When Noor Dalimoor got pinned to the ground under an invisible weight, when the alarms were going off, and everyone was screaming for their lives, Noor dragged himself into his room, dragging the stuffings from the beds and putting them all in the crawl space at the corner. He put himself into it, curling up into a ball.

“I call upon the Healer, the Prophet, and the King. I call upon your names, Gods of Gods, I pray for your mercy, for your kindness.” Clutching his claws against his arms, he clenched hard enough for his nails to pierce through his scales and draw blood. He prayed, prayed harder than when he was the Sultan’s prisoner, harder than during the lonely nights locked in a cell at the hands of the monster he had to share a room with. “I offer to you everything that I am, all I ask is for the safety of my sister.” His eyes tightened shut, screams could be heard all around. “I call upon the Merchant, I-”

Then, the world rattled and shook. Noor screamed, feeling like a log that had followed the river into a waterfall. And just as quickly as it began, it stopped. The room wasn’t as it had once been, walls were crooked and cracked, the beds, once part of the floor, had loosened, pinning Noor in place. Everything felt so impossibly heavy that he could not move from the spot, his bones screamed as his every breath was a struggle.

“I pray unto the Merchant,” he swallowed air, trying to fill lungs that felt as if they would collapse. “I offer gold, every scrap I’ve ever had, every piece I ever will. I offer it for the life of my sister.”

One by one, he prayed to every God and Goddess in the pantheon. He’d started with the bigger and more important ones, but as the minutes trickled by, and his voice grew hoarse, he’d moved on to every deity that was further down the list, hundreds of names, all the way to the few known demigods. He threw in the spirits of his ancestors for good measure.

He followed the formal and informal ways. The Dalimor household had not been a small one, and Noor had been expected to know every possible divinity out there because they might one day need to strike deals with their respective temples. Yet it had been a practice he’d loathed.

Because every time he prayed, every time he looked upon the heavens to seek for the higher powers that were meant to rule this world, he would get silence. The same gut-wrenching silence that now surrounded him, pinning him in place.

Yet once he ran out of Gods to call upon, one more name remained. A name that still brought him nightmares. But what was eternal pain and insanity in the face of his sister’s wellbeing? He’d already died twice, once when the Sultan captured him, and the second when he’d escaped into the desert.

“I…” Noor swallowed. “I call upon Maridah, holder of secrets, devourer of shadows.” Two eyes of impossible horrors stared at him, their glow bathed the room around him in flickering fiery red light. The owner of those eyes sat still, a beast larger than the very ship, occupying the space of some manner of four-legged creature, swirling with dark and gold.

Noor had not been asleep when the human had called upon this demon. Back then, the creature had swallowed the night sky, fangs of ivory the size of mountains threatening to swallow them all and leave nothing behind.

“I… help… please…” Despite being pinned, despite barely being able to move, he trembled like a leaf in the wind. Fear gripped his heart and refused to let go. “Save… save my sister… please…”

Those eyes, those terrible fiery eyes, they stared into his soul, burning through him. “Your sister lives, but barely.” It spoke with a terrible voice, one filled with unintelligible whispers that frayed at the edges of Noor’s mind. “There is a way you can save her, but this information comes at a price, and you must carry out the task yourself.”

“A-Anything,” Noor whimpered, fighting for every syllable.

How had Liam spoken so carefree, so casually, so fearlessly? How had this monster not torn the mortal through the pressure of its very presence? Noor felt as if his very existence was one stray thought from being snuffed into nothingness.

The demon let out a sigh, closing its eyes and providing Noor a moment of respite from the infinite abyss of fire. “There is a monster in the subterranean levels of the castle. It is feeding off a certain object to empower itself. This item, bring it to the dwarf Hassim; he can use it to heal your sister.” It paused, appearing to focus elsewhere for a moment before peering back at Noor. “Once the task is done, I will take the item as payment. Be warned, I can keep your sibling from death, but only until sunrise.”

Noor nodded hastily, clinging to the words even through the terror that ran through him. “I-I swear it on my name.” He was still pinned, unable to move, his body impossibly heavy, every breath a battle, but the promise burned within his breast.

“Liam would probably also want you and the others to know he survived.”

Then it was gone.

The draxani blinked, scales prickling with a shudder of concern. Noor had spied on the human, gathering information, and he’d known the first mate had dropped Liam off the airship. He’d kept this detail from his sister because she was terrible at hiding such emotions for too long. It would’ve only been a matter of time before the first mate figured out they knew and took steps to remove them as well.

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Noor had hoped they could’ve just left the Barb once the debts were properly dealt with. But now it was dubious there was a ship to begin with.

Something shifted; the heaviness in the air began to recede, whatever magic was keeping the strange effect going dissipated, and Noor found himself gasping for air now that he could. After a minute, he’d gathered the strength to get out of his hole, and after he picked up his gear (particularly the pearl-encrusted bracelet his sister had given him), he took wobbly steps out of his room.

Draxani could see well in the dark, but Noor was forced to move with extreme caution due to the extreme incline the ship was in. The damage was extensive; there was barely a surface left that didn’t show at least some cracking. Entire corridors were unusable due to being collapsed. Other places now had new holes where there had been only walls before.

If there were survivors, Noor didn’t encounter any on his way out. The only people in his path had been unfortunate victims who’d been crushed in some form or another by objects displaced during the crash.

His path towards the upper decks came to a halt when he encountered a gaping hole in the hull of the ship. It connected directly into a poorly lit stone corridor, and Noor immediately was thankful for the level floor. His tail had been doing overtime to help with balance, and it was starting to ache.

Staring out the window, Noor made a note that the sun was not too far from the horizon.

It wouldn’t be long before night came.

He didn’t have time to waste.

Currently, he was among the upper floors of the castle. The Barb had rammed nose-first into the structure, piercing through the stone with such ease it was hard to believe it’d been made almost entirely of wood. Noor had to guess the part of the ship responsible for flight was somehow involved, but he was more focused on making his way downward.

Much like the ship, the castle had seen better days. The attack had caused the same kind of overt internal destruction, with collapsed corridors and portions of the castle that had opened up as entire walls had crumbled. Twice he found stairs leading further down, and twice they had been inoperable before he had even made it halfway down. In the end, once he got low enough, he climbed down the exposed exterior until he reached ground level.

It was there that he found activity and other survivors.

There were barely twenty-odd crew, most everyone sporting a serious injury in one form or another. Noor hastily looked amongst their numbers to try and find his sister or the dwarf but spotted neither. He did spot Hosan the first-mate, barely recognizing the other faces as people he had maybe seen a handful of times.

And Alan. The chef looked like the only one that wasn't worse for wear, but with those compound eyes and chitin-covered body, it was hard to tell.

“We got another survivor over here!” One of the sentries spotted him, waving him over.

“Another pair of hands, good, we'll need all the help we can get.” The first-mate hastily nodded along, giving Noor a quick once-over. “You can handle a spear, right?”

“What's the situation? Are there other survivors?” He ignored the question, pushing closer to the gathering.

“No other survivors that we know of.” Hosan gave him a hard look. “The problem is the monster.”

“Monster?” Noor feigned ignorance.

“Wouldn't blame you for not noticing. That blasted thing that knocked us out of the sky was the monster.” A dwarf spoke up, nursing a large mug of ale. “And it couldn't have missed our landing.”

“Dinner. Bell.” Alan declared in a gruff mix of chitterings that mimicked Bellemian.

Grim nods were shared amongst everyone present.

Noor didn't like the sound of it, but he had to trust that if his sister and Hassim weren't present, then wherever they were, they'd be safe until morning came. That left his mission as the current priority.

“What options do we have? You can't seriously expect us to fight whatever did this with sticks and swords.” He met Hosan’s gaze squarely, noticing an odd burn mark at the side of his head. “What about the mages?”

The elf stood a little straighter. “I'm the only mage here, currently. All we'd need is to buy me the time necessary to complete a grand spell.”

Noor didn't correct the man, scowling more deeply. “What about the cannons?”

“What about them?” The first-mate visibly tensed at the question.

“The ship was armed with cannons; can we take some of them out? We could prepare a kill-zone with them.”

“Not enough manpower.” The dwarf from earlier replied. “Those things are heavier than any three of us put together.”

Noor scoffed, gesturing at Hosan. “Nonsense, we have a mage. Surely you know basic levitation spells?”

Shock was the main emotion amongst those present, the main exception being Hosan, the elf scowled as he crossed his arms in a deep glare. “That’d be a waste of aether.” He proclaimed with the tone of a Lord who had just said the sky was blue.

“Because the aether we have is going to do us any good if we die?” Noor challenged back but moved to offer a middle ground. “I know of magic; there is a limit to how much aether an individual can handle for a single spell. You can put that aside and use the rest to help move those cannons. Maybe it can be useful to find other survivors if you know any divination.”

“I do not,” Hosan hastily declared, glancing over at the others gathered.

The crowd had been hesitant at first but quickly started to show approval for Noor’s plan. “Then we should start moving quickly. The sooner we get proper protections in place, the better our chances to at least avenge the crew.”

And while they were busy working on that, Noor would look for his chance to slip away.

The deal had made it very clear.

He needed the item the monster was guarding.

There had been nothing about actually killing the creature, and whatever insanity Hosan had in mind, it could likely serve as a better distraction than any other option.

Noor just needed to find his window of opportunity.

Before time ran out.