The Kind of Gone

It's been two hours. The MacMurdaugh ballroom is empty now of the sounds of combat, the explosion of spells, and the clattering of steel.   The ripping of flesh, the screams, the fire, and the horrible teeth.   Now it’s cold, shredded meat lying strewn across the filthy floor of the hotel. Just empty bodies left to rats and to rot. No one will come for them. Why would they? Who would think to look for missing sons, daughters, fathers and mothers, brothers and sisters here? Cultists to the ones that lured them here, precious food for the hunger of the hotel, but family to others. Pests will come first to eat their fill, then maybe looters brave enough to enter the hotel by day, and finally the MacMurdaugh will swallow the rest… bones and all.   It’s been two days now. Good Bill’s room is empty, and his parents search everywhere for him. Nothing anyone says about what happened, where he went, seems satisfying enough. Jammy’s mom recovers in Mercy Hill hospital, a hollow and empty prosthetic arm latched in place of the one the Red Madonna took. Rooms at the hospital go unattended– Bayor, Teakettle, and Horrick never return to work another shift. Eventually, their lockers are cleaned out, left empty.   Two weeks have passed, and a ‘For Sale’ sign bakes in the sun, through the dust-smothered window of the Blackheart’s empty office. Dayne Reed has lost two whole teams of Ruin Sweepers. The man is rarely honest with anyone, especially himself, but one truth seems unavoidable. He’s very bad at this, whatever this is, was—he shouldn’t be doing it anymore.   Two months go by. Applause fills Bayor’s theater each night. The show must always go on; Bayor’s theater friends give up on ever seeing him again, though. His cupboard is cleaned out, empty for a time, before another hopeful entertainer fills it with scripts to memorize and costumes to fit. Imme Llmh’s mind is forever left with holes that Bayor will never fill, never reclaim from the Midnight Circus. Teakettle’s instructor, Bluebottle, will leave an empty page in his journal for the exploits of his student. He knows he went on to do something great, and when evidence of that greatness manifests, Bluebottle will eagerly flip to that blank page and fill it. One day soon, he hopes. Horrick’s grandmother, Rosie, keeps his room just as he left it. It’s empty of the little boy who came all the way from the mountains to live with her, yet never absent of his smell, his trinkets, his mementos, the memory of him being here.   Two years now, and Cogitron looks into the empty boathouse where they first met the Throat Wolves. Rain and snow have warped the wood, curled the paint. Everything is brittle, like the slightest touch could turn this sacred space to dust. Bad Bill’s family just left yesterday for the colony of Theawood. He was the last one to go. All of their parents moved on to safer places to raise a family. They’re all gone now, but the good kind of gone. The kind that doesn’t feel good but is good. Better than the other sort, the kind of gone that’s forever. Like Cojin. The sun sets behind the MacMurdaugh, its shadow looms heavy now.   The kind of gone like everyone who died inside that building.   Somewhere in the lobby, a dwarf sweeps the floor of a version of the MacMurdaugh that no one else will ever see. His name tag has a word, a name, on it that hardly feels familiar, hardly right.   Horrick?   Out the windows of the lobby, he sees a shape near the boathouse, a clanker. He used to know a clanker once, a good one too. The name is lost, like his memories of how long this shift has been, how many shifts he’s worked, how he ended up working shifts here at all. His recollection is empty, though. He knows the answers are upstairs. In a room with rattling pipes, steam, scalding fingers that peel and rip, with screams and with pain, in a room with a door that only closes, in a place where…   He tips his head to the distant clanker, the one that reminds him of someone. Somewhere. Then back to the floor that needs to be swept. Again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and agai…   It’s been two decades. Ghal Pelor changes, but only so much. The Blackheart’s office is a bakery now, wreathed in the aroma of fresh bread and filled with the eager footsteps of happy customers; no one remembers the awful drunk who ran a mercenary operation here. The fire that claimed the Counting House has faded from memory; a small plaque in Ravensperch’s square is the only memorial. Isolde’s bookstore, Arcane Bindings, was sold and demolished; now, just more wealthy villas stand in its place. Trevor’s shop too. It’s empty of the people and places these heroes knew, but it’s not empty. The lives they saved – Jammy and her family, the Throat Wolves, Isolde, Diagwen Freeleaf, Bluebottle, and all the people they met while solving cases – they live on. And they touch lives, save lives, who touch more lives and save more lives.   Our heroes didn’t die.   For them, it was never about unraveling an ancient mystery, stopping a phantasmal dragon and the ambitions of her court; if it was, they’d have acted sooner, sought the petrified teeth, and obsessed over a way to destroy them. Those were just things that happened to them, around them. Our heroes didn’t die; they gave their lives for a single mother, a handful of kids they adored, and to hurt the monsters that would dare to threaten the family of misfits they built.   Our heroes didn’t die; they turned into the memories that would inspire more heroes, who would inspire more heroes, over and over. Nothing is empty because they’re not gone.   They’re everywhere, forever.