How Nicolas Uses Power to Create Connection
Nicolas DeSilva, the second Immortalis, wields power not as a blunt instrument but as a scalpel, carving connections from the raw material of fear, desire, and submission. His asylum, Corax, stands as both laboratory and theatre for this craft, where inmates, tributes, and even the rare interloper become subjects in his grand experiment. To understand Nicolas is to grasp how he transforms dominance into intimacy, isolation into belonging, and agony into alliance.
At the heart of Nicolas’s method lies mesmerism, a faculty honed to exquisite precision. He does not merely compel; he reshapes. When Lucia, the second Immoless, stumbles through his hall of mirrors, her mediumship falters under orchestrated cacophony, her thoughts drowned in the shrieks of inmates and the relentless tick of clocks. Nicolas steps from the glass, his form elongating into the Long-Faced Demon, and commands her to run. She flees, blistered feet throbbing, only to collide with his body. This is no chase; it is choreography. Mesmerism ensures her terror feeds his amusement, binding her to him through shared dread. Power here creates connection by making escape impossible, turning pursuit into prelude.
Yet mesmerism alone proves crude for one so refined in cruelty. Nicolas layers it with environmental mastery, his asylum a living extension of his will. Mirrors multiply his presence, clocks disorient time itself, secret passages render privacy obsolete. Inmates strapped to gurneys or oversized wheelchairs exist in perpetual anticipation, their world reduced to the next unpredictable torment. Tributes, especially red-haired ones, fare no better, kept west of the east wing for ‘easy access’. This spatial tyranny fosters dependence; victims crave the predictability of pain over the void of uncertainty. Nicolas connects by owning the very air they breathe, the ground beneath them, the reflections mocking their isolation.
Blood exchange elevates this to sacrament. Nicolas withholds his Evro’s blood until the final moment, ensuring Allyra’s ascent remains tethered to him. When Theaten drains her, Nicolas intervenes not from mercy but possession, feeding her Chester’s essence aboard The Perdis. The act is intimate, visceral, his body claiming hers as sovereignty flows. ‘You are mine,’ he growls, and in that moment, connection crystallises: her power, his gift; her survival, his right. Even in multiplicity, with Chester’s form merging seamlessly, the bond persists, sensations shared across bodies, desire amplified. Power forges unity through transfusion, each drop a chain.
Most insidious is Nicolas’s persona proliferation. Webster designs horrors like the Nerve Harp or Void Capacitor Chair, rationalising sadism as science. Demize, the severed head on his gramophone, mocks and narrates, externalising his fractured psyche. Chester, the Long-Faced Demon, embodies raw lust and fury, seducing then savaging. Each facet connects differently: Webster through intellect, Demize through wit, Chester through flesh. Yet all serve the core self, splintered for control. Allyra navigates this labyrinth, loving Nicolas while wary of his shards, her Orochi emerging as counterforce. In their triad unions, power binds them, bodies and sensations merging, Chester’s flute and Orochi’s coils intertwining under Nicolas’s gaze.
Nicolas’s connections endure because they demand total surrender. Lucia’s pleas dissolve in his mirrors; tributes yield in his cells; Allyra submits in his bed, even as she claims co-regency. He offers protection, equality on paper, yet the asylum’s filth, the dripping washrooms, the rigged trials whisper the truth: connection is captivity, gilded by his peculiar affections. In Corax, power does not connect; it consumes, leaving only echoes of the bound.
Immortalis Book One August 2026