Valspan had landed a pair of heavy blows upon the old dragon, but the dragon hadn't been as wounded by the heavy weights as he had hoped. The creature threw off the cannons and dissipated into the ropes overhead, the floral combatant unable to see anything by the dark of the clouded sky. Without the blazing creature actually making flames, Valspan was stuck. His vines snagged two more of the cannons, their moors snapping free as he raised them up, ready to strike when the enemy showed himself again, four cannons hovering a meter or so above the deck around the Goada. If they weren't intent on taking this ship, he'd pull the rigging down around the dragon, but that was his muscle brain talking.<br/><br/>Lucky day! As his vines felt the deck for signs of movement, he'd happened upon a very bludgeoned, but still alive shark woman! He pulled her quickly into his mouth, despite two prior  occupants, and easily sealed her inside. The other two were already starting to lose strength, though their struggles resumed as a third member of their crew joined the tangle of limb, tail, fur and scale inside the tree. Valspan, now very content with his feast, settled in place and set his vines about the deck and rigging near him to detect when the elder dragon would strike. Luckily, his complete stillness and irregular shape made him hard to discern in the darkness  from cargo on deck, or the occasional pile of rope, even with the cannons hovering nearby. The dragon completely overlooked him as he went searching for the sorceress he so feared. Unfortunately for Valspan, when the damnable creature did show it was too far away for him to reach, and if he had a weakness besides being slow, it was being slow. By the time he'd managed to cross the distance and reach for the dragon battling below deck with Seydon, he shot out of one of the gun ports and made for shore, already beaten back by the magic of Seydon's weapon and the various drones hovering about. They hadn't attacked him, so Valspan had ignored the little things, not understanding them in the least, other than that they were machines.<br/><br/>See the threat winging away, the Goada settled in the middle of the deck, his vines wrapping tightly around himself to squeeze his own body, and the three meals therein. They were still very much alive, and the unconscious brought back to consciousness. One of the nefarious bits of his digestion was that the sappy, sugary ooze they were now basking in was nutritious, delicious, addictive, sedative, but also had a quality that kept one from sleeping. And so one was actually kept alive, and awake for the majority of the time they would spend inside him, very, very slowly digesting. Should they struggle, their weakened attempts would be mere tickles to the iron tree, and should they not, they could only languish and wait impatiently for their stick end to actually come. But of course, Valspan would ensure they stayed alive as long as possible, on the occasion he knew he'd be without food for a long time, he'd even pull a meal out of his stomach and let it recover in his vines for a few days before returning it to his stomach. These three probably wouldn't get such a treatment though. He was rather hungry, and they were all exotic creatures he'd never tasted before, so they were all slated for full digestion at full speed. Their bulky bodies put that estimate at...a month? Maybe a few less days if he continued to massage them all like he was now.