It was a good thing for Balyn that he wasn't ophidiophobic.
It was also a good thing that he wasn't being asked to define "ophidiophobic," but the plain fact was that there were few moments where a hunter's vocabulary skills could save his life. By contrast, ever since he'd reached the windmill at the end of the rotting village in the Forbidden Woods the ability to not run screaming in terror from snakes was coming in handy about every thirty seconds.
He'd been genuinely surprised when the last thing separating him from what he assumed was Byrgenwerth proved not to be a fifty-foot snake demon, but three slender, dark-hooded figures who moved like shadows to strike with long, curved swords and gouts of flame. So when he'd finally figured out that dodging around a giant grave-marker and letting the most aggressive of the three chase him out of sight of its friends and right into a flurry from his saw cleaver, it did not startle and shock him when, just before he was going to cut it down, it writhed, shuddered, and let a nest of serpents burst from its chest.
He supposed these shadows' heads were more firmly attached than those of the parasitized Yharnamites and the snakes had to seek an alternate exit.
Then one of the other shadows whipped its arm out, extending the limb to slash at him from twenty feet away, and Balyn decided that he could probably afford to pass on further snarky snaky remarks.
Unlike with the villagers, however, the snakes did not make the shadows that much more dangerous, and Balyn was able to quickly finish off one, before dodging and dashing, continuing to avoid exploding fireballs, lashing swords, and spouts of flame, slashing out whenever he could, until somehow it was a shadow that made the first major mistake, dodging into a corner where Balyn could pin it in place, hacking down once, twice, again…
He barely heard the whistle behind him; it made almost no impact on his consciousness.
The gigantic snake summoned by the whistle, on the other hand, made quite a considerable impact on his body.
~X X X~
"Welcome home, good hunter. What is it you—what are you doing?" the Doll changed her question mid-sentence as Balyn stormed up the stairs past her and into the Hunter's Dream workshop.
"Checking the bookshelves," he said, suiting his actions to his words. He ran his gloved fingertip along the spines, just below the titles. "Are these in any sort of order?"
"I am not sure, good hunter," she said, following after him. "The books are Gehrman's. I only touch them when there is one he cannot reach."
"And all those stacks on the floor, too. He ought to have you build some more shelves or something." He didn't know if the Doll actually numbered carpentry among her talents, but he had a fundamental assumption that she was capable of handling any situation. Probably the only reason they needed hunters at all was because dolls didn't walk and talk outside of dreams.
Mercifully, she chose not to comment on his assigning her to random home repair tasks. Instead, she said, "Why do you ask?"
"I wanted to make sure that we had room in the right section before I went back to the woods."
She hesitated before speaking, perhaps proving that animated eldritch dolls, too, had self-preservation instincts.
"I do not understand."
"I'm going to add to the shelf, here, because believe you me, when I get done those snakes are going to be hiss-tory."
She proved her high character by not knocking the bookshelf over on top of him.