Salsbury and the many missionaries before him knew that all of this - the powerhouse, the gardens, the growing fields, the barn, the hospital - were all part of the extravagant twenty-four-hour madness. The Allfather would have it no other way than this.
Salsbury's fragile reputation was on a floundering line. Moving was going slow. The elements, coming in from all directions, plagued the missionary's moral compasses like Odin's ravens carrying back knowledge of the enemy. The tired men were ready to turn against Salsbury if he made the slightest wrong decision.
"Captain," said Crem'gool gnawing on some jerky, "would you like the missionaries to advance?"
Salsbury thought for a long moment and then said hushed, "no, because we're going to wait for dawn's light to wake the creatures that sleep soundly, dreamlessly." His eyes fluttered from lack of sleep.
"Rats! I wanted to test out the men's new training on these loathsome, savage creatures before the day breaks."
"Our men need to rest before we face these brutal, inhuman things."
"Are you," said Crem'gool in a sharp tone, "going to be a chicken shit like you were in the last unholy place?"
"Watch your words with me, Crem." Salsbury stepped forward. "Stay on my good side unless you prefer sleeping with the dogs."
Crem'gool, concealing his emotions, bent down to his one good knee. "Please, forgive my fleeting outburst."
Salsbury nodded and then turned his attention back to the madness, the last place they had to look in. Somewhere inside was the plate that would free his people from the happy tyrant in the south. He turned back around to face Crem'gool who had not moved from the kneeling position. "Have the men pitch camp and go to sleep."
"Yes, Captain."
Crem'gool, groaning, lifted himself up by taking hold of his walking stick and then shuffled off into the darkness toward the campfire lights, favoring his limp leg as he did.
Still sleep-deprived, still thinking about the mission, Salsbury suddenly woke when the dream he was emersed in tried to capture his eternally damned soul.
He wiped away the crust that formed around his eyes and felt the sticky morning dew on his bare skin. The time had come to make haste if they were going to catch the creatures at their weakest, the time of the rising.
Clearing his throat of phlegm sticking to his vocal cords, Salsbury told the man standing watch outside to sound the trumpet and ready the missionaries. Like a sharp blade, the trumpet cut the air into pieces and traveled into the eardrums of the missionaries, their ears pained by the sound that poked them awake. Minutes later, the smell of smoke, coffee, and eggs filled the dewy air along with the sound of whispering voices discussing what was to be expected.
Peaking out from behind some hanging cloth, Salsbury watched as Tsunqiq came up to his guard, whispered something that only he could hear and then walked away.
"Dough Friday," the guard said coming in, "I used to call him teasingly since our “marital visits" began usually that day when the coffee was drunk and the eggs digesting."
Salsbury dropped the cloth. "Yes, I remember when he was a skinny fellow but then his mother died." He moved to the center of the room wondering if he should ask the guard what secret message was transmitted to him. He chose waiting as an option. Having both in the room would reveal what was said. "Let's head out."
They stood on the hill, Salsbury, Tsunqiq, and Crem'gool in front of the missionaries, surveying the land once more before they headed into a place they might not come back from. Not seeing a thing, Salsbury motioned with his bent finger for the rest to follow his lead.
Going through the fields was quite uneventful, just as Salsbury had hoped, and so was going through the barn, on the wall hung pictures of past presidents. All dead.
"Absolutely horrid," Tsunqiq stated the obvious as they moved through, "and to think that we were all fooled by these monsters who were us."
An arrow went whistling by Salsbury's head and hit talkative Tsunqiq in his third eye. Panic immediately followed as traps began falling from the sky, some landing on the missionaries heads, closing shut, killing the missionaries as the blades penetrated their fragile skulls.
The Allfather somehow knew that they were in there.
"This way, you fools," Salsbury commanded, knowing that he had lost half his men to some unseen force of magic. Salsbury sprinted for the wide-open double door. A creature, the size of a goat with the hooves to match and wielding a blade, rushed in front of him. As the creature swung its sword, Salsbury blasted it with a magnetic fireball. The creature's weapon shriveled into a tiny ball; the creature, wailing with pain, was quickly surrounded by twenty more like it so Salsbury changed his course.
"This way," Crem'gool hollered out over the wails of the dying missionaries. "Hurry!"
Salsbury slid under a table, casted lightning into the eyes of a creature, and jumped over a pool of murky liquid to where Crem'gool stood. There, Crem'gool pointed to a hole, cobwebs hung on the walls and spikes protruded out from the sides, indicating the danger within. Not seeing another choice, he hurried inside and Crem'gool followed, using magic to close the hole with a boulder.
"Your carelessness almost got us all killed!" screamed Crem'gool who was uncontrollably wheezing and foaming at the mouth.
It was playing out just how Salsbury had envisioned. "You will control your mindless temper and follow me."
"The hell with you, priest."
"How selfish you are. Our people have been dying ... the tyrant and, now that we are on the verge of finding the plate, you want to back out."
Instead of giving a vocal response, Crem'gool lunged forward. Salsbury counter and circled around him. From the walls, he grabbed with his magic the spiderwebs and made them tighten around Salsbury's body, the sticky substance tightening around him like a boa constrictor.
Just as fast as Crem'gool had gained the upper hand, he lost it when a spider dropped down on his bare head. He moaned.
Perfect. The last piece of the puzzle had completed itself. Everyone had been sacrificed to the creatures as he had foreseen in visions he received.
Letting the spider enjoy his meal, Salsbury broke free of the webbing and began down the long tunnel, careful not to trigger traps. He knew he wasn't careful enough when he heard the clicking sound. He cast shield; a pole that shot out from the cave's sidewall hit the shield and split in two.
The flicker of the flames on the cave's walls began to intensify as Salsbury was making his way to the end of the long tunnel. He shielded his eyes and felt his way to the end, and when there, opened his eyes, seeing the place where the visions had shown him the plate was found.
The room breathed like a space alien giving birth, it smelled like cow dung, and it wanted to swallow Salsbury whole.
He searched around the suffocating room for the gold-plated chest. Beneath bones, above in the rafters, down where the rats chewed on meat, avoiding cockroach after cockroach, he searched to no avail before one corner of the room attracted his eyes.
A stone golem came to life and proceeded toward Salsbury with such haste that Salsbury was hit on the calf as he dodged the golem's heavy arm swings.
Using magic, Salsbury threw brick after brick at the stone golem's legs. Each stone slammed against the knees of the golem, which caused it to stumble and fall to the ground. A falling pillar smashed the golem into pieces.
With some difficulty, Salsbury stood up, dusted himself off, and once again resumed in search of the plate, which was believed to be within the chest. He checked around the chest for traps and dusted off the lid before deciding to open it. At the bottom, he found the plate.
All the things he had lost, the animals, the marriage, the kids, the friends, the last of the family he had ever known came flooding through his mind. Pushing that out of his mind, he wrapped the plate within his tunic.
"We're all beautiful and strong." This was the last thing his mother told him after she had been poisoned by the tyrant who ruled them.
Plate in hand, he had the power to change fate.
This is in conjuction with The weekendfreewrite.
So, this was an interesting challenge, as recommended by John Taylor Gatto, that I gave myself to do. If you take notice, each section of the 3 prompts has 31 sentences each that are 1 word in length, 2 words in length, 3 words in length, etc, all the way up to 31 in random order. This was a tough exercise but a fun one. - Do let me know if you try this exercise. I would love to read it.
Also, I decided to start a contest called The 31 Sentence Contest that utilizes this method of writing. Not to worry, you'll only be going through the number sequence once, not three times! Please, come stop by and write something or just pop in and read the entries.
 @ocdb |  @steemmonsters |  @bananafish | |||
 @curie |  @creativecoin |  @theluvbug | |||
 @freewritehouse |  @c-squared |  @qurator | |||
 @thetalentclub |  @steembasicincome |  @contestkings | |||
 @tipu |  @freezepeach |  @creativecrypto | |||
 @steemauto |
 Facebook - Moving the Streets |  Iq Matrix |