History (Amrocar 4)

“Everything fit okay? Yes, yes, looks good.” The healer walked around him, looking at the way the clothes hung. “Excellent! We have few items that would fit someone as tall as you. I’m glad they worked out.”
Joshua realized that the people he saw going in and out of tents in the camp weren’t ducking the way he had. In fact, they had a comfortable space above them. Looking down at the Healer with new eyes, he had to readjust his age estimate up by almost a decade. He had unconsciously assumed that the healer was an adolescent, having only height to judge by, but in fact he had probably reached his full growth a number of years ago. Joshua overtopped the tallest man in camp by a good eight inches. He snorted mentally. Maybe it wouldn’t be as easy to fit in as he had first thought.
“We could go see the Knight-Commander now…?” The Healer left the words hanging as an invitation. It was the last thing Joshua wanted, but he guessed it would be seen as suspicious if he refused.
“Sure.”
“Great!” The healer seemed pleased, and Joshua felt warmed that it was so easy to make this fellow happy. Again he felt that the people in this camp, especially the healer, were friendly folks.
“I’m so glad you don’t mind, being out in the sun and all. It must be horrible for you, so hot and dry. And- Oh!” The healer stopped dead. He turned to Joshua and stuck out his hand. “My name’s Aston.”
Joshua looked at Aston’s hand for a second before cautiously taking it in his own. “My name is Joshua.” It surprised him again that he was possessed of a name, maybe one of the first in hundreds of years among his own kind.
Legend had it amongst the lower worlders that the first demons had had names. They had been powerful and fearsome creatures, considered near deities, and frequently worshipped as such by the credulous upper worlders. At that time, of course, there had been no Shining Nation of Amrocar. The lower worlders thought of it as the golden age of demonkind. But the old demons had grown greedy, and had asked for more and more from their upper world worshippers, until at last the upper world had risen in revolt. Led by legendary heroes, like Burak the Everbright, Lord Dalton, and Vendire Greystorming, and commanded by Prince Amrocar the Dawn, they fought back the demon hordes until at last they had forced them to the edge of the Pit. No mercy was shown to those of the lower world, and they were killed one by one until the remainder of the once proud demon army leapt into the unknown of the lower world. Barely one in a hundred survived, and that only because the same ripple effect that prevented a mass assault from the lower world to the upper spread the change barrier so wide that it crossed the fission layer below and the fusion layer above. The breach made it possible to survive the crossing, but made the time spent in the Barrier considerably longer. It saved demonkind from total destruction, but at the cost of their original forms and worse, their names.
The surviving heroes of what was later called the Demon Wars had continued to make their mark on the upper world. Prince Amrocar had formed a company of knights and built a military outpost near the Pit. He was joined by Burak and Sharburne the Second King, and the outpost eventually developed into the Shining City, and then the Shining Nation of Amrocar.
The six noble houses that followed Lord Dalton’s banner set up kingdoms in the central lands and lived out their lives in feudal bliss, marred only by the raids of Fygur Desert nomads to the north and poaching from the wily fen tribes to the southwest. Dannis Dalton himself built a grand castle on the top of Beheaded Mountain in the very center of the world, despite the advice of his councilors. When it was finished, (despite delays due to persistent ghost sightings and a constant stream of exorcisms performed by weary priests) it was a display of modern convenience, with flow-through jakes and ‘showers’ fueled by huge cisterns on the roof. However, the first night of Lord Dalton’s residence, he and the closest 199 people to him (by dead reckoning in distance, not emotion) were spectacularly rended apart by a chill wind that hurricaned through the royal quarters. The castle was abandoned and the new Lord Dalton (a nephew) built his city prudently far from the mountain.
Lord Dalton’s advisory council, disgusted with the whims of nobility, struck out on their own and settled across the inland sea, forming a small society where intelligence and research were valued over brawn and noble birth.
Lich Master Sebastien, first and greatest of the human dead-walkers, took his disciples and his army of the dead to the Pallidus Islands in the Great Western Sea, the free-willed dead on Greater Pallidus, those controlled left on Lesser Pallidus. The practice of dead-walking was immediately outlawed anywhere else.
Laric the Channel, healer and confidant of Prince Amrocar, tried to live in seclusion, but his ability to ease the suffering of others warped from disuse, and he began to draw strength from pain. He became Laric the Bloodletter, and he and his followers fought several wars against Dalton’s 7 Kingdoms before finally crossing the Inland Sea and settling far to the north.
Vendire Greystorming had disappeared, some said because of fatal wounds suffered at the pit, but others maintained she had gone to study her arts of self-discipline and mental prowess in secret.
Evan Blessing, Evan the People’s Vision, had dropped out of the Demon Wars early. In a large battle he had suddenly called on all his troops to march south, leaving Prince Amrocar and Burak the Everbright’s forces holding off a vastly superior demon army alone, with no reinforcements expected. Only the surprise arrival of Lich Master Sebastien (who had previously been neutral) and his undead army tipped the balance. The other heroes referred to Blessing as Evan the Traitor, and several times had tried to get Prince Amrocar to mount an expedition to bring him to justice, but the Dawn refused them. Evan formed his own nation, across Greenwater Moor from the 7 Kingdoms, and never gave an explanation for his actions. Eventually their descendants forgot, and trade was initiated between the nations.
Historians were in debate about the last of the Heroes that had survived. Some believed he shouldn’t be counted as a true ‘Hero’, because he participated in so little of the actual fighting. But demonkind knew better. The very first demons had been named before language was developed, and of them, only one had survived to the beginning of the Demon Wars. His name was Gaw, and He was as powerful as whole armies in His own right. He had masteries of lore that had disappeared centuries before, and it was very likely that His presence would have tipped the scales and won the war. But He was instead the first casualty. A single person, Maladuan of Tefiyar, Protector of Treehaven, and self-styled King of the Smiling Mountains, Maladuan the Base of the Pillar, met and destroyed Gaw in a week-long fight on Beheaded Mountain. The upper worlders were barely cognizant of his act, and no one really knew why or how it had been accomplished, but the lower worlders held a special hate for Maladuan and his descendants, and blamed him for their life of exile as much as they blamed Prince Amrocar.
And now, Joshua mused, a descendant of the demon lords of old walked the upper world, and he once again had a Name.