- Sigh... And now I feel like the bad guy...

When the soldiers secured everyone to a pole, they were especially careful when they picked up the fainted mercenary near me, I started torturing myself over what happened.

All the prisoners were elusively glancing at me, even the guards tried hard to never met my eyes, in short the atmosphere was heavy. It was like they suddenly they feared me. I speculated that the cold response from Cawic was maybe due to the true name thing Athame's discussion made me understand, but I had no answer for the behaviour they were showing.

I also had to self-reflect on the fact that in the end I was slightly peeved, maybe the out of the blue bombshell about war, maybe the rashness of my friends/teacher rubbed off on me, or maybe I had to admit I wasn't so cool about this whole situation as I first thought.

Anyway, when the whispers between the mercenary, and their subdued manners made me reach my limit, I sighed in desperation. I needed to at least to change the situation a little or, more than the expanding itch, the remaining time the scale shield needed to form was going to be awkward as hell.

Sure my past self would have been elated at the thought of instilling fear into mercenary and soldiers, but age told me otherwise. Fear could be a useful tool in certain situation, but it could also make people irrational, and often from it only hate would be born.

So when the soldiers leaved, they were still failing at hiding their excessive wariness, I crossed my finger and started to speak trying to asses the damage I had done.

- Cawic, I want to ask a question, will you answer it?

All the heads turned sharply towards me, the alternating looks between their chief and me were almost amusing.

- Ask.

- Sigh... First of all I know I don't really know you, but I can't help thinking that your way of speaking to me is a little forced. Am I right in thinking it's all about the true name magic?

I had to admit that if he was surprised from my question he hided it very well, only the slightly twitch of his brows betrayed his emotions.

- Yes, now that you know my name I must obey you.

- Why? I mean how that work? We are already all in prison now, what can I do, sue you?

- Don't mock us, human! Only because they believe you're a mage...

- Enough! Shut up!

When I asked Cawic about his reasons the one who shouted was one of the females mercenaries, she was stopped by Cawic's order so I never learned the end of her sentence. Seeing how passionate she was about defending him maybe they had some kind of relationship.

- Sigh... Listen, I only want a little bit of peace, you're free to believe whatever you want but what's bugging me is this sudden change of attitude. So, in short, leave me be and I will do the same. Even the incident before was because your man suddenly attacked me. I only avoided him, all the damage he did by himself.

I mimicked, really slowly this time, the motion I did when the bird-kin tried to bite me. Still seated I slightly leaned on my left, bending my neck a little at the same time, and made the same slap like motion that in the end guided the head of my attacker to meet the pole behind me.

I made a production out of the whole counter because I felt guilty and wanted them to be reassured, but my show obtained the opposite effect. Instead of understanding looks they all had various shocked expression.

- You want to tell me it wasn't magic, you managed to make a perfect timed move on the fastest of my men? Are you really trying to enrage me? Even beat and chained he was a blur, even the soldier didn't have time to block him, and you want me to believe a non gifted one countered that attack?

I was even more confused after the declaration Cawic made. Blur? Sure his sprint was fast but nothing so special, then I remembered what Llanfil told me once about the system. She told me that all the training was a mean to obtain real experience that would help me outside, but she also said that the system assigned skill could have different result from my trained one. I had to be wary and hope all the difference shoud be for the better.

Was that such a case? Were my enhanced senses interfering also with my fighting capacity?