The Curst Strike!

The creatures bearing down on them through the trees were an horrific mixture of bear and bird. The massive shaggy form of a bear was topped with an avian head and a mighty beak; a mixture of feathers and fur covered their hides, and birdlike claws extended from the heavy paws.

Sack recognized them as owlbears; he'd seen one, once, wounded, when he was young, being hunted down by the rangers near his father's home. These, however, were bigger - much bigger - and had a hideous crimson glow to their eyes that had been absent from the visage of that rememberd creature.

Surya, and Sack from his vantage in the treetops, launched arrows at the oncoming creatures, and Hildraft conjured a Blade Barrier into being, enveloping two of the monsters in whirling, tearing magical blades.

Several of the arrows struck home, but more bounced out, and the ones that had gone home seemed to have done surprisingly little damage. Worse, the archers could see them start to be squeezed out - the monsters were regenerating!

Hildraft eyed this, and concluded that he wasn't going to survive a direct combat with these things. With a flick of his hands, he shifted himself onto the Ethereal plane and disappeared from sight. The owlbears that had been bearing down on him snarled and peered around, baffled and furious, unable to understand his sudded vanishment.

Sack remained aloft; despite the poor rate of success, he continued to rain shafts down on the monsters, hoping to score a kill through simple attrition.

Surya changed his plans, and, leaving the Sword of the Dead Legions in its' scabbard, swung his shield off his shoulder and shook it onto his arm, hefting Tormentor's dead grey shape in his right hand. Suddenly, the Tellaran and his damnéd sword was alone facing the ten hellish abberations.

Leaping forwards, he dealt a series of rapid, probing sword-blows, feeling out his foes. He was dismayed at how little damage he managed to inflict, and a spark of anger began to kindle deep inside. This was fanned to fury as one of the monsters slashed him with its' claws, inflicting a painful wound in his chest.

Hildraft suddenly shifted back onto the material plane, right behind the Tellaran, and, touching him on the shoulder, bestowed a Holy Aura on him. Kord's radiance settle about his shoulders, protecting and strengthening him. He was going to need it.

Two of the owlbears had managed to deduce where the regular stinging arrows were coming from, and were attacking the base of Sack's tree, trying to dislodge him from the branches. Gathering his equipment, the ranger sprang lightly from one tree to another, concealed himself a little better this time, and resumed fire. Baffled, the owlbears continued to batter the treetrunk of the tree he'd abandoned.

Hildraft, now visible again, was forced to wield the Axe of Glass again, for the first time since Kord's renewed blessing had fallen on it. Despite deep misgivings about his ability to affect their terrible foes, he inflicted a couple of serious wounds on one, the blazing blue axe cleaving its' polluted flesh with ease.

Surya's restraint slipped, and the red mist of blind fury came down over his eyes. Casting caution to the winds, he flung down his shield and drew the Sword of the Dead Legions, before hurling himself into an all-out assault on the creatures before him. Hildraft watched with awe as the warrior's twin blades flickered and flashed, cutting, tearing and stabbing with little regard for defence. For a few moments, he drove them back, aided by the blinding flashes of power released by the Holy Aura each time the creatures managed to strike back, which sent them stumbling around unable to see; but his disregard for defence was his undoing. A pawful of terrible claws slashed across his throat, and he dropped in his tracks, a plume of arterial blood fountaining into the air.

Hildraft desperately worked another spell, as claws and beaks sought his own vitals, hurling the mesh of a Mass Heal across himself and the fallen Tellaran. The powerful curative magic flowed out, erasing the pair's wounds as if they'd never been, and dragging the Tellaran back from the very jaws of death. The price was high, however; the dwarven priest felt a pair of claws sieze and lift him, and a beak tore deeper into his body than ever before. It tore more than his flesh; as he struggled free in sudden desperation he felt his body weaken as his vitality was drained out into the monster, which immediately shook off all the signs of wounding it had hitherto displayed.

Seizing Tormentor and his shield, Surya exploded up from the ground, his fatal injury of a moment before gone as if it had never been. Cold anger had replaced blind demonspawned rage, and his strikes sent blood, fur and feathers flying across the forest. With a crash, the monster that'd struck him down was itself felled, but there was no healer to rescue the owlbear.

Across the clearing, where the mighty cylinder of whirling blades still turned, one of the blinded monsters blundered back into the holocaust and was shredded. Hildraft swung the Axe of Glass again, and was staggered when it scythed through an owlbear without resistance, leaving nothing but a pile of dust!

A light dawned. The nature of the magic employed to create the Desolation meant that the Curst were fiendish in nature; linked to the Lower Planes by the power infused into them - and thus susceptible to the newly-released powers of the Axe. Ignited by this discovery, he cut down another.

Opposite Surya, the first monster he'd slain, downed with the Sword of the Dead Legions, rose up again from the dead, and at Surya's word started to attack its' former fellows.

Behind them, through the trees, the urgent sound of hoofbeats was heard. Hansen and Moonflame galloped into the clearing, flinging themselves from their horses and into the fray; the bard was already singing.

The tide had turned!