The Eighth Ditch, the Flames

The counsellors of fraud are each shut inside a flame that walks the floor, and one flame alone has two tips, because there are two of them inside it (Inf. XXVI 52-63); in the game this makes it the only ditch of the chapter that gives light of its own, and for the first time you can see how deep a ditch is without lowering the lamp into it. The flames are tall on purpose: what makes the place readable is not the particles but the pool of light each one lays on the floor.

It is the eighth of the ten districts of the pit, crossed on its own spoke of a bridge like the rest, and with the third it is the one you recognise from above: coming in on the wing and then walking the banks, the third and the eighth are two lit rings, and they are what tells you how wide the funnel is. Smoke from all those flames rises out of the floor, and here you learn to trust a light that is not your own.