If Henry were to describe the type of noise thundering out from the front of the church, the best he could reasonably use in that moment was… energetic. Matter of fact, he'd probably be lying by omission if he didn't use that descriptor. Lord knows it needed at least one way to succinctly describe it.

Whatever musical style this was supposed to be, it felt like it was intentionally designed to induce heart attacks. Not a single note lasted for a full beat, the time signature changed constantly, and from what he could hear as he approached closer to the main entrance, he would have sworn that there wasn't a single string on that electric guitar that wasn't somehow in use at any given moment. The term 'wall of noise' was never supposed to be taken literally, and yet here they were, where it was somehow the single best way to describe what he was hearing.

It honestly made him a bit apprehensive to push the weathered oak gates open and greet the man. Exiting the building would most certainly break what little soundproofing still remained, so if he didn't get Death Jr.'s attention quick, he was just asking for tinnitus. While a familiar companion to him, triggering it now would be actively detrimental to his efforts rather than just a nuisance to be tolerated.

Though, no guarantees that I'll be able to avoid it by staying in here, either…

He took a deep breath. The current situation had him feeling indecisive for no good reason. Had him reminding himself that after everything, he wasn't about to turn tail and run away from the first hurdle. Either he left here with a new alliance of convenience, or with the knowledge that they needed to start aiming closer to the bottom of the barrel. And in both cases, the first step he needed to take was undeniable.

The heavy wooden doors of the church trembled from the low frequencies permeating the air. With some effort, Henry pushed the right-hand door ajar. The low creaking noise he knew the doors had made on the way in was completely drowned out during his exit.

What wasn't drowned out, however, was the shrill note of microphone feedback that managed to sound off just as they were both coming out the door. Both he and Enrico instinctively held their hands to their ears, as a forcibly raspy voice rang out across the whole block.

"WOOOOOO!!!", Death Jr. hollered, forcing a bit of gravel into his voice. "Welcome back, HALLOW LONDON!!"

His presence was practically impossible to miss. Metal studs on a black leather jacket glinted in the stage lights as he gesticulated wildly. A bargain bin mix of several clashing styles all at once, proudly stitched together without a care in the world while at the same time challenging somebody to call it out.

It looked like there might be someone else up there with him too, but they were obscured by the messy stage layout pretty heavily from where he stood. All he could make out was a pair of evening gloves fiddling with some wires and sockets behind the scenes.

Clearly, all eyes were supposed to remain on the star of the show. With his back turned to the two of them, he dove straight into another impressively complex yet downright obnoxious series of riffs, completely unaware of their presence.

And he probably would be for a while. Even shouting, Henry and Enrico were unlikely to get his attention from here. The white-haired Devil was clearly having a blast, but the noise was so loud it left the two of them clamping their hands down onto their skulls like a vice in a vain attempt to mitigate the noise.

How Death Jr. was simply ignoring it was beyond either of them, especially considering the speakers were arrayed in a fashion to point directly at the raving rock lunatic. It left them with essentially one option: Get up on stage and talk to the man face to face.

That was the other big detail that hadn't been present before. The steps leading up to the church had been blocked off by a full-blown stage.

Mind you, those steps had been rather excessive on their own. The church in question had clearly been well off before the Witching Hours. But, despite all that unspoken affluence, the nature of the new construction still managed to one-up it. A massive rectangular block protruded up just shy of ten meters off of ground level. Even from the top of the steps, they'd still had to look up slightly to get a glimpse of the star. The whole thing was, perhaps unintentionally, designed to be more ostentatious than anything surrounding it.

Not because it had more gilding or ornamentation. Rather, the exact opposite. From top to bottom, the simple structure was made entirely out of densely packed skeletal remains.

Must've been trying to nail down an aesthetic theme…

Every shape and size, every make and model that had roamed the earth at least once made an appearance. An eclectic mix of animal skulls mixed in equally with the ivory polished heads of former humans, elves, orcs and other Tolkienized races. How the small mountain of skulls remained a cohesive structure without collapsing into a heap was beyond him, but apparently it could somehow support its own weight. As well as the weight of its occupants, and enough stage equipment to fill up a small to mid-sized music store.

Death Jr. continued to scream at the top of his lungs from his ebony tower as they made their way down the steps, breaking line of sight with him for the time being. Considering that this was supposedly his warmup, Henry suddenly found himself highly motivated to cut off the performance as soon as possible. Already, the genre of music was starting to shift a bit, in a way that might have made musical sense on paper if you squinted a bit, but just plainly didn't translate into a pleasant auditory experience.

"WHO'S READY FOR A NEVERENDING NIGHT TO REMEMBER?!?!" came the slightly hoarse shout from above. He shared a knowing look with Enrico. Clearly, the answer was neither of them.

They rounded the first corner as the tempo of the bridge turned out to be comparatively mild. With a half turn, he sidestepped around the perimeter of the stage looking for anything that might make for a clear path up, only to be sorely disappointed on all fronts. Loose stones propped up against the sides of the sheer cliffs in front of him lent the distinct impression that this whole thing had risen up from beneath the earth. Both excessively dramatic if true, and ultimately unhelpful for him. Which seemed to fit something of a pattern for Death Jr.'s persona, at this point.

"ARE! YOU! READYYY?!?!?!"

Henry physically reeled back from the renewed onslaught. First one step from the shock, then another from poor balance. Somehow, his expectations that the worst might actually be over had continued to be shattered. He would have fallen over completely if he didn't bump into something behind him that he hadn't noticed before.

This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

His breath hitched.

He could have sworn the street was empty save for himself, Enrico, and the eyesore dominating center stage. Enrico was in front of him right now. As was the aforementioned eyesore. So what-?

A bony hand clamped down his wrist from behind. No skin, muscle or meat to speak of, but strong and clenching tight. Clearly, not some cheap Halloween decoration. This was the real deal. A manifestation of the Exotic Domain that propelled Death Jr. to true notoriety.

Henry was forcibly spun around with a yank. Shambling around in various states of assembly, cobbled together from scraps of every kind, was a mishmash of animated skeletons that were slowly forming a congregation from the depths below. The one who was holding him tight clacked his jaw aggressively at him, which made Henry realize that the guitar had gone silent for the first time because he could actually hear the teeth clicking together.

From somewhere up above, he heard a jeering snicker blare through the speakers.

"Heh. Looks to me like tonight's audience might be a little dead," Death Jr. said to nobody in particular. "Get it?"

A spike of fear jolted through him before he very aggressively stamped it out. Enrico did his level best to blend in with the skeletal wall behind him. Not easy to do when wearing all black against an off-white surface, but… in truth, he was mostly relying on the low-hanging fog to do the heavy lifting for him.

Silence followed. Nobody dared to move a muscle. Henry's breathing came shallow and slow, forced into calmness so as to not draw any undue attention to himself. The promised ringing in his ears only seemed to grow louder with each passing second.

Quiet… Absolute quiet…

"Ah, well." A few loud booms echoed through the night as the microphone got tapped a few times. "I thought it was funny."

He started playing guitar again as though nothing happened. Henry blinked, confused.

Did… does he not know I'm down here yet?

He spared a second look back at the skeleton currently restraining him. In truth, it seemed to be an outlier compared to the rest of the crowd. Isolated rather close to the towering platform itself, most of the rest were clumped together a few meters out where one wouldn't have to crane their neck as much. Yet, despite this, it stood completely immobile from the bad angle it had chosen, gazing up at the plinth still as a mannequin in a clothing store. Nothing seemed to indicate that it was capable of doing more than what it had already done.

Similarly, the dozens of other skeletons behind it idled around in a haphazard fashion and were also all staring up at the spot where Death Jr. was playing from. Whether it was some sort of trance or just the limitations of the animated constructs, it appeared that their ability to operate on their own was… stunted, in some way. Perhaps the only reason he had been grabbed in the first place was because of his close contact?

Testing his luck, he wrenched his hand free and stepped away, massaging his wrist as the tips of the finger bones that had grabbed him left scratch marks on the way out. The skeleton didn't budge.

Guess I'm lucky he wasn't paying more attention…

He made sure to give them all a wide berth after that.

Enrico visibly let out a sigh of relief from underneath the cloak, if not audibly. Relatively confident of their ability to move in safety once again, they resumed looking for any sort of way they could get the Devil's attention without immediately painting themselves as 'likely to be hostile'.

His gun might have been louder than the din overhead, but in his opinion shooting first and trying diplomacy later would be way too easy to misinterpret if they tried it. Instead, they busied themselves with the seemingly fruitless task of testing footholds and handholds one at a time.

Like rock climbing, but with a lot less rock involved. There was a music pun buried in there somewhere, but right now Henry was more concerned with the security of his grip on the femur above him, which was beginning to slide dangerously.

Come on, don't fail me now… oh, shi-!

To his dismay, the protruding bone shifted ever so slightly. The whole thing popped out of the arrangement the moment he tried using it to support his weight. For a frightening moment, he was balanced only on one foot atop a very small outcrop, and if he hadn't thought quickly he would have found himself freefalling to the ground below.

He shifted his weight forward just in the nick of time, barely managing to commute it down to just a disappointing slide down to the ground below.

All told, he'd managed to climb maybe a meter. For basically zero progress, though, it had a rather unexpected result.

"Huh?"

A note of confusion rang through the microphone as the music above quite literally screeched to a halt. The skeletons behind milled about in confusion, the focus of their attention suddenly dropping and freeing them to wander around once again. Henry was getting a bad feeling about this.

"Hey, uh, Giselle, can you double check the weight distribution real quick? I think I just felt something pop loose in the foundation."

...Well, shit.

He looked at the femur bone still held in his hand. It seemed that they'd gotten his attention after all, but he wasn't quite sure if this was a good way to go about it. Glancing back up at the rough location he'd fallen from, it was pretty clear he wouldn't be placing it back and pretending nothing had happened, either. Even if he could find the exact spot inside the tangle of skeletal limbs, he'd have to climb one-handed just to reach it again. For better or for worse, he would need to accept the consequences.

"Actually, on second thought, I'll see if I can find out what went wrong for myself," Death Jr. sounded off from above. "It'll be quicker for me to go down, anyways."

The entire stage started rumbling. Up above, the noise of the guitar was quickly replaced with the percussive clacking of bones colliding with bones, at a rate so frequent it almost sounded like a hailstorm. The structure began to shift, maintaining shape overall but roiling just below the surface of the block like a living, breathing organism. The movement seemed to center around a single point, gradually making it's way down towards him.

Is… is the whole bloody stage a skeleton under his control?!

Enrico, sensing his hiding spot was compromised, backed away from the wall just as the surface began to ripple. Joints folded in on each other, twisting subtly out of the way to be pushed aside by other nearby limbs. Before long, a hole the rough size of a person appeared in front, just below the point Henry had fallen from moments ago. Out stepped Death Jr., with a look of befuddlement on his face.

One that shifted into an excited smile as he saw the culprit of the disturbance.

Henry got a chance to get his first proper look at him as he emerged. Some details had been obvious even from a distance, such as the short, spiky white hair and jacket that had been prominently on display before. But the finer details that the camera hadn't picked up were now immediately apparent. For one, his face was absolutely caked in powdery white stage makeup and greasy black eyeshadow. It gave him a distinct appearance, leaning heavily into the aesthetics of the world he found himself in while still trying to maintain some sense of uniqueness. The end result was looking like a pale ghost with piercingly human eyes.

Whether that was intentional or just a product of bad application of cosmetics, Henry had no idea. Overall, though, he looked downright normal compared to half the other Devils he'd encountered, save for one very obvious change.

For lack of a better term… his lower jaw was on the outside.

A thick plate of bone wrapped over the bottom half of his face, running along the sides of his cheeks and terminating just below the upper lip in stylized, jagged points meant more to resemble teeth than actually be them. Despite this, it was immediately obvious that Henry's presence had him grinning from ear to ear.

"An AUDIENCE!!" he exclaimed with no control over his own volume. "Giselle, get the backstage passes ready! We've finally hit the big leagues!!"

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