The Dark Wood

The wood at night, and a lit hill you are not allowed to reach. The she wolf drives you back down, and the only road out of the wood runs underneath. You carry a lamp because you have mortal eyes: the dead have no use for light.

The three beasts are not fought. In the poem Dante tries the hill three times and three times he is turned back, and the she wolf is the only one of them that moves: «mi ripigneva là dove ’l sol tace» (Inf. I 60). In the game they do not hunt you and do not know where you are, but each keeps under its muzzle something taken off whoever came through before you, and you do not leave the wood until you have stolen all three.

This is the prologue, and it has no circle and no damned soul: it is the only chapter above ground. It teaches the systems the rest of the descent runs on, and it ends by crossing the gate of Hell, which is not crossed back. You come out of it carrying the lamp and the strung bow, which is what the next chapter puts in your hands.