From pups we raised those loyal wicker beasts, the gentle children of the forest lord. Thatched with stripped dogwood bark and fueled by ancient, unknown majicks, these creatures fulfilled an unwritten accord.

The deep within was to be left for woodland homes of animals and plants and otherkin. We only felled what creaking timber would break naturally, as though peeling away dead skin.

Those beasts with glowing eyes and splinter maws did work alongside our kind for generations.

The rules of the past often fade with time, and with modern engineering reliance on majicks slowly died. The woven grainy twigs of muscle settled into statues throughout the village as the gifts of the forest lord were lain aside.

Stone and mortar turned to steel and steam, and the hunger for wooden fuel began to outpace the natural forest decay. Automated saws ate through the thickest trunks as deer and birds and shadows ran away.

The treaty thusly broken, whispering fog emerged from the deep with roaring reverberations.

Lanterns lit throughout the town seemed dim compared to the flickering life of long-forgotten figures. Wooden limbs and jaws groaned alike with the awakening of the forest lord’s most faithful familiars.

Steel met oak and pine and maple, as swords began to whittle the crafted monsters back to piles of sticks. Man’s technology adapted well to such old fiends, but the forest lord still had plenty of tricks.

The beasts given freely so long ago had been made to cooperate; the true fury of the forest lay outside of the lord’s creations.

Nothing could be heard or seen beyond the shifting of the mist, after which blood would fill the night. The others from the forest deep had come to reclaim their homes, and mere flesh and bone beneath thin metals gave little fight.

By morning death had soaked into the earth, sowing new seeds to defend the deep and village both. Life traded for life, the townsfolk watched in awe as the corpses quickly turned to nearly unrestrained growth.

And when the gentle wicker beasts returned the remaining people stood clear, remembering the forest lord and his gift’s implications.