Why Nicolas in Immortalis Requires an Audience to Exist
Nicolas DeSilva, the second Immortalis, exists in perpetual performance. He is not a man who simply lives; he enacts, with every gesture calibrated for observation, every cruelty staged for reaction. Corax Asylum, his sprawling edifice of torment, serves less as a prison than a theatre, its corridors lined with mirrors that reflect not just his form but his intent, its inmates a captive gallery for his whims. Without eyes upon him, without the weight of witness, Nicolas unravels. He is a creature sustained by spectacle, his sadism a soliloquy that demands applause, his boredom a void that swells in silence.
Consider the rhythms of his days. He rounds up the wretched for speeches of utter banality, announcements contrived to provoke nothing but endurance. He dances to screeching violins of his own recording, the gramophone’s rotting head spinning in mockery, inmates shrieking in harmony with the clocks that chime discordantly. Alone in his chambers, he writes volumes in red ink, binding parchments no soul shall ever read, yet he hoards them as if posterity lurks. Fashion becomes ritual: the plaid jacket stretched to his thighs, the tallest top hat, the burgundy cravat straightened and loosened in endless vanity before the glass. Each choice cries for approval, each mirror a stage for Webster’s refined gaze.
His Evro, Chester, prowls the sands with flute in hand, drawing women like moths, but even Chester’s conquests end in display, bodies wrapped in wire for the aardvarks’ feast. The Long-Faced Demon emerges in lust or rage, skull elongating, but always with an audience in mind, whether trembling tribute or the reflection that smirks back. Demize’s severed head cackles commentary, a perpetual heckler on the gramophone. Chives endures the tirades, the name changes, the endless errands, a foil for Nicolas’s commands. Without these witnesses, these reactors, Nicolas fades. He sulks amid shattered clocks, rains indoors, levitates chairs in futile orbit. Boredom consumes him, and in that void, he smashes what remains.
The asylum itself bends to this need. Secret passages twist endlessly, builders rotated lest any map its full extent, ensuring Nicolas alone directs the gaze. Inmates strapped to oversized chairs or gurneys, their suffering amplified for his rapture. The hall of mirrors warps reality, reflections screaming from the glass, a labyrinth where escape mocks itself. He declares insanity with a parchment, trades tributes for Irkallan writs, builds devices like the Nerve Harp or Void Capacitor not for cure but for the exquisite twitch of response. Even his pocket watches tick in cacophony, demanding notice.
Strip away the audience, and Nicolas confronts absence. No Webster to rationalise, no Demize to mock, no Chives to berate, no Allyra to claim. He withdraws to his office, nails the door shut, ignores the world. The Deep endures without him, but he endures only through it. His power, vast as it is, feeds on reflection. Immortalis by blood, performer by necessity, Nicolas requires eyes to affirm his existence. In solitude, he is but a shadow, unmirrored, unwatched, undone.
Immortalis Book One August 2026