only some vines remained of the bridge that once distinguished the border between Nibel and the Misty Woods.
Leru and Gumo continued. They rested at Hollow Grove under the shade of the Spirit Tree before hurrying through an oddly quiet and empty spider nest. They next crept through a dry and polluted Thornfelt Swamp before journeying into the depths of the Moon Grotto
"Well, here we are!" Leru said, looking out onto a beautiful, big cavern with roaring waterwalls not unlike the ones in the Valley of the Wind. The water was polluted, but plants still grew and there was not even a Decay Crawler to be seen.
Gumo bobbed up and down, his version of a nod.
"Isn't it perfect?" Leru asked.
"No, not quite," Gumo said, peering down over the ledge. "It will need some improvements before it's worthy to be called a hideout."
Leru and Gumo began to work. Gumo specialized in gathering wood and stones, while Leru preferred to gather small mushrooms that glowed in the dark and decorate the caverns with them.
"I agree, Gumo," Leru said one day. "It isn't perfect yet. It's far too dull." She placed a mushroom in between a brick.
Once Gumo had gathered materials he began to draw blueprints in the mud right at the Moon Grotto entrance to Thornfelt Swamp. Leru watched him, tilting her head. Even though she had lived with the Gumon for a long time, the inventions they created still puzzled her. I guess I'm more of a practical Spirit, she thought.
Gumo began to build, with Leru helping loyally at his side. There was one time that Gumo slipped on a wet wooden board and ended up hanging from a metal bar quite comically. As Leru laughed, she fell backwards over a stone, and ended hanging from a smaller bar by her tail. A few minutes later, Gumo was looking down at her, laughing.
Soon they had put up dozens of platforms for ease of access and huts for each to occupy their own space. Leru by this time had decorated the caverns so much that they glowed as if above ground, though a bit bluer.
"I made these designs," Gumo said to Leru one day, passing her a leaf with writing on it. "Traps, to keep us safe."
Leru frowned. "Good designs I suppose, from what I can tell, but I don't think we should use them. If there are any Spirits out there, even just one, we should make entrance as easy as possible. And what if the Gumon come?"
Gumo looked sadly into the waters below the wooden platform. "What if the Gumon aren't—"
"We can't lose hope, Gumo," Leru replied weakly. "I suppose you could build your traps, just in case for Decay, but let's not turn them on."
"Okay," Gumo said.
Leru looked around. Her eyesight suddenly became blurry. "Agh!" Her Light was trembling inside. The sources of life and energy had become sparse over the past few weeks.
"Are you alright?" Gumo asked, springing to his feet.
"Fine…" Leru said, laying back.
As more time passed, the life and energy in the caves grew even scarcer. Leru, however, didn't even take the little she found. She saved it for Gumo. He needed more life and energy than her, as she was a small Spirit already full of Light that sustained.
Even as her head swam, Leru protested to herself: I'm alright! There's no need to worry.
There came a day, though, that Leru felt particularly weak. She stumbled out of her little cove in the morning onto a platform, holding a hand to her faintly glowing chest. She dragged herself to Gumo's platform.
"Where are you going?" Gumo asked.
"Just…just for a little walk," Leru said. And she hoped it was true, but thought not. And so she took one long, last look at her dear friend. A much better friend than I've ever been to him, she thought.
Leru stumbled through the mushroom lit rooms. Eventually she reached a small cavern. She remembered this one specially. Not because the decorations were particularly beautiful, but because she'd had a troublesome time putting them up.
If only I'd had more time, Leru thought as she laid down, closing her eyes. Maybe I could have found other Spirits…
And all was shade. A little while later wails echoed beside a white flower.
"Heed my words, Ori. Remember my cowardice, how I was so quick to leave my friends when instructed to. Gumo was a much better friend to me than I to his people. In my time as the Spirit Leru, the ability to jump on air alone wasn't even an accomplishment compared what I could have done in the time given to me. But see how I was also able to make a life in chaos. Be loyal, and you and those you love may restore Nibel together."