Arguably one of if not the most powerful practicing dark mage
The bountiful rumors concerning Aeric, specifically his origins, are close to legendary. His birth name lost with the passage of time and very few living souls have seen the mage's human face, and most of them aren't even aware that they have met the very man that haunts campfire tales and cautionary nursery rhymes across the allied kingdoms. Many events are exaggerated or completely false, but Aeric is perfectly fine with being the proverbial bogeyman.

Aeric was the youngest and weakest of 3 boys; suffering a host of symptoms through the majority of his childhood. With one son heading toward a promising military career and the other showing almost effortless athletic skill, at best Aeric's father was a source of benign neglect. His mother was more doting, seeing Aeric's difficult birth and care as the balance for the relative ease raising their first two. She fostered his scholastic interests and when his innate skill for magic began to show as a toddler, well ahead of the typical age 10-13, she did her best to hide his ability from his father who generally distrusted magic as a rule.

Under the ruse of an apprenticeship with a tailor, Aeric traveled to the Amethyst Academy when he was of age to further hone his abilities in the hopes of ultimately becoming a court alchemist or archmage. After his 1st year it was obvious he was learning far more in his independent (prohibited) studies than in the stifling classrooms. In a flagrant display midway through his 4th year at the academy, Aeric managed to humble and incapacitate several instructors until the combined efforts of three teachers and the headmaster finally brought an end to his one man rebellion. Aeric was immediately expelled, and long gone when it was discovered he had stolen dozens of legendary grimoires and compiled volumes on theories of enchantment and experimental necromancy.

A rogue mage with that much power at his disposal and most of it taboo at best demanded an immense search of allied lands and even calling an emergency summit with the outland tribes, but armed with centuries of privileged spellweaver arcana, evading the etherphage and some lunkhead battlemages was child's play. Working at a bakery about 10 minutes' walk away from the Academy gave Aeric a special satisfaction; serving pastries to the flood of battlemage recruits sounding like the dumbest version of every shining knight and storybook prince with an evil wizard to hunt down. He'd give a lingering eye to the swordsmen in their provocative "paragon armor" that looked more...distracting than protective (battlemage lore was a weaker interest subject). Humble some condescending bloatbags, borrow a few books poof you're a public enemy.

Against the vast Academy library, the relative few that he took, even as valuable as they were, was hardly worth the global emergency they were making it out to be. Besides he might not be an Amethyst alum, but he was a recognized mage with as much access to those volumes as any caster. He scrapped his original plan to duplicate the books and return them as obnoxiously as possible, deciding he should look over the originals more closely if their absence was this important.

Almost two years after the emergency was first announced with nothing but dubious leads and tour weary battlemages to sho.w for it, the enthusiasm for the search had taken a sharp fall. When the active searches were reduced to patrol squads on travel routes with added battlemage muscle, the missing books appeared in a ill-balanced stack with a heavy slam right on the headmaster's desk. Naturally suspicious, several top tier spellweavers were called in at the ready to counter whatever foulness might lash out from the returned tomes. The instant the headmaster shifted the top book, an explosion of tar soaked black feathers whipped through the room like a cyclone of ink blotting out the windows and engulfing the helpless attending wizards, their mouths stuffed with a jet black gooey mess before the hint of a counter spell could escape.

When the guards finally managed to burst through the door they found a grand mess of black feathers and 4 chickens running madly around the room. All of them started rapidly laying a trail of eggs behind them which immediately hatched into more identical chickens. From his boardinghouse quarters Aeric was laughing in tears at knights and battlemages chasing chickens through the tower only to have them burst in a plume of tar soaked feathers when captured. When the real headmaster and weavers were identified and restored in the infirmary, one battlemage captain asked why Aeric would go through the theatrics and juvenile pranks. The headmaster took a deep breath, "It means he's figured out the Bird's Eye, or half of it at the very least. He's nothing if not a lusty showman, if feathers and eggs are the worst of his assault I'd say we are immensely blessed."

"Lusty showman?" A bright purple flaming glow engulfed Aeric's arms as he seethed over the headmaster's quip, "I'll show you lus...." Aeric stopped himself and blinked at the rippling image of the headmaster settling back on his infirmary cot, his arms still covered in mottled brown feathers. Aeric settled back into his chair, steepling his fingers with a thoughtful grin as his skin tone melted to an inky black and his hazel green eyes rolled back in his head, the whites gleaming bright yellow, What do you know, old man has some lessons left after all."

Art by  BelAssa