Energy-absorbing energy vampires that ruled the planet long before Primus?
Transdimensional entities that conquer planets and integrate them to their own hellish world?
or my personal favorite…
Energy-based monstrosities that exist in a realm that can be best described as a “collective seizure?”
Honestly? After a long day of thinking about this and sketching ideas (which will be posted later) I’m thinking a lot about the all of those and a few more to boot, particularly what sort of visual representation they have. Whatever a Cybertronian “demon” looks like, in the setting of Matrix, they likely don’t look like what humans might consider demons to be- provided humans can see them at all. Cybertronians may have a much wider or different form of vision- where a human may feel a slight static tingle across their skin, a cybertronian may find horror.
Many minor malevolent energy beings might simply show up as a visual glitch to cybertronians- a living, moving glitch or error unable to be processed. A being of static and stray pixels and lines of code that won’t be parsed. Or perhaps a physical representation of such a thing- particularly while possessing a Cybertronian body;
The corruption in Horizon: Zero Dawn is a great example of this visually- writhing black-and-red tendrils of toxic nanotechnology and energy, lashing out and clinging to robotic life- slithering through them like worms. Of course, I do imagine a lot of the weirder stuff in Matrix starts off as straight-up just energy beings; similar to a holographic display that moves of it’s own accord, possibly unable to physically interact with things around it. Maybe through technology- after all, this is robot hell we’re talking about here.
Given enough energy, though, you might wind up with something like this (Hyper Light Drifter)
or this (Transistor)
But then, considering that “demon” tends to apply specifically to malevolent otherworldly beings who are here to do business, maybe something a little more dignified for dealing with Cybertronians would be necessary. (The following are from Destiny)
Something…almost Cybertronian yet still somehow organic in base might appeal to the innate fear many Cybertronians have of organics.
Or more mechanical, almost vehicle-like in itself.
or something a little more…abstract, but still distinctly technological?
I dunno, there’s a lot of really cool directions Cybertronian “demons” or any sort of otherworldly beings could go! And a lot of them are way stranger and (imo) more interesting than the classic western version of devils- after all, what might a species of robots be afraid of? What sort of monsters haunt their dreams? Disembodied circuitry, nothing more than a glimmer in the air, coiling wires ready to strike and thread their way into joints?
(Mukesh Singh- Grant Morrison’s 18 Days)
Or something a little more recognizable?
(That being said, the “Demons” in Matrix are less…demons in any sort of human term, so much as they are entities related to and unique from Cybertron. Humans would start referring to the translation of them as demons, though, since they serve a similar purpose.)
Cybertronian Database 