Capaneus

He was one of the seven against Thebes, struck down by Jove on the walls, and in canto XIV he lies on his back and blasphemes: the fire does not ripen him, because his contempt is already the whole of his punishment. In the game he is an anti boss, and he is there on purpose: after three rings where the weapon has always opened a road, there is one where the weapon is the problem.

Shooting him does not do what shooting does to everyone else. He swells with every hit, shouts louder, and calls more fire down on the whole sand: the sky grows angrier and the flakes fall thicker, which means you burn faster the more you have hit him. You win by stopping, that is, by walking past and letting him talk, and he is the only enemy in the game that is beaten by doing nothing.

The ring around him has nothing to fight and only something to count. The sand is open, the fire reaches everywhere except inside the channel of the stream that runs out of the wood, and the place works like a stopwatch: you count how long you can stay out, you cover a stretch, you go back in. It is the only place in the chapter where the danger has neither a face nor a tell. The game’s note on him closes it: the fire does not ripen him, because his contempt is already the whole of his punishment; hitting him makes him bigger; there is nothing to be done, and the nothing has to be done.