She wore purple boots under a white dress as she walked through the empty town. It was always this way. The town was empty, but she wasn't alone. In her palm, the amulet would warm and she knew Durin-Sha was close. Watching eyes, stalking feet, fur the dark violence of bruised storms.

This was Marlannis's penance. If she strode out to the edge of town, the very edge, and looked over, she would see others. Other places, other consequences. After all, where else was there for a god to go when they failed?

Marlannis exhaled. She'd come to the courthouse again. Her feet took her there without direction. Purple vines climbed the balconies and scrollwork, right to the roof where they wound around its crown. A faceted dome pierced by a spear, its point brighter than the faded lavender sun that haunted through the cloud film.

There was a bench here that she liked to wait on for Durin-Sha. Sitting and watching the wind ripple all the roads—they were water here. She walked on them like they were dirt, but everywhere she went, the shining roads, mostly calm in this largely windless nowhere, would throw her face back up into the sky. Where she would never go again.

Marlannis did not sit on the bench today. Today was a construct of her mind. It was never night here, it was never day. Only a purple existence of neither here nor there. It had been her divine color once, now it was her condemnation and existed only here. She'd taken the color of her failure from the world when she'd fallen.

Such a long way from there to here. Such a long time.

She found her sword in her hand. It was there when she wanted it to be. More of a thought than a physical reality. But thoughts could cut just as well as steel if you let them, more damaging than any mortal blade.

The town sighed, and faintly purple pollen swirled down the roads, coating the impenetrable ripples of water. Marlannis planted her feet. She heard Durin-Sha's velvet growl. The way his tail swept back and forth was the only time she kept in this place. When he prowled into view, eyes gem-bright, fur alight with phantom purple flames, Marlannis felt herself loosen.

The amulet around her neck flared, warmth bringing her cold bones a memory of the outer world. A living world. A world of terrible mistakes and beautiful lives. She would have loved it until death if they'd let her. But she'd been the one to let people die instead.

Durin-Sha wasn't really here, though his claws and teeth tore just as well. It was her memory of him that kept her caged. Memories were the best way to imprison those of her kind. And those of Durin-Sha's kind...they were dangerous, strong, strikingly tragic in their balance of mind. Marlannis did not envy them, but neither did she hate them. Not even him. He who wasn't here. Her memory of Durin-Sha faced her down the water road while the reality of him still wrought terror and destruction in the wake of her failure.

She hadn't killed him.

Though she was a warrior, though she was a god. She hadn't struck him down and so she fell and he rose. And she was left in an empty town of twilight with a sword in her hand, confronted by what she hadn't done.

What she still wouldn't do.

Marlannis laid down her sword and Durin-Sha grinned his animal grin.