Nicolas DeSilva, the second Immortalis, embodies the primal appetites of his kind with a ferocity that eclipses even his brother Theaten. Where Theaten has cultivated a veneer of sophistication, Nicolas revels in the raw, unfiltered urges that define their lineage: an insatiable hunger for blood and flesh, coupled with sexual voracity that borders on the mechanical. These drives are not mere indulgences; they form the architecture of his existence, propelling him through a world he views as little more than a larder stocked for his convenience.
His appetites manifest most vividly in the crypt-like dungeons of Corax Asylum, where thesapiens and lower vampires alike serve as playthings. Beds replace coffins in his cells, not for comfort, but to facilitate the nocturnal activities he pursues with methodical relish. Straps and handcuffs adorn each, transforming restraint into prelude. The surgical racks gleam with rusting scalpels, bonesaws, and trephines, tools wielded not for healing, but for the exquisite prolongation of suffering. Whips and birches line the walls, instruments of petty tortures that amuse him when grander spectacles pall. Red-haired tributes receive preferential treatment, positioned for easy access, their favouritism a testament to his capricious tastes.
This system of consumption extends beyond the physical. Nicolas devours autonomy itself, declaring inmates insane to justify their internment, then driving them to madness to validate the verdict. Cure would ruin his enterprise, so he trades ravaged tributes to Irkalla for credentials that perpetuate the cycle. Behmor accepts the arrangement, knowing Nicolas’s excesses ultimately feed Hell’s bureaucracy. The dead are sorted: some to Mortraxis for purgatorial tedium, others to endless torment, the cleverest conscripted into Irkalla’s civil service. Everyone profits, except the victims.
Underpinning this voracity is an absolute refusal of empathy, a void where compassion should reside. Nicolas experiences no concern for Lucia’s well-being as she flees, only irritation at the asylum’s tarnished reputation. Inmates’ suffering registers not as tragedy, but as ambient music to his dances. He reasons that patients roaming free undermines his institution, yet orchestrates their escapes for amusement, dispatching ghouls like Chives to recapture them. Chives, rotting and resentful, hobbles through his duties, his immortality no balm against decay.
This empathy deficit shapes every interaction. When Lucia begs for death in the hall of mirrors, Nicolas mocks her, elongating his skull into the Long-Faced Demon, a visage Demize attributes to lust, anger, and hunger. He plays “run rabbit,” granting illusory hope only to shatter it, her blistered feet throbbing in rhythm with his sadistic grin. Even allies like Webster chide his creepiness, yet Nicolas persists, mesmerising red-haired maids into fatal accidents, declaring possessions in cows, and severing taxidermists’ throats when his glass-eating fails to impress.
His Evro, Webster, tempers this through rational architecture: bespoke torture chambers, underfloor heating for blistering soles, blurred spectacles for disorientation. Yet Webster too serves the appetites, inventing diaphragms to amplify screams and capacitors to convulse the helpless. Nicolas’s world is a feedback loop of desire and denial, where empathy’s absence ensures no brake on escalation.
In refusing empathy, Nicolas achieves a purity of predation. The Deep bends to his whims not through charm or alliance, but through the terror of his unblinking gaze. Tributes bred for centuries fuel his feasts; villages complain to Tepes, who petitions Theaten, who shrugs at the jester’s asylum. Irkalla profits from the overflow, Behmor sorting souls into his circles. Nicolas endures, a black hole of appetite, devouring all warmth in his orbit, leaving only the cold precision of control.
Immortalis Book One August 2026