As chaos was brought under control and the scavengers slowly gathered to the designated area tasks were handed out. I noticed only eighteen of the scavengers including me had survived. Less than half our number and we were not even halfway through the mission.

I was ordered along with four others to gather the bodies of our dead scavenger comrades and dump them outside of the camp. It was a gruesome and disgusting task. Most of the corpses we found were incomplete.

In many cases, we were forced to do our best to carry organs and innards along with the other desecrated remains to the edge of camp.

I felt my stomach turn and fought the urge to vomit repeatedly during the awful work. My hands became caked in blood and pieces of flesh. Our group of five regularly gagged and wretched. We didn't dig graves or cover the bodies. We simply laid the remains down outside camp.

I felt guilty for the action, but while doing the disgusting work I took a beanie hat off one of the dead. It felt like grave robbing and I earned some disgusted looks from my fellow impromptu morticians, but I needed the hat. It would allow me to wear my stolen radio earpiece without it being seen.

I felt some anger at the fact that the knight's bodies were treated with a much different level of respect than the bodies of us scavengers.

Each of the knight's bodies was carefully put in black body bags and stored inside the cargo containers carried by the GOLIATH armors. It was just another example of the difference in status.

The work was done quickly and the entire camp set about digging out the cores of the core beasts. We hacked and stabbed at the beasts until their cores were revealed and dug them out.

Being so close to the core beasts I finally got a good luck at them. They looked like dogs or maybe hyenas with massively overgrown thick front legs. Their front paws seemed almost like hands with four finger-like claws.

Their heads were the most awful part of the beasts. They seemed oversized and completely alien. Multiple sets of eyes ran the length of the head that was shaped like a melon seed. Its mouth nearly split open all the way to the neck revealing row upon row of small jagged teeth.

It looked like a disgusting grinder. Its tongue was not one single large tongue, but many snake like tongues that ended in bulb like disgusting points with barbs sticking out of them in every direction. The drool was disgustingly black and smelled awful.

Their skin was mottled and seemed like it was rotting. Patches of hair grew here and there in the beasts. Despite the rotting appearance of the beasts skin and flesh, it was incredibly hard to cut or pierce the flesh.

I was glad I didn't try anything foolish like attempting to slay one of the beasts with my pathetic sword. I wouldn't have been able to pierce or slash much more than an inch or two into the beast before it ripped me apart.

The cores were slowly and painstakingly extracted and handed over to the knights. They would be added to the supply of cores used to power the armor.

The Knights used their armor to throw the massive bodies of the beasts outside the camp and we were ordered to resume watch intervals and attempt to sleep. No one slept. The night battle had scared us enough that no one felt comfortable to sleep here.

Many of us simply sat huddled on the ground fearfully watching in every direction.

I, however, put my newly acquired beanie on my head and folded the sides down to cover my ears before taking out the communicator and listening into the knight's chatter.

There wasn't much to be heard sadly. Besides those knights on watch shift, the other knights were quiet. I assumed they were asleep or in private channels.

I decided against trying to change channels as I didn't want anyone to notice me listening in and wasn't sure if changing channels or attempting to join another occupied channel would alert them to my snooping. No one seemed to notice the missing earpiece and I aimed to keep it that way.

One thing I was able to learn was the divide between the knights and the noble. It seemed that while the knights were worlds above rats in status, the noble was worlds above them.

A few times a knight would mumble about "uppity nobles" and would be hushed by other knights. It seemed they were afraid of the noble being able to listen in to their channel.

As the night progressed I took a shift at night watch and then went back to "sleep". Oddly enough I did end up sleeping while listening into the inane chattering of the few night guard knights.

Nightmares haunted my sleep. Hulking shapes much like the beasts that attacked the camp hunted me through a pitch black forest landscape. When they finally caught me, multi snake like barbed tongues drilled into my body filling me with horror.

When the morning came and the call to wake up was shouted I jerked from my fretful sleep drenched in cold sweat. My head pounded and I felt more tired than before I slept.

The smart turrets were packed away. The cargo containers were hoisted up by the armors and we set off in the direction of the growing in number jagged peaks and hills.

Even with our loss of numbers no mercy was shown to our group of scavengers. Ever the same we were treated like a pack of hunting dogs.

As we roamed loosely in front of the armor the chatter among the Knights picked up. One thing caught my attention above the other useless ramblings.

One of the knights commented on the state of damage among the surviving armor and lamented they didn't have an old world armor. I didn't quite understand until one of them mentioned self-repair abilities with jealousy aimed at the noble.

I looked over at the noble in his armor and noticed something odd. Last night the noble had gripped one of the core beasts in his armor's massive metal hand and crushed it. But before the beast had been crushed it had scored the first and hand of the old world armor with a myriad of scratches.

The scratches were nothing that would affect the ability of the armor to operate, but they were obvious.

They were now gone. Not a single blemish could be seen on the hand or arm of the armor. The realization was shocking to me. Just how advanced was this armor?!

What kind of equipment could literally heal itself?! It was metal!! Or was It? Was it some kind of smart metal? Was it actually biotic and only seemingly metal looking?

I didn't know. It was far above me and no one bothered to inform rats about the capabilities of old world armor. What was the use? We were just disposable pieces of trash. But it did begin to make sense to me. How could a 400-year-old piece of equipment survive battle after battle and the ravages of time and still operate properly? They basically had to be able to self-repair.

As we continued forward the terrain only got more and more rocky and jagged. Cliff faces began looming here and there on either side of our loose column.

Trees began to become more and more sparse. I thought being out of the thick jungle would be comforting, but I was wrong. I felt unprotected and out in the open. It felt like the cliffs and hills had eyes that all watched me.

The ground became more and more barren. Grass became something rarely seen. It seemed this land did not support life.

I noticed the knights began to speak about this phenomena as well. They seemed spooked much the same as me. Apparently, none of them had ever been to such a place before.

I felt my sense of danger grow the more we moved forward. The only good part of this whole situation was our line of sight on each other had much improved. Without the trees and bushes to block our line of sight we could actually see the entire group at any one time.

I began to notice the noble moved differently than the rest of our group. He avoided walking his armor across soft ground and seemed to prefer walking along ridges of rock as much as he could.

I wondered at the behavior. Not knowing any reason not to follow his lead I copied the nobles behavior as much as possible.

I noticed the ground had become more and more dry and sandlike as we progressed forward, but didn't think that the reason why the noble would avoid stepping on it. Simple sand wouldn't affect the old world armor. It wouldn't even affect the GOLIATH armors.

If sand was all it took to stop an armor it wasn't well designed at all. Was he worried about quicksand?

The answer came shortly over the com channel. The mature voice of the man the knights called boss spoke up over the group channel.

"Be careful. Baron MacArthur just warned me we should guard against sandworms. We need to avoid stepping on any loose ground or sand as much as possible."

A chorus of groans could be heard among the group. Many of the knights seemed afraid at the revelation. From what I could tell they had never encountered such beasts before but had heard awful stories about them. I had no idea what a sandworm was, but the name gave me colorful ideas.

That was why the noble was moving so oddly! He was avoiding loose pact ground because of possible danger below our feet.

I wondered when us scavengers would receive a warning as well. After another thirty minutes, I finally realized no warning was coming.

I cursed the selfish bastard noble and the knights. We were once again being used as bait. If there were any beasts lurking below our feet they would reveal themselves when they attacked a scavenger.

It was a disgusting tactic, but not unexpected or out of character for the knights or noble. I thought of warning my fellow scavengers, but threw the idea out when I realized I wouldn't be able to explain my warning. How exactly would a rat know anything about sandworms? My hands were tied.

The most disgusting part was the tactic of using us as bait wasn't even discussed. No one raised any objection or even brought up the idea. It was instinct for them to allow us to walk straight into any trap. Much better a rat trip a trap than a "valuable" knight.

My hatred for the knights and noble increased a notch. We were nothing more than a few gold coins out of their pocket. I really thought about it. We're were hired for one gold or the equivalent 100 silver as advanced payment. Ever job we survived we earned another gold piece. If we died our families got a gold piece.

What was a gold piece to a knight? Their armor alone even as the most basic of armor probably cost a thousand gold at least. They could afford a hundred or maybe even thousands of our lives for the price of one armor. The math was simple. Our lives were cheap.

God, I hate this world. Why were those in power such pieces of shit? Was humanity always like this or did it happen along the way? Life seemed like a big meat grinder to us rats.

Toward the end of the day we lost a man. He was walking across open ground and suddenly he was gone. The ground seemed to collapse under him and he fell into the hole. It happened very quickly. He didn't even scream. He just grunted loudly.

When other scavengers approached the hole in an effort to pull a man they simply assumed fell into a normal hole out they found nothing but some loose dirt and gravel mixed with sand and some blood.

The other scavenger were confused and scared, but the knights moved into action at the word of their boss.

"Go into container three. Baron MacArthur has a seismic cannon in that container. Don't waste any more charges than needed. We don't have many and it's baron MacArthur's gear. Use it just like in the simulations."

The cannon was quickly unloaded and brought forward. No comment about the lost scavenger was even made.

This new piece of equipment was odd. It looked like a massive rocket launcher with the front portion thicker than the rest portion. There was no opening however on the front portion. It wasn't a tube.

The scavengers were ordered to back off and the knight came forward while avoiding the area where the scavenger was sucked under. He placed the end of the massive weapon against the ground while it was mounted on his shoulder and paused.

There was no indication he was about to fire. No click. No woosh. The only indication anything happened was the ground around the device being cracked open in a spider web like designs and sand being thrown in every direction before I felt like a wall of wind hit me straight in the face.

I stumbled back and my ears began to ring. My head started throbbing with an ache. The knight fired two more times before he stood and put the massive weapon away into storage again.

I was in such complete shock over the oddity of the weapon it took me a while to notice my nose was bleeding as was the corner of my eyes. When I noticed I was horrified at the sign. Could I have suffered internal damage from the weapon?!

The words seismic cannon circled around in my head. A weapon that used sound? Or pulses? What exactly did it do? What did it do to me?!

If the weapon used sound waves or some unseen energy and was powerful enough to make my eyes and nose bleed I could already be a dead man walking. The thought chilled me, but what could I do but pray?

Another two days were spent passing through ridges and hills. We lost four more scavengers to these underground beast and each time the strange seismic cannon was used after the fact. I made sure to stay as far from the weapon when it was being used as possible and the effect seemed less damaging.

Not much useful info was talked about among the knights. They seemed to not know our objective as well. It felt good that the knights were being used much the same as us scavengers but the lack of info still worried me. The noble obviously had a good idea of where we were going but kept it to himself.

We camped on flat slats of rocks or even nudged up against cliffs. We avoided setting camp on dirt or sand at all cost even if we had to travel onto the night before finding a suitable place to camp.

The other scavengers had long caught onto the fact that there were beasts in the dirt and sand. They tried their best along with me to avoid walking over dangerous areas, but the knights caught onto our new tactics and threatened us to "properly scout the path ahead".

It was sickening in much the same fashion walking across an un-mapped minefield probably felt. We were using our flesh and bone to trip these "mines". We were using our lives.

Eighteen scavengers became thirteen. I knew then that this was more of a suicide mission than normal for sure now. At least for us scavengers. None of us would survive this.

After three days of this minefield like hell, we came out of the peaks and hills area to a more flat area. The ground seemed much more solid and mainly consisted of rock.

I felt relief at the change. I figured these sandworms wouldn't be able to dig around in this type of terrain as easily. I had not even been able to see a single one of the subterranean beasts but they filled me with dread.

They struck with such suddenness and there was no man who survived an attack. One moment the man was there and the next they were gone.

We moved across the rocky ground that started showing more and more plant life. The plant life however was very odd. It seemed twisted and unhealthy.

After half a day of traveling across this weird and awful landscape, one of the knights spoke up with a little tension in his voice that made me pay more attention than I usually did to their inane chatter.

"Boss I'm reading elevated radioactive levels. It's not too bad, but it's getting a little more intense as we move forward."

The word radioactive made me panic. I nearly tripped and fell on my face. Everyone knew about radiation. Even the rats.

It was said that in the last war before the fall of civilization nuclear bombs were used openly and without reserve. Whole patches of the continent were no man's land where no unprotected man could travel.

The core beasts had pushed humanity to the brink and one of humanities trump cards was nukes. They were obviously not as effective as hoped.

The threat of radiation was so potent that even centuries after the use of such weapons they still showed their awful effects.

The boss's voice cut in.

"Yeah, I'm reading it too. It's well within acceptable ranges. Our armor is made to protect us from this bit of radiation. I'll talk to the baron and see what's up."

He soon came back into the channel and spoke again.

"The baron says it will get worse but not by much. Well within acceptable ranges. The scavengers might be getting a lethal dose, but that won't even be our problem. Hopefully, they survive long enough to get back to the city. Once they are back we don't have to pay a silver extra should they die inside the city walls."

The words spoken shook me to my core. Die? Death? I'm going to die?! No. No. No.

I knew the stories of what radiation death was like. It was horrible. One of the worst ways to die. I didn't even pay much attention to the words of one knight as I panicked inwardly.

"Boss are we penny-pinching now? Haha. What're a few gold coins?"

The boss answered calmly.

"Every gold is going to count on this one. The scavenger guild will charge us 3 gold for every scavenger lost and repairs are going to be painful for this mission. Not to mention replacing the lost armor. I'm going to have to try and squeeze some extra gold out of the baron for this job to begin with. While I mention repairs.... Carlos, how is your radioactive seal? Is the damage your armor suffered effecting it?"

I didn't even care about Carlos's answer. Fuck the bastard. I hope he gets a nice dose of radiation like the rest of us.

Panic was truly beginning to set in. I had to get out of here. I had to get back home. I looked around me. There had to be a way out.

But there was nothing. Just an open expanse of rocky terrain and the little clumps of twisted ugly shrubs and grass. I know understood the reason for the hideous look of the greenery.

There was no tree to duck behind and flee out of sight. No cliffs. Nothings.

I could feel the chill of death's breath on my neck. I closed my eyes and thought of the one thing that could calm me down. It didn't calm me as usual. It only left me feeling desolate.

Mother, I don't think I'll be coming home. I'm sorry.