Pluto sat atop a lighthouse, rubbing at their eyes. There was someone next to them. The two of them sat against the outer wall of the chamber, just below the beam that spun at the aperture’s center.
“It’s too bright,” said Pluto, covering their eyes. There were barely any stitches in their skin at this point in time.
“You know,” said Galley, staring directly at the lighthouse’s blinding crystal. “You don’t need eyes to see. It doesn’t have to hurt.”
—
Pluto awoke to the sound of screams. They rubbed at the bandage across their face with dagger-like fingers. Fingers new to their body. Fingers carved of obsidian. Getting to their feet, Pluto surveyed their surroundings. They were in Central Vendictia, though they couldn’t quite tell where. The city around them seemed wrong. Parts of it were separated by great cracks, rending the metropolis apart.
They looked to the sky then, past the towers of industry and the fires that consumed them. Pluto stared at the stars as they bled. Stars of oil and saltwater, children of the moon. A moon born of the sea, made of its currents and oils. This was not the bleeding of a lost tooth or growing pains, however, as it once was. Rather, this was the bleeding of a wounded animal. Of something fighting for its life. Pluto could relate to this feeling, having fought for their life only a few hours earlier.
They looked down at their daggers-for-hands. The cuts on their hands were gone, obsidian slivers set into their skin, chunks of the glass comprising their shoulder. Running a city felt so far away now.
“Welcome back, Plu!” Kantra grinned with both her mouths, one smile smug and the other closer to a grimace. “I love being right,” said the devil as she hammered her fist into the head of an armed attacker, sending them careening into a nearby wall.
Blood did not drip from Pluto’s eyes now, but flowed swiftly through their veins. “What the fuck, Kantra? What the fuck is all this? I leave for two minutes and it all falls apart?”
Kantra straightened then, turning to face the walking sewing project. “This has nothing to do with you,” she said flatly. “This was centuries in the making. You just happened to get here right when it was getting good.” She pointed a bloodied finger to the sky, where stars were beginning to flicker out, consumed by darkness. “Your favorite missionary is trying to eat the fucking stars.”
Pluto stared for a moment before a thought occurred to them. “Galley…?”
Kantra had already begun to stalk away when she replied. “The very same.”
—
Rushing through the streets, dodging the occasional looter and zealot, Pluto headed to where they knew they’d find the construct. Somewhere old. Somewhere imprinted in Pluto’s brain. Somewhere they hated.
The lighthouse of Vendictia stood tall on the edge of the seaward side of the city. Always shining, a beacon of familiarity, no matter how much the light had bothered Pluto. It was not shining now. The opposite, actually. Darkness seemed to pool from the spire, pulled down from the heavens and cast over Vendictia. It was hard to see the stars at all this close to the structure.
Creeping up the steps, the tower felt taller than it had before. When they reached the top, they found the lantern at the center of the chamber shattered, liquid gloom pouring from it in waves and spilling over the city. They found Galley there, knee deep in the liquid, looking skywards.
Pluto stuttered for a minute before managing a coherent sentence. “Galley, what the hell is this? What did you do?”
The construct turned to face Pluto then, staring at them quizzically. “Huh… I had thought you would have liked it.” They trudged through the abyssal liquid towards Pluto a few steps. “You always said it was too bright up here. You always liked the dark, you know.”
This left Pluto speechless for a moment. “What the fu- Why- The fuck do I care about dark?” They exclaimed. “My fucking city, Gal!”
Thousands of feet below them, another part of the city broke off, consumed by the ocean. “The sea’s gonna win if you don’t help, Plu,” Galley spoke somberly, slowly. “Do you want it to win again? Do you know what it’s destroyed?” The construct angled a finger far below them, and Pluto could just barely make out a figure with too many eyes fighting several silhouettes at once. “You know you can’t trust her. She’s been selling out to that briny piece of shit for longer than you’ve been alive. We can fix this. It’s not too late, Plu.”
Pluto reflected for a moment. How long had it been since they’d last seen Galley last? It really did feel like it’d been decades, maybe even a century. They had never really understood Galley, even back then. The construct was always hard to read, after all. Galley had saddled them with running the city. Galley had let them unravel. Galley had taken their eyes.
Baring their teeth and spreading their claws, Pluto snarled. “Get the fuck out of my city.”
Galley turned to face them fully then. Their presence felt heavy, suffocating Pluto. They had to be careful not to get lost in it. Pluto closed the distance in two strides, swiping at Galley, but finding no purchase in their mechanical flesh, only pushing their claws through a cloud of black smoke.
The construct’s voice came from behind them, then. “This ends one of two ways, Pluto. Either I snuff out the stars and strangle the moon, or the sea wins again, and we all drown. Don’t you want to see a clear sky again? One not encroached on by saltwater and sand?”
“Fuck you and fuck your sky,” Pluto growled. They felt so far away from the earth. So far away from home.
Again, they were not quick enough. They felt Galley, only a shadow at this point, slip behind them, planting a blade of boiling abyss deep into their chest. They felt Galley pull their strings out one by one. They couldn’t move as they crumpled to the ground in a heap of limbs.
At this point, Pluto couldn’t see any stars at all. The bandage had fallen away entirely and they felt the night breeze on their face. They wished they could die closer to home this time. Somewhere cozy, somewhere that smelled of greenery and obsidian and things that were not deer. And then they were falling. Towards the ground. Through the chasm. Towards those two red dots, blindingly bright now.
—
They awoke surrounded by the rubble of the lighthouse. Their arms and legs were all obsidian now, volcanic glass filling in the gaps. The earthquake had leveled part of the city, sent other parts deeper into the sea. Pluto slowly got to their feet and saw Galley doing the same a few feet away from them. As the construct coughed, black liquid like tar sprayed from their mouth. One eye was missing, leaking the same inky fluid.
“Y-y-y-you m-motherfucker-r-r,” they stuttered mechanically. One of their robotic arms had broken off. It was now replaced by a flowing tendril of liquid darkness, reaching towards Pluto as if it had a mind of its own. As it neared their face, desperate like an animal backed into a corner, Pluto sidestepped the tendril and sliced through it cleanly. Galley screamed and fell to the ground, clutching at the wound from which dark fluid rapidly escaped, vacating their body as fast as it could.
Kantra stalked towards the pair then, both mouths presenting smug smiles. Before she could speak, Pluto turned towards her and planted a pointed finger on her chest. “You’re not taking the city either.” The stars and the moon were already beginning to brighten. Pluto could feel the heat on their skin.
This seemed to briefly shock Kantra, an expression on her face Pluto had never seen before. “Fine,” she smiled. “You take the city, I take the sky.”
As the sea began to eagerly rush in, as Galley writhed and boiled under the starlight, as Kantra stalked off, Pluto felt the earth. They called to it, and it sang in return. The ground opened beneath the city and Vendictia sunk into its obsidian domain. The earth resealed itself atop the city, as if it had always been like that, as if no city had ever sat where the stars now grew bright enough to challenge the sun.
—
Within the gently lit landscape sat a city. It was surrounded on all sides by obsidian, walls of black glass that reached towards a ceiling that could never be reached. Vines grew along their surfaces, up and down every wall in Vendictia. Strange wildlife inspected the city with interest, but stayed at a safe distance. The residents of the now subterranean city were battered, scarred and terrified, but would clean their wounds and adapt nonetheless. The ruler of the city of obsidian and coal, made of obsidian themself and held together tightly with stitches that would not yield, did not dream that night.
