Phlegyas

In the eighth canto he is the ferryman of the marsh, and in the myth the man who burned the temple of Apollo; in the game he is the end of the third chapter, because a chapter ends on a crossing and not on a threshold. The boat comes because it was called and not because the time had come: it is the only moment in the poem when somebody signals to somebody else, and it is also the difference between a door and a sequence.

The signal is two fires lit on top of a tower whose foot is under water, so the marsh has to be brought down first, and what brings it down does not hold for ever. The countdown does not punish, it hurries you: if it runs out while you are still on the stair you do not die and you lose nothing, you go back down and start again. The two signs of time passing are a noise and a line of text, and neither of them is a clock on the screen.

The answer comes before the boat: a point of light on the far side of the marsh, and only some seconds later the oar begins to be audible. The guide steps aboard first, as in the canto, and what closes the chapter is not a threshold crossed but you climbing in. The fourth chapter picks up from the same boat and the same crew, not from something that looks like them. What the game says when you look at him: Phlegyas, who in the myth burned the temple of Apollo to avenge his daughter, ferries the wrathful and is one of them; not a warden, a damned man with a trade.