Wizard Alyosha
A
young kindly wizard who lives in a small town, collects children's paintings and happens to possess one of the most powerful magical artifacts in the multiverse.
- Absent-Minded Professor: Occasionally forgets about small household matters like buying sugar. However, he insists it’s only thanks to his magic clock that reminds him to do things that he’s not more absent-minded.
- Badass Bookworm: He looks like your average helpless nerd, but he's quite capable of facing great dark wizards if necessary and live to tell the tale. He wasn't entrusted with the magical chalk for nothing.
- Blue-Collar Warlock: Even when he's in a magical universe, he doesn't don a robe and flick wands.
- Celibate Hero: Single and with no attachments throughout the series.
- Friend to All Children: He gets on wonderfully with kids, both on Earth and in parallel worlds.
- Honorary Uncle: The kids from the neighborhood call him "Uncle Alyosha".
- Shrinking Violet: A rare male example. He's more or less comfortable around children, animals, or his genie but painfully shy with everyone else. That is, until real danger strikes (see Badass Bookworm above).
- Smart People Wear Glasses: He’s very brainy and he always wears them.
Vas'ka
Alyosha's sidekick and pupil, a striped cat. Painted by Vasya Vertushinkin and brought to life by Alyosha.
- Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?: In Astrel and the Forest's Guardian, he personally fights Kargor and wins. Mostly because Kargor was in his raven form and Vas'ka didn't know it was him. Still, even as a raven, Kargor isn't to be trifled with due to his enormous size and vicious claws and beak.
- Laughably Evil: In The Wizard's Pupil, he wreaks havoc on the town by turning creatures and objects into mice. And still stays hungry because he can't eat a barking mouse or a mouse that smells of wood.
- Official Couple: With Murka from the end of book one. She likes to tease him every now and again, though, by being affectionate to other tomcats.
- Took a Level in Badass: Starts as a Miles Gloriosus, but grows a lot braver, especially in the last two books, where he meets the most dangerous wizards of the respective realms face-to-face and doesn't flinch.
- Vegetarian Carnivore: Mostly cares for dairy products after becoming friends with the Mouse Queen and Swallow Two Spots.
Vasya Vertushinkin
A boy from the neighborhood, one of Alyosha's friends. Likes painting and drawing best of all; he paints Vas'ka, a picture of the Sad City, and the door that Alyosha uses to enter Astrel's realm. Used to boast quite a lot but learned his mistakes in
The Wizard's Pupil.
- Demoted to Extra: After being one of the main characters in The Wizard’s Pupil, he only makes brief appearances in Glazastik and Astrel.
- Miles Gloriosus: Has shades of it in The Wizard's Pupil when he boasts he can walk among wild animals unharmed.
- Puppy Love: With Katya.
Katya
Vasya's friend on whom he has quite a bit of crush. Due to an accident, she ends up accompanying Alyosha into the magical universe in
A Girl Named Glazastik.
- Beware the Nice Ones: She's about the nicest girl you'll ever meet, but in Glazastik she proves it doesn't make her a wimp.
- A Day in the Limelight: In The Wizard’s Pupil, she is just a satellite character with little to do, in other books she hardly appears at all, but in Glazastik, she is one of the protagonists.
- Innocent Bystander: Follows Alyosha through a door (to offer him a cake) without realizing it's a door to another universe.
- What Beautiful Eyes!: When she looks at him with her shining eyes, Vasya is prone to do stupid things (like think up an especially unrealistic boast).
The Genie
The incredibly mighty and incredibly whiny magical creature who lives in a thermos and then in a matchbox.
- The Eeyore: So much that Alyosha only asks him for help as a last resort.
- Instant Allegiance Artifact: Whoever possesses his current "home" gains power over him. That becomes important in A Girl Named Glazastik, where the thermos is briefly in the villains' possession.
- Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness: Gives flowery Arabian Nights-style speeches at every moment.
- Welcome Back, Traitor: He was forced to work against Alyosha when King Krapodin stole the thermos in A Girl Named Glazastik, but since he couldn't very well fight his own magic (although he could have warned about it), Alyosha takes him back.
Murka
An elegant red cat, Vas'ka's girlfriend.
- All Girls Want Bad Boys: Downplayed. She likes the roguish Vas'ka, but she does appreciate qualities such as honesty.
- Sugar-and-Ice Personality: The first time Vas'ka meets her, she's quite aloof and haughty (later, her thoughts reveal that she simply doesn't like tomcats due to being disappointed in them). Afterwards, though she never appears in person after The Wizard's Pupil, even Swallow Two Spots refers to her as "so nice and charming".
