I sat bolt-upright; it took a moment before I remembered the link for what it was. I went back to my tabs.

Ezzie said.

I ignored her and kept scrolling through the menus.

Ezzie said.

Of course I was; she’d left me alone to wander through a world I had no knowledge of. At the same time, I remembered the way she’d left—the screaming, the way the link went suddenly quiet—and it was obvious that she hadn’t left by choice. But it was hard not to blame her for what had happened.

Ezzie said,

I shrugged. She had a point, though I didn’t want to admit it. I ground my teeth, the muscles in my jaw flexing and threatening to cramp. I said.

Ezzie hesitated. She whistled.

I said.

I said.

she said.

She laughed, though it sounded a little forced.

I said, interrupting.

I fought down the urge to apologize, which was surprisingly strong. So strong that it made me wonder if she was rooting around inside my head again.

she said.

I swiped to the icon in question. It looked like a scarecrow on a stick.

I said.

I didn’t like the way she was hedging.

I closed my eyes, not wanting Ezzie to see my frustration. I could have had three extra stat points per level, or another twelve stat points by level five. And now those points were just…gone. Yet another advantage squandered.

Ezzie said.

I said. Wait…why was I trying to spare her feelings? I shrugged and brought up the training dummy icon again, selected it, and dropped it a little ways behind the forge. One hundred coins seemed a little steep for a bunch of hay-stuffed clothing, but so it went.

For whatever reason, the dummy was delivered by a pair of drones that swooped down overhead, the sharp post that it was mounted on sliding easily into the dirt. It was about my height, though its body ended at the torso. Its head was a sack that someone had filled with hay and tied off with a piece of rope around its neck, and it wore a ragged but equally stuffed blue jacket. A wide-brimmed hat sat low on its forehead, shading its eyes.

I had the Constructor print my sword, then realized I should probably be wearing my armor, too, which took the better part of a minute to print out. I said.

I had to laugh at myself then. Two days ago, the Constructor would have been the most amazing piece of technology I’d ever seen. Strange, that I was already so used to it.

Ezzie said,

I pointed my sword at the scarecrow.

I swung the blade in a long diagonal arc, aiming to cleave the dummy from shoulder to hip. Instead, the blade bounced off the dummy and tumbled out of my hand, then clanged against the wall of the forge.

“Ten,” the Dummy said. “You suck.”

I frowned, looked down at my sword—which had flown about six feet away—then looked back to the dummy. I said.

Ezzie said.