Aleksandr was largely left to his own devices as they prepared, furtive glances cast towards him as many people started to let their preconceptions loose as the tension on the air mounted. He was Skaldborne, was he here to do something amazing? Would he deliver them right in to the maw of death? The more religious hard line regarded him with an awe that made him much more uncomfortable than the doubting and uneasy - he didn't think he could live up to whatever lay inside the mind of a fanatic.
From what he understood of their enemy, she was not likely to be drawing a compliment of soldiers, and she herself attacked in a way that didn't use conventional weapons. As a result he had sparsely armoured himself - a polished breastplate covered his torso, which he had to all but fight to don himself when an entourage of believers came to help him don his garb. As such he was feeling sullen now, burdened with something he didn't ask for - he had accepted he might have to die to win this thing, but the idea of living with reverence was much worse, much harder to reconcile in his mind.
His damaged eye offered him no grievances in his ability to see, yet the pupil and iris still looked like someone had ripped a chunk out of them - the healers he had seen had been baffled by the situation, seeming to find no physiological problem to deal with beyond the curious dissolving of the pigment. He didn't tell them about the headaches, didn't see the point right now - war would not wait for him to get better, if he could get better.
Of course her ladyship showed up to check on him, and the moment was heavy with tension, and of the potential promise of some prior activities. There was little time to talk it out though, with so much to be done and all the prep work on the line for both of them. He settled for kissing the back of her hand in as courtly a fashion as might help her relieve her anxieties about observers, and then he left her to her duties, so he could take up his own.
He was garbed and armed, but he still had another to attend to, stepping outside and putting his fingers in his mouth, an ear-piercing whistle shrieking through the air. A few moments later, Keiro burst from the nearest foliage and loped out towards Aleksandr. The Rock Lion was a fearsome thing to look at, a vaguely feline creature large enough to compete with a horse, made up of corded, dense muscle just beneath his mottled pelt. Numerous eyes blinked intelligently as the beast observed things around him, the teeth just beneath those eyes big enough, with the size of his jaw, to shear off a man's arm without too much effort - these beasts ate basilisks, out in the wild.
Keiro's tail swished with expectation as Aleksandr vanished for a moment and then returned with the tack to put on his unusual steed, which was immediately rewarded with a snapping of teeth that echoed so loudly as to make Aleksandr wince a little. "You knew this was coming. Don't whine about it."
Not impressed but apparently understanding, the beast huffed out a sound that was equal parts growl and strange, insect-like chattering, chirping noise as he let Aleksandr sort out tack and fasten it on to Keiro as Azalie had shown him to do. Once it was all secured, Keiro was no more impressed, his long tail snaking back and forth with enough force to knock someone over if they were caught by it - accepting, but not happy about it, that was Keiro right now. "Tell you what, Keiro. If we get out of this not dead, we'll take you some place fun, some place where you can eat something you've probably not had in a while."
He talked more to himself than his steed, patting a broad, muscular flank as he exhaled a sigh to center himself, hand resting on the pommel of the sword at his waist. This was the weapon to battle the gods with, then? It had done nothing but bring him misery, it seemed. Something about it was wrong, warped somehow in a way that made him uneasy; in a way that had made Eirian banish him from the tavern just because he was in possession of it. If it helped fell the virtuoso though, then maybe it would be worth it? As the ragtag forces of the civilised world lined up, he certainly hoped so, settling in to his saddle as Keiro stretched and then loped out.