After dealing with that metallic irritant, it found its new territory more appealing. Resources above ground were abundant, foreign substances like brick providing a rich flavor of clay and limestone that he may have gouged on slightly.
The same could not be said below ground which was, shockingly dead despite the growth atop it. The quality of soil was poor yet somehow packed together tight as if teaming with life. He left the ward of petals in the deep earth, slowly burrowing through in the darkness toward an indiscriminate point. The methodical motion of chew, swallow or chew, shift dirt behind it stilled its nerves on the dead dirt around it. It might have chewed a decent tunnel had a pinging of a mind not taken priority.
A bug.
The first one it’d felt and immediately it twisted upward, corkscrewing its body to tunnel faster and faster until the upper crust gave way and it emerged into damp darkness, trickles of still water rushing into the newly caved hole. It had emerged near but not beneath the bug, and its dark pupils blew wide to find its quarry in the darkness, vestigial spurs scraping at the slick earth to draw itself out.
@rainonglass