Why Nicolas in Immortalis Treats Everyday Spaces as Performance Arenas
Nicolas DeSilva, the second Immortalis, presides over Corax Asylum as if its every damp corridor and shadowed cell were a stage awaiting his cue. He does not merely inhabit the place; he commandeers it, turning the mundane fabric of stone and iron into a canvas for his ceaseless theatrics. The asylum’s architecture, with its mirrors that twist reality and clocks that chime discordantly, serves no practical purpose beyond amplifying his whims. These are not the tools of a healer or warden, but the props of a performer who demands an audience, willing or broken.
Consider the chapel, that crumbling husk of piety on the ground floor. Nicolas insists upon it, not for reflection or redemption, but to corral inmates for his pointless speeches and announcements. He rounds them up like cattle, forces them into rows, and delivers sermons of utter banality, his voice echoing off the walls as if the very stones must applaud. The meeting hall fares no better, repurposed for the same farce. Corridors swarm with mirrors and clanging clocks, ensuring no inmate escapes the relentless scrutiny of their own distorted reflections or the tyranny of discordant time. These elements conspire to disorient, to remind every soul that privacy is a privilege Nicolas has revoked.
His chambers exemplify the absurdity. A gramophone, rickety and out of place amid the immaculate desk and bloodied sheets, spins records of his own screeching violin concertos. Upon it perches Demize’s rotting head, animated by Nicolas’s magick, cackling commentary to his solitary dances. The room’s barred windows, plaid drapes, and mismatched clocks tick in anarchy, a symphony of his dominion. He crawls on all fours from cell to cell, complaining of levitating chairs or absent audiences, as if the inmates’ suffering were mere backdrop to his monologue.
The torture chambers on the first floor are his grand opera. Bespoke horrors like the iron maiden and brazen bull stand ready, but it is the hall of mirrors that reveals his genius for performance. Angled glass creates a labyrinth of infinite distortion, where reality frays and inmates confront grotesque parodies of themselves. Nicolas steps through mirrors as if they were curtains, emerging to growl or mock, his skull elongating into the Long-Faced Demon when lust or rage overtakes him. Here, space itself bends to his script, trapping victims in a play of endless pursuit.
Even the washrooms, that open-plan nightmare spewing sewage, serve his drama. Inmates, cut beforehand to ensure infection, wash in filth under his watchful eye. The dungeon crypts, with their rusty scalpels and whips, host his nocturnal amusements, beds favoured over coffins for their straps. Secret passages and rotating builders ensure perpetual surprise; no inmate knows where his next torment springs from.
This compulsion stems from Nicolas’s fractured core. Split from his Evro, he embodies both Vero restraint and primal excess, craving spectacle to fill the void. Primus’s design demands balance, yet Nicolas fractures further, his alters—Chester, Webster, Elyas—extensions of his need for control through chaos. Everyday spaces become arenas because stasis bores him; he requires reaction, fear, submission. The asylum is his eternal stage, inmates his unwilling cast, and Allyra his unwilling star, drawn into the performance whether she wills it or not.
Yet in this grand theatre, cracks appear. Allyra’s resistance hints at a script he cannot fully dictate, a performance where the audience might yet seize the whip.
Immortalis Book One August 2026