Johnathan, he did not know if he liked that or even if he liked the thought of being a he but for now it would have to do. From sorting through the child’s memories, he determined a few things. For starters he was not a normal existence, he could create and move things in ways that the child had never seen or heard of. He also had an incredible ability to absorb information and make it his own, it only took a split second to sort through all of the child’s memories. Although this had its limitations, while he could sort through information at a breakneck speed compared to what humans could do, but his ability to make decisions and to apply said information was similar to a humans.
It was strange to comprehend how humans viewed things. While he was constantly aware of his body and nothing else humans had a thing called sight, which while limited in field of view, could see outside the cave clearly. He envied this ability, for anything beyond his cave was nothing but a blurry mess. He dreamed to see the thing called a star or a sunset or an ocean. He dreamed to see anything but his own dripping cave and small army of defenders.
“One day” he said more to himself than to anyone else.
From the memories he understood that humans, while sentient, where violent. Even if he could negotiate with them what good would that do if anything he provides would immediately disappear once it leaves the cave. Even if they could take items what if they got greedy and wanted the glowing red stone that was central to his existance. He was no longer naïve, he knew he was in danger and the only option was to get stronger.
First off was to close the entrance to the cave, restricting the animals allowed in. He hoped that this would also help him avoid human contact until he was ready. To do this, instead of violently destroying rock or pulling jagged spikes from the ceiling he instead tried to be more delicate. He willed the rock to slowly knit itself together becoming one solid mass that still resembled a pile of rocks. He then had his army carry more rocks to the opening slowly closing the hole to about the size of the child’s head.
Which reminded him about the childs body. He could feed it to his army but he doubted they needed or wanted to eat. Instead he peered at the child and began to pull at him more out of instinct than reason. The child’s body began to glow and slowly dissolve into little bits of light that slowly wafted to his stone. Upon reaching the stone and being absorbed he felt a burst of power and strength the likes of which he had never felt before.
Killing felt good, he felt good, but it was not long until reason took hold again. Killing all that entered his cave immediately would stop people from entering or worse force them to kill him. He needed to seem to be fair, to bait living things into him but at the same time be completely safe from attack. This was no small task but he had a few ideas from the child. first though he attempted to pull apart the other dead creatures within his cave. The mouse and the snake gave him almost nothing but the bat did provide some. It seemed the longer something remained dead and the smaller it was the less he got.
Either way he was much stronger now, he had not even realize how weak he was before. With this new energy he would begin to expand further and deeper, to prepare for the time when he would eventually have to fight off humans. He had not learned anything about death traps from the human child but he had learned about mazes and how good rodents where at them. He had no idea how to make a good maze but he had plenty of time and plenty of rodent test subjects to test them out.
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After three days his stone was safely hidden further back but he had still not created a maze that the rodents could not solve. That was until his 267th try when he tried something new. See all mazes had a simple solution, follow one side and you will make it to the end, but what if the end was in the center and the center and outside walls did not connect? What if that was repeated many times until it was nearly impossible to solve with the exit randomly placed?
It may not be enough to stop a human but it was enough for his rodents and it was the best he can do. He began to sculpt the stone itself to build the maze and was surprised at how second nature this had become to him. While he did this he ordered his army to use a few rodents as bait to lure in more species of animals. They did this by laying near the entrance of the cave and pretending to be injured. It seemed that his creatures did not need to eat, sleep or do anything for that matter. It made sense though as in truth they seemed more like solid ideas than living beings to him.
Nearly four weeks have passed, with him exhausting himself multiple times having to wait as that something from outside flowed to his stone and was absorbed. As far as he could tell the stone was like a heart and a stomach, it took whatever was in living things from outside and converted it to power he could use. He needed to protect this stone and thus had hidden it in his maze along with an new army of defenders. His maze looked drab and uninteresting, much like the original cave with dripping spikes and no light but to him it was beautiful.
He had also learned much, for one creatures killed in his cave by an outside force can be taken from his cave without dematerializing. The implications of this where both good and bad, on one hand he could trade on another he could be exploited. Second birds are and forever will be thieving bastards that stole his mice and left him with nothing in return. It was only through shear luck that he managed to trap one with a few well placed bats and then killed the bird with a hidden snake. His reward was a creature that was nearly useless in his cave yet he was still satisfied at having one of those dam thieves.
He gained a lot of new creatures too, such as things called turtles, cats, dogs, and lizards. He only knew what the kid knew so he could not identify the lizard but it was about as long as a turtle and as high as one too. These new creatures made up the backbone of his defense and he felt finally ready to open up to more dangerous invaders.
Before doing so though he had one more important thing to do, but had been putting this off until now. He attempted to create a human and to his delight he managed to make a human child exactly like the one which had given him his name. However something was off, the child was lifeless only breathing slowly. He felt cheated as a human would be a great boon to his defense but he could only stare helpless as the created human slowly died for reasons he could not tell and was reabsorbed. It seemed more intelligent creatures needed something more, but what it was he did not know. Despite this setback he slowly and deliberately opened the hole large enough to fit a small child but not large enough for an adult.
Now to set the bait, he did not have money or items but he knew that the area around his cave was war torn and in desperate need of supplies for the war effort. A pair of clothes or shoes could go a long way. With that in mind he created a simple pair of shoes, identical to the one the boy was wearing earlier. One placed at the entrance visible to all and one placed just inside the cave. All he had to do was wait.
It did not take long.