Chiron and Nessus

Chiron is the middle one: he looks, he notices that one of the two moves the stones under his feet, and he gives the order. That is where the rule the whole game runs on comes from, because nothing down here knows where you are and everything knows only what you have disturbed. Nessus is the one it falls to, «Nesso, che morì per la bella Deianira» (Inf. XII 67-68), and in the game he does not run the bank with the others: he waits at the mouth of the ford, cuts across your road, and does not move until the order comes.

The ford is paid for, and not in gold and not in grains: in a name out of the book. All through the game names are collected by promising one of the damned that you will carry him back up, and here somebody asks to be paid: Chiron wants one of the souls boiling in his river to come out with you, which is the price a guardian of a punishment can ask. With an empty book he does not even look at you, and the only thing the ford tells you when you frame it is that he is not looking.

Turning up with nothing is not a dead end, and it is the most expensive lesson in the chapter: you go back along the river, wade in up to the chest and get a name out of one of the souls in it. That costs health, because the blood cooks, and it costs time under the arrows. The crossing itself is not a black screen: you really do climb up, the back follows the bed of the river, and while Nessus wades the blood rises to his chest and the heads go by a metre away. The game’s note at the ford says it in one line: here the blood is shallow and the bottom is underfoot, and whoever carries you across does not do it for nothing, he wants one of the names you are carrying.