Chapter 5 · MalebolgedemonCircle VIIIBeing built
The Cleaving Devil
The devil with the sword who makes his round of the ninth ditch and opens whoever is on the line of the blade.
Un diavolo con una spada, piantato in mezzo al fossato. Non guarda nessuno: fa il suo giro, e chi si trova sulla riga della lama viene aperto. Le ferite si richiudono prima che lui torni.
Revealswhat is waiting on the bridge of the ninth ditch.
In the ninth the sowers of discord are cut apart by a devil with a sword, and the wounds close before his round brings him back. In the game he is the one obstacle in the chapter that is neither fought nor avoided: the blade sweeps the floor of the bridge on a fixed clock, always the same one, and he does not look for you, does not see you, does not wait for you. He passes.
The warning is not a caption, it is the arm: he holds the sword above his head for almost the whole beat and brings it down in half a second, and it can be read from the bank before you go up. Bertran de Born, who set the son against the father, walks below the bridge carrying his own severed head by the hair like a lantern, and that head is the only light in the ditch: it is the thing you see moving when the blade is not passing.
The game does not depict Muhammad. The decision is written into the code and is not reopened: the contrappasso stays, the ditch stays, and the other sowers of discord stay. The note the game shows on the devil reads: a devil with a sword, planted in the middle of the ditch, looking at nobody; he makes his round, and whoever is on the line of the blade is opened, and the wounds close before he comes back.
The numbers
| What | How much |
|---|---|
| How often the blade passes | 1.9 s |
| Length of the sweep | 0.7 s |
| Time to raise the arm again | 0.4 s |
| Width of the line it sweeps | 2.6 m |