The roots of the birches dig horizontally across the topsoil and plunge down, weaving themselves past and through dense clods of rocky subsoil. At a depth of three yards, you begin to find pockets of damp air no bigger than a fist. At a depth of four to five yards, there are passages as large and wide as those in any castle, though they curve and meander. The floor is tamped hard as stone by hundreds of years of footfalls. Dim lanterns are tended by tiny lantern keepers, although these servants are unseen. Deeper still, there is a small village made of caves. Each of the house-like nooks is inhabited by a strange occupant: a blood-drinking aristocrat that has lived for a dozen lifetimes. Their banishment from the world above was thought to be total, until you happened to see a shadowy human form passing between cottages in the village of Birkreach in the dead of night.

submitted for the Cairn: Forests of Another Name jam on 4/11/2022.