#WIPJOY #12

Today's challenge is to discuss how my antagonist is like me.

Um... none of them are. They are all dedicated to violence and evil, truly bad people motivated either for a love of power or a thirst for vengeance. As my antagonists have drives understandable to humans, I guess I could say they and I share the same vices except I refuse to act on them.

In The Shrine War, the main antagonist is Akumu, an Inugami who leads a force of invaders against the five defenders of a remote Shinto shrine. Created by evil Daoist magic, Akumu is completely motivated by hatred and a thirst for revenge.

Akumu sheathed her katana with a sharp click, walked up to Sen and squatted on the ground before her. Smoldering Inugami eyes looked into the serene eyes of Inari’s head shrine maiden. 

“Do you know how we came about, fox? You were born in the wilds of Nippon. Your destiny if you survive the first century of life is to grow an extra tail and receive the gifts of sentience and servitude to your rice goddess. Tell me, shrine maiden and guardian, do you know how an Inugami is birthed?” 

“I have learned that Inugami are the creations of men who practice dark sorcery,” Sen replied. 

Akumu snarled. “Yes, so you know of our creation, fox. All of us were once dogs, dogs born to serve humanity. Then humans that we trusted and that we only wished to serve did terrible, pain-filled rituals, dark and evil tortures that twisted us into dark and evil servants.”

In The Inugami, the antagonist remains in the background and only actually appears in the closing scene. Abe no Tadayuki is a Daoist sorcer dedicated to evil.

A Japanese man sat at the dinner table wearing a travel-worn kimono. He motioned and Kelly entered the kitchen, her muscles responding to another will.  

The man sat erect, but relaxed, his hands on the pages of the book of Daoist sorcery as if he had been interrupted while reading. Thin, almost to the point of emaciation, he appeared to be quite old. Only his eyes, bright with life and intelligence, seemed completely alive. 

In the final section of the novel, Incident at a Japanese Inn, the antagonist is Kamo no Masahiro, the original master and teacher of Abe no Tadayuki. As he exists in a incorporeal form, he has no physical description except to possess the unwary.

I sincerely hope that except for the common vices I would share with all my literary creations, whether they be Inugami or sorcerer, the comparison would stop there.