The Many Faces of Nicolas in Immortalis and Which One You Should Fear Most
Nicolas DeSilva is no mere Immortalis. He is a fractured god, a kaleidoscope of selves splintered across bodies and mirrors, each facet honed to a lethal edge. Primus, that ancient architect of torment, gifted his bastard son dominion over multiplicity, and Nicolas wields it like a blade through flesh and sanity alike. One body houses the Vero, the other the Evro known as Chester, yet within them dance a dozen shades: Webster the rationalist, Nicodemus the drill-wielding dentist, Bigglesworth the seafaring fool, and the Long-Faced Demon that elongates when hunger or lust stirs. There is the Ledger, inscribing fates in yellow ink, and Elyas the necromancer lurking in Sihr’s icy spires. Even the gramophone head, Demize, chatters from its perch, a rotting chorus to the madness.
These are not mere aliases, nor convenient masks for a single mind. They are Nicolas, each with agency, each sharing sensation, memory, and appetite. When Chester beds a tribute, Nicolas feels the slick warmth; when Webster dissects a marrow sample, Chester twitches. They argue, they merge, they diverge, but always they converge on one truth: control. Nicolas fears loss above all, and his multiplicity is both armour and cage against it. He builds Corax as a labyrinth of cells and secrets, declares insanity to chain the free, and whispers contracts into Irkalla’s ear. Yet for all his dominion, one face eclipses the rest in terror.
Consider Webster first, the spectacled intellect peering from every mirror. He is the planner, the engineer of inhibitors and spine-crackers, the voice urging restraint amid frenzy. Rational, precise, he tempers the beast, designs the traps that make Corax a symphony of screams. Fear him for his cold calculus, the way he reframes lobotomy as serenity. But Webster is the mind that serves, not the one that devours.
Nicodemus and Smythe, the dental duo, drill and extract with gleeful abandon, turning mouths to bloody craters. Bigglesworth sails ships into storms, Cedric releases murderers with machetes, and Dibble tapes ports shut against phantom blights. Each is a carnival of cruelty, a specialist in absurdity. Ledgerly spins newspapers into weapons of gaslighting, and Archie drafts the alters themselves. They are the tools, the jester’s kit, each a spark of Nicolas’s infinite spite.
Demize, the severed head, mocks from his gramophone throne, a constant reminder of curiosity’s cost. Elyas hoards souls in Sihr’s frozen vaults, whispering necromantic secrets. They terrify through persistence, through the way they erode the world one quip, one ritual at a time. But none match the primal horror of Chester, the true Evro, the Long-Faced Demon made flesh.
Chester is the carrier of urges too vast for one body. Tall, silver-studded, his top hat a mockery of Nicolas’s own, he strides with the confidence Nicolas feigns. Where Nicolas postures, Chester acts. He is the flirt, the seducer who beds milkmaids by the herd, the piper whose flute draws thesapiens to grotesque ends. His violence is casual, his appetites boundless. When he takes a woman, it is not ritual but ravishment, not control but consumption. Nicolas feels it all, the slick heat, the shuddering release, but Chester lives it without restraint.
Fear Chester most because he is the unfiltered id, the Evro unbound. Nicolas channels him through mirrors and merges, but Chester leaks through in every elongated face, every flash of green eyes. He is the reason tributes vanish into the night, the force behind the writhing in Corax’s cells. Nicolas builds the cage; Chester devours the occupant. In the end, all faces serve the same master, but Chester is the one that hungers without apology, the one that would swallow the world if Nicolas let him loose.
Yet even Chester bows to the Ledger’s ink, for Nicolas is all of them, and none escape the system he inscribed. The many faces whirl, but the fear is singular: Nicolas endures, and so does his dominion.
Immortalis Book One August 2026