The Centaurs of Phlegethon

In canto XII they run the bank in file, armed with arrows as they went hunting in the world, and «saettando qual anima si svelle / del sangue più che sua colpa sortille» (Inf. XII 74-75). They do not guard a passage: they guard a punishment, and their weapon is precisely the instrument of that punishment. In the game they are the first enemies that strike from a distance.

You do not fight them, and that is what the canto says: Dante and Virgil do not take them on, they get themselves recognised and ask for passage. One of them runs faster than the player can sprint, and the bank has no end to corner him against; so the mechanism is not a duel but a line of fire to break, because under the surface of the blood or behind a rock you are not seen, and standing on the bank you are. The rule the whole game runs on holds here too, with one addition: the nose says where you are, the eye says whether the shot is on.

The tell the canto gives, the centaur rearing, could not be told apart from one merely running at twenty or thirty metres inside the fog, and players said so in their own words: it looks like they aim by themselves and there is no way to answer. Now a thread stretches from bow to chest and thickens as he draws: it says who is aiming at you, from where, and how long you have, and it vanishes the instant you take cover, which is exactly when the arrow stops coming. The game’s note on one of them is just as plain: he guards no passage, he guards a punishment, and he shoots whoever rises out of the blood higher than his guilt allows; you, who carry no guilt here, only have to stand up.