How Nicolas Turns Conflict Into Attraction
Nicolas DeSilva does not merely endure conflict. He feeds on it, transmutes it, makes it the very air he breathes. From the moment he encounters resistance, whether from a thesapien tribute or an Immoless with notions of sovereignty, that friction ignites something primal within him. It is not love, not in any form the thesapiens might recognise. It is possession, raw and unyielding, forged in the crucible of his fractured psyche. Nicolas turns opposition into ownership, defiance into devotion, and in doing so reveals the twisted alchemy at the heart of his being.
Consider the asylum itself, Corax, that festering monument to his dominion. Inmates do not simply suffer; they perform for him. A glance at the wrong mirror, a whisper of escape, and conflict blooms. Nicolas does not crush it outright. No, he savours the spark. He lets Lucia, the second Immoless, taste freedom through an unlocked door, only to hunt her through his hall of mirrors. Her blisters split open on Websters engineered flooring, her mind fractures under the cacophony of clocks and screams, and yet he grins, the Long-Faced Demon flickering across his features. Her fear, her desperation, it draws him closer, transforms her from threat to plaything. By the time she kneels before Elenas empty sarcophagus, broken and pleading, the conflict has become his attraction. She is no longer an Immoless sent to unmake him; she is his to break.
This is no accident. Nicolas, son of Primus and Boaca Baer, was ripped from his mothers arms at twelve and schooled in Irkallas demonic ways. Rumours persist that this severance warped him, instilled a peculiar madness. Whatever the cause, he wields conflict like a scalpel. Take the red-haired tribute in the dungeon cell, strapped and waiting. Nicolas does not feed immediately. He watches her tremble, lets denial build until her endurance snaps. Only then does he take her, blood and flesh and all, the primal surge of her submission fuelling his own. The Vero savours the control, the Evro the savagery, and together they merge in ecstasy. Conflict delayed becomes attraction perfected.
Allyra represents the pinnacle of this transmutation. From their first charged encounter on The Sombre, where she resisted his mesmerism with sardonic wit, Nicolas saw potential. She boiled vampires for knowledge, grilled them on his own name, and when he appeared in raven form, she ignored him until he performed. Her indifference was conflict incarnate, and it hooked him. He stalked her, gifted her Ghorab, dosed her wine, yet she slipped his grasp, trading barbs, extracting truths even as he plotted her capture. Each evasion sharpened his hunger. By the time she knelt before him in the chapel, her destiny laid bare, the conflict had alchemised into obsession. He chained her, whipped her, fed from her, and in her cries found not just release, but rapture. Her resistance made the surrender sweeter.
Even sovereignty bends to this pattern. Nicolas does not seek power for its own sake; he seeks it to possess. The Immoless blood mosaic in Allyra was his design, a vessel to claim what Lilith lost. Yet when she swallowed the goddess whole, emerging scaled and sovereign, conflict reignited. She cuffed him, fled with the wolves, and left him chained in Neferaten. That betrayal, that ultimate defiance, only deepened his attraction. He pursued, not to destroy, but to reclaim. In the end, she returned, signing herself to him body and soul, her love a willing chain. Conflict into attraction, once more.
Nicolas DeSilva is no lover in the mortal sense. He is a collector of fractures, a curator of surrender. Conflict is his forge, attraction his alloy. In the damp crypts of Corax, amid the ticking clocks and rusting irons, he waits for the next spark, knowing it will burn brightest when it resists.
Immortalis Book One August 2026