Writing the Demons

After I’d come up with my world building, magic system, and my main characters and their general arcs, I started thinking in earnest about the monsters - Demons, in this case, or more properly described, demon-like aliens from another universe bringing with them their own Laws of Physics.

I wanted them to be the ultimate adaptive predators, solitary rivals to each other, driven by hunger, and not social at all - to the point that only a few ever even bothered to develop language. They needed to be the bogeymen that drove the action but also that would point out the evil and depravity in Man. And (obviously) I needed them to be very… alien.

But I had no idea how to write them. Even as I refined my ideas about their world, characteristics, and society (such as it is) I struggled to illustrate it on the page in a way that seemed natural and tied to my story. I couldn’t exactly write a scene covering all this through expository conversation at the proverbial water cooler. How could I make them seem real and understandable without messing up their alienness?

I decided to try writing a single flashback chapter that took place on the demons’ world, where I could show their life cycle and general point of view, and then I would get on with the rest of the book. But as soon as I started writing the chapter, the character Hakk’rix sprang forth like Athena, fully formed from my head. Cautious and thoughtful, Hakk’rix is the exception that proves the rule, reflecting the rest of demons through its own differences from them. It (the demons are asexual, coming into being on their world as hotspots of ambient environmental willpower that coalesce into quasi-sentient life) is more careful, complex, and intelligent than the other rivals (their concept for each other), and had recently developed the power of communication as an adaptive hunting tool. It wasn’t an Apex rival, the oldest and most powerful and intelligent examples of their species, but it no longer fit well in its own caste.

Having in my opinion accomplished the objective in that one chapter, I had intended to be done with Hakk’rix, but I had really enjoyed writing the character and the scene, and apparently that shone through, as my beta readers almost universally asked for more Hakk’rix, so in my rewrite, I elevated Hakk’rix to be on equal footing with my other POV characters.

Setting Hakk’rix loose on Earth was a LOT of fun to write (nevermind what that says about me)! I just put myself into the character - having that biology, coming from that world, needing to prey on sentient life, what would Earth, this Garden of Eden teeming with prey, seem like?

Getting to experience Earth through alien eyes was a unique experience, and it helped draw out more information about the rivals. They (including Hakk’rix to a more nuanced extent) are walking hungry ids, dominated by one guiding dynamic - to strive, to consume, to adapt and grow more powerful. Humans, normally wrestling with the meaning of their lives, are forced by extreme circumstances to narrow their focus to staying alive and uneaten.

I explored my magic system through the rivals’ biology and life cycle, as consuming the brains of sentient creatures causes them to absorb some of the prey’s capacity to influence reality, using it as fuel to grow physically and mentally, ascending to their own next stage of evolution. They periodically molt their old forms and grow larger and more effective as hunters under their current circumstances, and they are extremely varied in their forms, appearance, powers, and tactics.

And finally, Hakk’rix bears out Socrates’ claim that “the unexamined life isn’t worth living” (I’m quoting all the people who have said that in English, not a translation of the original Classical Attic Greek). Life is extremely cheap for the rivals, and even more so for their prey, but Hakk’rix is something genuinely different and interesting to me, and its interaction with the other POV characters, prey animals, and the other rivals will be a touchstone in the series. Unless I kill him off! - No Spoilers!

[I apologize for the the use of AI art in this post - I will pay for a living artist to do some character art for me to replace it. Message me.]