Alanna the Lioness, defender of the realm of Tortall, and the King's Champion, thrashed around in her bed in a fitful dream. She had the same dream at least once a week. In it she was standing on a battlefield red with blood. The blood of her family. All around her lay her friends bodies.
There was Daine, killed by a Stormwing, trying to change her lifeless body in to that of a falcon. Her beloved George, stabbed in the heart in a bar brawl with a knife tipped with poison. Thom and Ally lay in each other's embrace, barely recognizable they were so blood covered, both reaching for Allen, Ally's twin brother.
Lady Keladry mounted on a headless Peach-blossom. Daja, Tris, Briar, and Sandry, her friends from the other side of the world, were still half alive trying to regain their strength by holding a circle of thread with four evenly spaced bumps. At this point in the dream, Alanna always threw up in her vacant bed.
Jonathan was hunched over the Dominion Jewel, his face shaved with a sword, showing pearly bone. The Queen was draped over her children's still forms, crying even in death.
Alanna awoke. Now that she was up she remembered how each of the people she cared for died.
Veralidaine had been trying to become a griffin, which had gone hideously wrong, and had died in immense amounts of pain. Her lover Numair had been over come with grief after her death and eventually jumped off Balor's Needle. George had been killed in a bar fight, but he had had his head slammed into a tower of glass beer mugs. It might not have killed him if he had not gotten several glass shards in his brain. Alanna couldn't even have saved him, although she did try.
Ally had been on a vessel bound for the Yamani Islands when her ship, attacked by pirates. They had raped her several times, then tied a weight to her feet and threw her over board because no one on that ship had wanted a sex toy at that time. Thom had been killed in a spell backlash that had changed him from a male to a female. Alan had been gored by a wild boar while training for knighthood.
Keladry was in a jousting tournament, when a lance had been jammed into the vision hole in her visor. Peach-blossom was so mad he killed the other knight. The joust officials had to put him down. Daja Kisubo had been working with a large amount of her living metal when she had coughed and inhaled some metal, which had slowly grown over her insider and killer her. Her foster siblings had over used their magic and died trying to save her.
The king was teaching Prince Roald a tricky move with a sword when the prince had become possessed and ran his father through with his blade. The Queen had had Roald put to death and then a few months later been shot by an arrow from a hit man's bow. And Alanna herself had died when a new mare had bucked her off. Now she and all her loved ones lived tighter in the realm of the Black God.