Omake Week 2021, Day 3: Clearly, this was a major oversight on my part, as it's taken this long to feature the second-most-horrifying boss encounter in the game after gravity itself in a fic.
~X X X~
A running stab, the blade slipping past his spear and burying itself in his gut.
"That…"
Repeating pistol shot, the bullets blowing open his chest.
"Bloody…"
An iaijutsu quick-draw slash, sweeping a blood-edged blade between shoulders and chin, the head bouncing twice in a final indignity.
"Bastard!"
"You appear perturbed, good hunter," the Doll observed. Since Balyn was at that moment on his hands and knees, punching the stone steps with his fist as punctuation for his curses, an objective observer would have to agree with her.
The realization helped him gain control of his temper. That and the messenger who'd crawled over from the bath to extend a bottle of sedative towards him in case he needed it. When merchants offered their wares for free because they were concerned about you, then well…
He waved off the sedative, patted the messenger on its head, and got to his feet.
"That bloody crow has killed me twenty-seven times," Balyn ground out between his teeth.
"I know."
"You've been counting."
"The little ones have. I took a short nap from attempts twelve through nineteen."
"I'm surprised there hasn't been a betting pool on how long this was going to take."
One of the messengers in front of the Unseen headstone suddenly started to get very interested in how the grass was growing next to its grave.
"I have been shot. I have been stabbed. I have been sliced. I have been impaled. And just this last time, he hit me in the face with a Numbing Mist and I slipped when I swayed backwards with the impact, falling down the cathedral stairs and breaking my neck!"
The Doll, it will be noted, was a kind soul. She loved all of the hunters who came to the Dream as a good parent loves her children: the wise and the foolish, the clever and the thick-witted, the brave and the hesitant, the caring and the callous, the stable and the blood-maddened. This was, after all, how she was made, and it held true even if certain hunters, as children did, tested her patience more than did others.
It therefore made her happy that her porcelain face at least made it impossible for her to show the laughter she was desperately trying (and failing) to stifle.
"You know, given the number of actual jokes I've tossed in your direction without a reaction, I'm going to count that as a victory. And heck, that bloody Crow'll have to kill me another two dozen times at least if he wants to be anything more than the second-hardest foe I've overcome!"