The morning brought with it the sounds of the city; She could hear the clanging of hammers on anvils, the calling of salesmen, and the rumble of the gate being opened and shut right near their home. These sounds used to soothe her by helping her feel less alone in a world where she is both everyone’s’ great shame as the only young golem slave and their favorite pet. This was true for both her family and the unrelated members of her tribe. No one took her seriously, and as her family left for work, they barely spared her a moment's thought. She knew they loved her, yet it was not the same love she felt for them. Her mother especially was reminded of what she represented and the acute loss that they all felt for her father's death in the raid.

Verity could not blame them for the divide that existed. She would never know what it felt like to grow up in one of the tribes or how to carry on the ancient traditions. There had been no reason for them to teach her as they would have a young tribe member since there was no tribe anymore. This would be the first thing she would fix when she reclaimed the dungeon for them. All golems would know the ways of their people to avoid the weakness of leaving all the secrets in the hands of shamans that, in their case, had died without sharing their wisdom with the survivors. The little that her family knew was kept away from her, and she still did not understand why it was so unthinkable to instruct her.

It was for these reasons, and a thousand others that she declared today was the day. The day she would be free. There was no concrete plan or ingenious solution. It was intent alone that drove her. One foot followed the other as she prepared herself with a small satchel and her brush. Her skills would make the brush a threat to any opponent, even if it did not look threatening. She would not hesitate to kill if she had to, but she would avoid it where possible. Killing would bring levels, and she could not afford to lose the opportunity for a good class.

Her walk brought her to the far gate, where she meekly presented her brush for the guard to see and was ushered inside to clean. She had never cleaned this section before as she always worked in her personal master's noble house, who was one of the city’s lords, but she had the day off due to her punishment. These guards would probably remark on the queer site of a striped girl doing the cleaning, but she had hours before they would have the time to gossip. The gatehouse was quite dirty from the grime and mess that resulted when a large number of men worked in a small space, so she began to actually clean for a while until she felt her chance arrive. A group of slaves was being sent to the mines, and the guards were busy shackling them to each other and keeping an eye out for problems while they did so. Their issue was that they were looking inward for an issue and not towards the gatehouse. Her distinctive markings would normally pose a problem, but with the pilfered coat she had nabbed while cleaning, she could pass for a human since her face remained unblemished. The master’s liked to have some of the scars from their whipping visible as an example, yet they reproached those who caused disfiguring damage, which was one of the few things she appreciated about them.

The guards were so busy getting the slaves set up and ready that they missed another human addition to the numerous slaves in the line. She had let herself be chained along with the rest of the group to avoid one of her fellow slaves noticing her free movement. For once, her scars helped her since the guards had failed to look at her face earlier when she arrived, and now their eyes had no recognition when they looked at her. Demi-humans like herself weren’t the only creatures enslaved, and her masters would punish anyone for refusing to bow to their superiority, even other humans. There were three in her group she could see as they moved past the walls of the only home she had ever known. She was ecstatic and had to fight to keep a grin from showing on her face. Freedom was just a moment away. All she had to do now was wait while they gained some distance on the city and its many trackers. Then she could easily slip out of her manacles since her palms were mostly made of sand instead of flesh and blood like those around her. Typically golems would be given full-body chains to prevent this, but her humanoid appearance had fooled the overworked guards into giving her a means of escape. It would hurt to slough off all of her hand sand and would handicap her fighting ability until it was replaced. For that reason, she planned to hide what came off in her satchel to allow her to reapply it later when it was safe. Pure sand, like hers, was hard to come by after all.

The tunnel they were now passing through, as she carefully worked sand into her bag, was large and smooth from decades of mining and preparation by the slaves. Most dungeons built their own tunnels that were uniform, yet as a city dungeon, theirs had to be worked by hand. That was why slaves were such a valuable commodity. This was especially true for hardy humanoids like the beastkin and half-golems that could withstand the harsh labor. The mines were fairly close to the city which allowed for different shifts of workers to be sent; It only took an hour of walking for them to reach their destination. Her hands were completely sandless by then, and just over half of their original mass remained, making it simple for her to free her hands from the rusty iron cuffs. The leading soldier, who was in control of the primary chain linking them all, stopped them at the mine's opening to consult a ledger and, following the procedure, record whether or not all the slaves made it.

She took this opportunity to leave her fellow slaves' ranks and try to disappear into the dark recesses of the tunnel. It worked at first since no one was expecting it, but before she had made it far, another slave ratted her out. This had been expected, it was a desperate world they lived in, and as a result, her brush came out to slam into the nearest man’s face without any hesitation. He went down hard, and bits of cheek remained firmly attached to the rough bristles. The resulting tension on the main chain as he fell caused a domino effect, and it blocked the soldiers from following her easily. She broke out into a run the second her attack was finished and could hear the men behind her swearing, angrily. A flush warmed her cheeks as the thrill brought a wild grin to her formerly stoic face.

An arrow brought her smug satisfaction to a painful end, but fortunately, it hit her back where the years of whippings had left hardened scar tissue filled with dense grit. The point barely stayed in and was easily dislodged as she ran. More followed, but only one more hit her, and it too avoided doing much damage. The sounds of pursuit faded with time. She knew it was because they still thought she was a human and not a golem. Human prisoners went missing much more frequently than halfbreeds since the government was less worried about the ramifications of a few escaped convicts. The soldiers’ priority would have been making sure none of the more dangerous captives broke free while a tracking team was sent for. A stray human was annoying, yet hardly worth the added risk of a potential revolt that would inevitably occur if any non-humans escaped.

The reason her cousin had failed his attempt is that all of the golems except her, due to being built of sand and not a more powerful substance, had less human-looking appearances. Their bodies were bulkier and rough in style with darker tones. Her pale sand and skin, along with a small frame, did not draw up images of threatening monsters like her uncle. This was her advantage, and she had every intention of capitalizing on the misunderstanding for as long as possible. The pace she set for herself was fast, especially considering her lack of practice running, yet it was manageable for the moment. No one would rush to find her until they realized she was missing later that night or possibly even the next morning if her parent's covered for her. The trackers would search halfheartedly until then which would ideally slow them enough to make her escape a success.

She had been in the noble houses her whole life and had seen diagrams of the dungeon hundreds of times. It had become one of her few pastimes to memorize the branches just in case she ever got the chance to travel them, and she was very proud of her forethought. The path she led herself in now was full of twists and turns to throw the pursuers off her trail and to bring her closer to the orc controlled territory nearest them. She had little intention of meeting an orc, but the rivalry between the two factions would make stalkers wary of invading. One ‘human’ the orcs would allow, a whole party of high leveled hunters would not be so accepted. She wished she could have gone out the other side of the city as it led towards the water king Khiren’s territory, where she would be closer to the last known location of her tribesmen. however, it was probably a good thing she wasn’t tempted by the choice since his people were vicious to strangers of any kind, but now it forced her to backtrack through the entire system to get to a place relatively close by in comparison. When she made it to the nearest dungeon, she would have four more to get through before she could see if her people still remained, and hopefully, she could find proof of their existence long before then.