You're wrong about me. You said I'm not what the Empire made me… But I am. I'm everything they made me and worse. I don't deserve your pity. Nobody deserves anything.
Plucked from forced conscription into the mage corps of the IVth Legion after witnessing the wanton slaughter and execution of his family, his household servants, and his childhood friends, Alekas is a specter of a person. A host, perhaps, for a ghost, possessing his every pale movement, forcing words to form in his mouth and expelling them; each syllable a plea. And yet, for all that he was rescued from becoming an imperial mage, his talent for magicks did not go unnoticed by his new master.
Saire sas Aulus. Saire Tiran. Former slave, liberated by the Empire, red mage who learned under Lovro, double agent.
Under Saire's exacting tutelage, Alekas came to refine his razor-sharp talent for sorcery, to be used as a surgeon's blade to excise corruption in the imperial government as Saire saw fit. Used, too, by Saire to gain access to Lente's Tears and work against the Empire, while simultaneously did the elusive spymaster and master mage cultivate influence among the IVth Legion. 'Twas in such conditions that Alekas spent much of his young adult life.
He was promised a chance to avenge his family and more. Did he serve the Empire, did he serve Dalmasca? In the end, he served Saire. And he was given the power to never be humiliated and terrified again.
—Physical Description
After the desolation of his House and much of the country besides under Livia sas Junius, Alekas spent most of a year at a young age starving in the streets of Valnain. While the country experienced a famine, Alekas barely managed to survive—boiled leather, rotten food, the midden heap became his banquet, all while evading hungry eyes, learning that the shadows were his friends and people his enemies, for people could get hungry. As a result, Alekas is a jewel-sharp young man, with gaunt features and nimble grace. Even should he exercise with stones on his shoulders, Alekas will never be big.
Unnerving indeed are his eyes, often unblinking and haunted, dusted with the finest grain of eyeshadow and kohl. Like chips of blue ice from a lake, they stare out at the world, and quite often can Alekas be seen listing in place like a ship unmoored, his attention eliding all other people around him. As if the whole world is a dream of fog and phantasmagoria, and he merely a spellbound witness.
Notably, he's ever dressed in all-black, accented at times with crimson and gold as a nod to his master Saire's red magicks. Alekas's hair resembles the sandy dunes of the Estersand and Westersand, straight as straw and fine and soft. His full mouth is often tautened into a bowstring line, ready to loose invective and arrowhead barbs.
—What You May Know
The survivor of terrible war and violent purges against his people, Alekas has earned—one way or another—a reputation for a vengeance-seeking firebrand. He's difficult to calm down, though he, oddly enough, has been seen taken off-guard by displays of tenderness. He doesn't know how to react to someone being gentle with him, and this is said to be enough to disarm him from unleashing his outrage.
For all that he's an arrow ready to be loosed, Alekas rarely engages in combat. Back home, he has a reputation as a lethal prodigy, wielding dueling steels—one longer, one shorter. Combined with his talent for sorcery, he's likely deadly, but few have ever witnessed his prowess with their own eyes.
Perhaps he's overblown.
With dubious connections to the IVth Legion and Lente's Tears, it's a large unknown where Alekas's loyalties rested during the war against the Empire. His master, Saire, is a known double-agent, having received a pardon from the provisional government of Dalmasca for his role in aiding the overthrow of the imperial yoke. Still. Alekas seems to have been a weapon, not a decision maker. Does he deserve pity, scorn, indifference?
He doesn't know.