A huge, damp, papery sac floated above the ground of Hell. Figures with feathered wings, resembling angels, clung to its surface, their bodies struggling futilely beneath layers of sticky material like flies trapped in amber. Iron chains tethered the bottom of the structure to the hellish landscape.
They looked like angels.
But those angels had actually been dead for thousands upon thousands of years. During the fiercest years of the Blood War against the Abyss, millions of angels had attacked Baator. They had dealt devastating blows to it, but their victories were always short-lived. The corruption and depravity of this plane swiftly erased their triumphs from its surface, replacing them with more corruption and depravity.
In the end, just as the Eladrin had failed in their all-out assault on the Abyss, only a few thousand of those millions of angels had escaped and retreated from Baator. The others had either become Baator's fallen angels and daemonettes, become trophies for devils-such as the belt of angel heads around Bael's waist-or become part of the ruins scattered across the surface.
What Aaron and his companions saw before them, for instance, was a remnant left by the angels. Such ruins lay all over Avernus.
These creatures had once been angels, or at least their corpses had belonged to angels. But after they fell in the Blood War, creatures native to Avernus had taken over their bodies.
Throughout Avernus, aggressive colonies of Stygian Bees built enormous hives out of slain angels and other fallen celestials. These structures possessed a magical buoyancy and had to be chained to the surface of Avernus. The cocooned angels writhed eerily as larvae squirmed inside them, creating the illusion that they were still alive.
The Hellcar roared past as the angelic ruins writhed in the distance. Strings of maggots