The man standing over her could not have been much older than her. Sunburns turned his skin red and flaky, stained by blood and soil splashed onto him by the cyclone. Coan swung her jawbone sword at his neck, only grazing it. Her wicker sandals pressed deep into the wet mud as she charged at him. With her, the other soldiers she rallied joined her in the fighting. For a moment, all of their warriors stood as one, aiming for the foes closest to them. Then, as Coan took another step, the army collapsed. There was screaming, someone was running. A monster from the Second Sea fell dead onto the grass. Coan lashed at the pirate with her flint axe. The boy, stumbling, guarded with a metal broadsword. If only our forges were not burned and ravaged, then we could fight with iron too. The stone edge shattered upon biting the steel, and the axe turned back into a stick. All Vall had were sticks. Sticks tied to stone, tied to sap, tied to souls. And Coan had one attached to a crocodile’s jawbone, slamming it against the steel sword over and over again. And her bones, her heart, they turned to fragile twigs when she heard the gunshot. On the day Rem turned Vall to smolders, they rang out like the birdcalls and thunder. But here, it turned everything silent. Coan turned and saw her brother fall backward. Something in her twisted. Her brother sprawled out dead.

  So much struck Coan at once there was only a void. How could I have made him stay? Mysk lay there, like a thousand others on the day she lay in a river of blood in her mother’s arms. She was shivering, close to vomiting. Her sword still wrestled with the metal in the pirate’s hands. Am I alone now? Dizziness came over her, everything swirling. Her grip weakened. The pirate was overwhelming her. With his boot, he kicked her away, throwing Coan into the mud. She looked at her brother’s corpse again. Something within her vanished, crushed, and stomped. Something ate her insides, it seemed. When all of Vall was starving, worms had eaten the sick villagers’ stomachs, and Mysk had begged her to kill them. He was too scared. And then, they would stomp on the parasites together. Why couldn’t we have done something else, anything but watch people die? Why did we have to grow up like that? Green rain fell atop her hair as the pirate stood over her, blade pointed at her heart. I will be the last one alive, I will be the one to bury Vall. She saw herself shrouded in a blanket of ice. Behind the temple’s amber windows, everyone slept, the island finally at peace.

  A half-howl half-sob bellowed from her throat. Rising to her feet, she slammed against the invader’s sword with her own. Maybe she never needed a smith. The poor boy dropped his steel, slipping through sweat-drenched fingers. And Coan hacked at him like he was made of bundled straw and hay. It took only three good slashes to leave him dead and maimed. The warlord pressed her mask against her face with such force it nearly crushed her nose. Prying the steel sword from the corpse, she noticed he looked like the captive Gele dragged in. Was it the same one? No, if he had no fingers it would be far easier to steal the sword.

  Boom! Another gunshot rattled through the air, coughing up a field of smoke. A weaver fell backward, their head missing from their shoulders. An invader marveled at the sight from behind his thunder stick. What was that dead man’s name? Coan could not remember. All she saw was her brother when she looked upon the headless carcass. She dived forward with the steel and jawbone. Spitting out shambling words, the warlord tried to rally her people under a battlecry, but all that came out was an incomprehensible whine. Sucking in air, every breath made her nauseous. Everything was spinning again. Somehow, her sword dove into the pirate’s chest. Did I kill the same one twice? No, this one was big and had gray hair. He was carrying spools of copper wire. This was the one with the gun. No, half of them had guns. Ten pirates remained. And of her soldiers, the ones she led out here to die, five of them lay dead and butchered. Her brother, she could see his heart from where she stood. For a thousand generations, for all of time, they will see him as I see him now. They will sew up the wound, but the scars tell all. They could not tie together my mother, who–

  A wicked growl caught her in her dismay. Pivoting, her wrist spun the blade, catching the knife before it gouged out her own heart. The figure was like a shadow, fish guts had fallen on him, shrouding his face and extinguishing his torch. He screamed something, spitting on her too. The knife stabbed her shoulder, and she tore a chunk from his neck. Did I die? She swung, surely, but she did not feel her muscles, her reflexes. Everything was falling. The world was falling around her, the wind bashing it, bringing Vall to its knees, and there she stood on shaking legs. I am the warlord, a name that was born at the start of time.

  She gasped and whimpered and wailed as she yanked the knife from her flesh. It burned to swing her arm, but she had to. Another had come to kill her. With an exhausted breath, she lunged forward, cutting the pirate down. She looked at her hands, she had a different blade now, one she picked up from somewhere. Adrenaline engulfed her. Dizziness infected her, only expounding as the fight went on. When she looked at her hands again, she was pulling herself off the ground. A dead man was under her, his face devoured by rapid nausea. A deep cut dug into her leg, and she was so cold. The soil was thick with frost. It was raining green-red slush. Snow and frozen fish fell from the clouds.

  There were more gunshots, she thought. The smoke had drank the wind, the cyclone ending and a different storm being born from it. The spirits? Would they save her now when all she got from them before was silence? Coan tried to find her people; wherever they had gone. All she found were corpses, skin painted in blood, and masks staring at the Second Sea or sinking into the mud. What were their names? All the people under the earth, at the heart of Vall, must have been looking at her with disgust. Where are my soldiers? Her army was her, everyone else was dead or running. Gripping her sword, she kept walking through the mist. In the night, how close was the dawn? Only the Second Sea knew. She was the warlord. All she had was her sword. I have always been alone, Coan the loner, not the warlord. I starved, I survived. Let me be eternal, let me be undying, please, I don’t want to die. I don’t want to die. Let me be the last one. I don’t want to die.

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  “Coan!” A voice called for her, but she could not tell if it was real or a delusion. “Coan!” Now she knew. Mapsokas stood behind her, wandering through the mist. Was it really smoke from the thundersticks? The fog trapped them as sleet dripped from the canopy. The green snow covered Mapsokas’s hair, her mask repainted in red. She still had her axe, a bludgeon of sharpened stone. But it was useless now. Gore dulled the blade. Mapsokas was caked in it as well. She looks like the warlord, not me. But then she looked at herself, and for a moment, she thought she was dead. No, this is someone else’s, she thought, trying to wipe it away.

  Coan blinked, and she was covered in an even thicker blanket of grime. Mud and blood seeped down her skin like a sleek river. And Mapsokas joined it as a bullet broke her mask and opened her skull. Under the invader’s torchlight, it looked like sap. I will be the last one. Coan lunged at the killer. All they had was a smoking musket. “Coan,” she said, repeating the woodcutter’s last word. When the word crawled through her lips, she drove the blade—she forgot if it was the third sword she picked up or the fourth—into a fleshy mass. Blood blinded her, a sheen of red made the men disappear and monsters take their place. I am the last one. She never felt like Coan the Warlord until now, in the fervor of fright and unfocused rage. But there was no euphoria, no pride. All she had was a warlord’s mantle. Mother, mother, mother, are you watching me? Where? From the trees, the ground, maybe the corpses?

  And then something pressed against the back of her head.

  Why did they hesitate? Coan turned to see the barrel looking at her. The black void loomed. Was the invader too scared to fire, only feeling safe if it was hovering over her skull? Something metal was trembling, clinking together as Coan stood on a precipice between the apex of her role and joining the sludge of guts and mud at her feet.

  Click.

  She was still alive, just for a moment. Flint sparked. Something hissed inside the weapon. She could smell the gunpowder. In the corner of her eye, Coan saw her brother. His arms were sprawled out, and she could see the hole in his chest. She saw everyone. A few were bound and crawling away. Gele was thrashing on the ground, eyes rolled back and mouth foaming. And everyone else was dead.

  I am the last one.

  With the palm of her hand, she shoved the gun barrel up, thrusting it towards the canopy. BOOM! The deafening blare nearly split her skull. Her ears were ringing, really forcing her to her knees. All her wounds burned. It was as if her gnarled skin had become a blanket of red-hot shackles. But Coan was alive. If she had acted a fraction of a second slower, she would have died as Mapsokas did. If the musket was not soaked in rain and mud, it might have taken off her head. The delay graced her. Coan surged forward, clenching her teeth so tight she was on the edge of shattering her jaw. It was all she could do to stay conscious. The pain was a flurry, one coaxing her to sleep, to give in. Her ears bled, and she could not hear the gunman’s shouts. He was slow, weighed down by the cargo on his back. A bundle of brass rods kept him from running. The pirate tripped, spilling them onto the grass. Coan stood over him. He covered his eyes and braced himself for death.

  Coan would have died if she had lunged forward. A whirl of bright yellow came as a flash, more like a viper than a blade. The captain interjected himself between the two, his necklace bouncing and the potions on his belt chiming. Coan rushed at him, lashing her arm out and smashing steel against brass. The pirate had the sword that was looted off her, looted from when Vall burned and her mother shielded her from shrapnel. Some of the iron debris still lodged in her panged with pain as she parried the captain’s jab. The brass blade was new, but the handle she recognized. Even with ruptured eardrums, she heard the cries of the thing inside the amber. The first thing to fall from the Second Sea, the first soul to grace this island. She could not see nor reach it. The pale spotted fingers of the captain hid it from her. Coan gazed into his eyes. It was as if they were scooped out and replaced with butterfly wings. He killed my brother, the single thought seared her thinking as anger swelled. Their weapons met again, clashing together, two metal waves climbing across the wind to tear apart the other. Give me everything back.

  Maybe they bounced off each other once more, maybe twice more. Coan did not know. For the moment she invested everything to expunge the soul from her brother’s murderer, something bashed her on the head, knocking her onto her knees. Whatever it was, whoever it came from, swung again, slamming her face. Coan’s mask flew up, barely holding on to her head and covering her eyes. She felt a kick fly into her stomach, and another hit her hand. “Mother, save me! Protect me!” She did not know if she screamed the words or whimpered them. Her ears still heard only scratching thunder and a shrill whine. Something was holding her down, slapping her as she tried to struggle. Coan bit at the fingers prying her mouth open. The invaders hit her harder. She tried to kill them, but her sword was gone. The invaders hit her even harder. Her body gave up, every breath an exhausted wheeze and the wounds seizing her muscles in all-consuming agony. The sensation pierced every part of her body as she was kicked and smacked over and over.

  She thought it was done, and she was another corpse. Then, something was poured down her throat.

  At first, it tasted like warm milk and boiled syrup. She blinked and saw Vall. All the stone statues were alive, singing and smiling. Her mother sat with them, Mysk laying in the grass beside her. In the canopy, the faces in the temple grew on the tips of tree branches, every one a nice plump fruit. Coan snatched a ripe one for herself, and it screamed like a frantic child. She bit into it, feeling the juices in her mouth. There was something else she was drinking, but it kept flowing down into her stomach she did not seem to notice anymore. It was like she was breathing the elixir. But that was somewhere else. She was home with her family now—not kissing glass. Her mother laughed, and Coan ate another fruit. Everything still hurt, though, and the warlord could not clean off the red-brown paint that clung to her skin like frost.

  I should have chosen a different name.