Ordinarily, Balyn would have been happy for a straight-up one-on-one fight. The various creatures of Yharnam liked to live up to their animal natures and come at him in packs. Whether it was a party of prowling huntsmen who hadn't noticed, somehow, that they themselves were already halfway to being beasts, or a congregation of rag-clad beast patients in the burned-out ritual hall, or small armies of towering, slack-faced servants of the Healing Church, or even just tangled balls of hissing, poison-fanged snakes, the hunter was well-conditioned to have to keep an eye out in all directions, not just on what he was trying to fight.

And when he didn't have to face a crowd of bloodthirsty enemies, it was usually because the thing he was fighting was some giant monstrosity that didn't leave enough space in the room for a second one of them. Towering beasts that had once been clerics, undead horrors that crackled with unnatural blue sparks, giants that looked like reanimated monstrosities with hooks, clubs, and cannons stitched right into their corpse-like flesh, he'd had to fight it all.

So when Balyn had finally managed to get to the very bottom of the lowest depths of the forgotten hintertombs and found himself faced with only a single guardian, he had been relieved. Sure, the humanoid figure was, even in its withered and hunched state, several feet taller than Balyn, but that was only par for the course. Even the smallest of the Pthumerian lineage, the spindly watchers who haunted the labyrinth corridors in droves, were human-sized, and their chieftains were giant, bloated monstrosities far larger than this one foe.

All right, the way that he could turn his staff into a variety of different weapons made of living fire turned out to be slightly annoying, but Balyn was prepared for such tricks. He hadn't been born yesterday, after all. Or at least he thought he hadn't, though he couldn't actually remember yesterday and Yharnam could be an odd place... Anyway, the point was, he himself used trick weapons and the idea that his enemies could as well made perfect sense. Even the "made of fire" part, since this was, after all, a Pthumerian elder and if there was one thing he knew about Pthumerian society it was that eldritch abominations were standard operating procedure.

Therefore, when the elder began to spin his staff over his head, sending a rain of meteors arcing through the air to explode down around Balyn, the hunter did not spend his time boggling at what was going on. Instead, he reacted at once, dodging forward through the spinning fireballs, gritting his teeth as glancing strikes scorched him but never breaking stride, until he burst out the other side of the flaming hail to catch his enemy completely off-guard. Once, twice he lashed out with his saw cleaver, slashing into the withered Pthumerian, then raised the weapon and brought it down for the finishing blow.

Or, it would have been the finishing blow, had it not passed through empty air.

Balyn cast his gaze left and right, desperately trying to figure out where the Pthumerian had gotten to. The room was featureless and empty; there was nowhere for him to hide, so either he was invisible or else—

The firebolt that tore through Balyn's back told him that "or right behind you" was in fact the correct answer. He did not have time to feel smug about having identified that before darkness claimed him.

~X X X~

"Welcome home, good hunter. What is it that you desire?"

Balyn looked the Doll square in the eyes.

"I want to know who's in charge of the rules of etiquette around here."

She tipped her head to one side in an attitude of curiosity, a posture that gave her audience the impression that she was looking at something that made no sense whatsoever.

Balyn got that expression a lot.

"The rules...of etiquette?"

"Yeah, because I've got a bone to pick with them. I may not actually remember it, but I'm pretty sure that I was raised being told to respect my elders, and right now I don't see that happening any time soon!"