Runestone saga, p.1
Twice In a Blue Moon, page 1
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Twice in a Blue Moon
By Iliana Collado
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Table of Contents
Prologue- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -10 1. They’re All Dead- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -15
2. A Boy or a Monster- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -26 3. What are We Now?- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -34
4. Dead or Alive- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -39
5. She’s a Monster- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -47
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6. Can We Trust Her- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -53 7. Conquistador- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -61
8 .The Kids From the Prophecy- - - - - -68
9. Traitors and Lovers- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -77
10. Love Triangle- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -86
11. The Real Robert- - - - - - - - - - - - -94
12. Shadow Creatures- - - - - - - - - - - -104
13. The king and Queen- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -120
14. Poison Water- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -130
15. Dreamers- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -140
16. New Friends and New Enemies- - - -152
17. Memories- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -164
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18. gods Save the Queen- - - - - - - - - - -175
19. Heroes or Theives- - - - - - - - - - - - -186
20. For us- - - - - - - - - - - -197
21. The Kidnappers- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -211 22. Mysterious woman- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -217
Epilogue- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -229
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Information you need to know
To understand this book
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In Azalea, King Bast was murdered by Queen Leola 825 years ago. Therefore, Queen Leola is executed in front of the entire kingdom.
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Currently, King Leonard and King William are at odds due to their ancestors…let’s say problems. War had been raging for ten years, killing 10,000 people. To save his kingdom, King William made a deal with King Leonardo. The deal was that if they had different sides, they could be at peace. King Leonardo agreed but only got greedier. It got so bad that King William confronted him about it. The two countries disagreed, and war raged again.
Eventually, King William died and the panther
dynasty ended.
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Prologue
(Two years ago)
As the Ellerbrook family sat eating
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dinner at their little table in their little house in the small town of Ismael. A loud bang followed by screams made everyone except six-month-old Lulu jump up.
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“Mark, get the girls to the underground safe house,
I’ll take Lulu and the…erm…stuff,” the mother, Iris, said.
Iris took two objects out of her drawer and placed them in Ella’s twelve-year-old hands.
“Honey, if something is to happen to us, take your sisters to the past,” Iris said, kissing Ella, then ten-year-old Ana.
Mark grabbed Ana and Ella by the wrist and, with a glance at his wife, he led his two daughters out the door. Ana, Ella, and Mark ran down their narrow driveway and onto the cobblestone sidewalk, with Iris and Lulu following closely 13
behind.
“Ella, watch out!” Mark screamed, jumping in front
of her, and taking the bullet that was meant for Ella.
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“Papa!” Cried Ana, nudging her father's lifeless body with her foot.
Ella pulled a still crying Ana to her feet and said.
“We need to get out of here, the person who killed Papa will be coming back for us”.
Just then, Lulu came tumbling down the driveway, followed by Iris. Even from a distance, Ella and A could see that they were
not far from being orphans themselves. Ana runs to her dying mother and hugs her. As she bent over her mother, she saw a ginormous Spider-Man fleeing the scene in the corner of her eye.
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Ella scooped up an unconscious Lulu, and the
three recently orphaned kids ran to the underground safe house just in time. Ella tried and tried to turn into a panther, but as they had dreaded, Ella was not the one chosen.
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“How dare those leopards kill our parents? I will tear the claws off of those greedy cats if it’s the last thing I do!” Ana fumed.
Ella sat in the far corner feeding Lulu when she heard it, the sickening crunch of bones. Ella turned to where Ana was seated, but Ana was no longer there; instead, a human-like panther stood where Ana had been only minutes earlier. Ella then knew that Ana was to be the high queen of the kingdom.
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Chapter 1
They’re All Dead
Two years later, Ana lay on the ground.
She tried to sit up, but her head spun as if the world was spinning on its axis. In the blur, she could see trees and darkness. She brushed her black hair
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off her dark brown eyes to get a better view of her surroundings. She tried to remember what had happened, but she could not. Then, as if a dam had broken, the memories flooded in. Ana and her two sisters had been eating what little food they had in their beat-up house. Since they
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became orphans two years ago, food has been scarce, and shelter has been even worse. Suddenly, three loud chimes came from the war horn atop the tower. Ana’s little sister, Lulu, being only two, had no idea what this meant, but Ana and her older sister, Ella, at the ages of twelve and fourteen, had experienced more than the average wars in their lives and knew all too well what this meant. The sisters hurriedly ate what was left of their food and rushed to the underground safe house, but they were too late. The soldiers from the leopard side of the country had already started to invade. Ella was holding
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the baby when a bullet came out of nowhere,
hitting her in the shoulder. She screamed in pain, dropped Lulu, and fell to the ground.
Lulu started to cry at the sight of her dying sister, but all Ana could do was stare at her.
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Hearing Ella's weakened voice calling out for
her ana, she snapped out of her trance and immediately ran to her sister's side.
“Here, take this,” Ella said, giving Ana two objects. She recognized them immediately. “No, I can’t, I’m not ready,” Ana said.
Ella closed her eyes, and Ana knew she would never open them again. Ana knew what Ella wanted her to do next. Ana slipped on the necklace that Ella had given her, and a tear slipped down her cheek. The necklace was merely made of twine and blue crystal, but Ana
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did not care if it was made of diamond or mold. It
was the only thing she had left of her family. Ana looked down at the sword that had been passed down from her mother to Ella and now to her. In one hand, she held the sword, and in the other, she reached for Lulu's hand, but it was not there. Instead, it was on
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the floor, a knife embedded in Lulu's chest.
Gasping, Ana realized that she was all alone in the world, but there was no time to cry. She had to get out of there and to the special place that, with the help of Ana’s necklace, would take her back in time. All Ana had to do was change into her panther form and activate the crystal. After that, you can automatically travel to and from the past and future. The problem was that she had only ever changed into her animal form twice, and on both occasions, she was unable to change back until a week later. Ana knew that if she were 25
going to save the world and her sisters, she would have to try it. Ana And just like that she was in the
1200s. Ana’s heart broke as she replayed the events in her mind. When it hit her like a blow to the face, her sisters were dead. Actually, they are not dead in this timeline, and by the
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looks of it. It was sometime in the 1200s, which
would be 825 years before the time she had just come from, so Ana shouldn’t even be born.
Ana told herself. She surveyed herself and noticed for the first time that her clothes had
changed. In the present, she was wearing an old yellow shirt that had once been white, and tattered blue jeans. But now, she was wearing a magenta 1200s-style peasant dress, with bell-like sleeves, an apron, and a corset.
Ana burst into tears
“What am I gonna do?” She cried.
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“My family is dead, my home is burnt, and I am gonna die.”
Then she had an idea.
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“If the war started in May 1200, and it’s April.
Maybe…just…Maybe I can stop it,” Ana thought.
If Ana did everything right, she would save
her entire family. As she sat on the ground in the middle of the dark woods, she thought about how wonderful it would be to have her old house back, her mom, her old phone with the white and pink case, her friends, and her… Just then, her thoughts were interrupted by a loud growling. She slowly turned around to see a tiger with a boylike face. Ana's first thought was to run, but then she pulled out her sword and challenged the tiger to
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fight her. This ended up being the worst
decision she had ever made and possibly the last. When the animal did not move,
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being wounded and now mad, picked up Ana and
flung her across the clearing into a tree. She hit the tree hard, her spine cracked, her vision turned red and blurry, the pain was unbearable, and she blacked out. The bits of pieces she saw while drifting in and out of consciousness went like this: a boy with dark hair was staggering around, clutching his knees, then he was lying on the ground.
When Ana awoke, she saw five men looking
down at her in wonder. Ana tried to sit up, but she could not. Her first thought was “I’m paralyzed, "
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but then she saw the rope that tied her waist and
arms to the board to a wooden board.
Then one of the men spoke. “Whatever
shall we do with a child”.
“We barely have enough food for us five, we certainly can’t take on another one,”.
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“Now, gentlemen, I know we can’t take one
more, but we can’t leave her for bird food,”
The guy who was obviously the leader said. “Who says we can’t, Leo?”.
“Well, if we take a little blood from the boy and feed it to the girl. She will be fine in no time,” Leo explained.
And for the first time, Ana noticed that a boy was tied to the rock next to her. Ana vaguely recognized him, but she wasn’t sure where she had seen him.
“Could it be…no,” Ana thought.
“wh... where am I?” Ana asked.
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“Why, you must have hit your head harder than I thought if you don’t know where you are,” replied Leo.
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“Um, seriously, I’m not from around here,” responded Ana.
“Oh, you aren’t?” Leo Implored, with a
mischievous grin.
“So, say you were to go missing, no one
would go looking for you?” He continued fingering the chains around the boy.
“Look, I don’t want any trouble. I just need to find the town of Ismael,” Ana defended.
“Oh, silly child, there is no town of Ismael,”
said Leo.
“Oh, right. Um, how about the Island of
Saints?” Ana asked.
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all faces turned to look at her, even the boy. Now it was Leo's turn to look surprised.
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“My…my lady,” Leo stuttered with his face going red with embarrassment.
Everyone was silent.
“what did you say your name was?”
asked Leo.
“um…Ana... Iliana Ellerbrook”.
“the king's eldest daughter?” shrieked
a man.
And then everybody disappeared, they were
there and then they weren’t. Which left Ana and the boy alone.
“What's your name, boy?” Ana asked.
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“Robert… Robert Ellerbrook,” he replied.
“and I wanna know what you're
doing with my sister's name?”.
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Ana’s brain was now fried.
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Chapter 2
A Boy or a Monster
Robert stared at the girl, who he pretended to 40
think was his twin sister. The truth was, he knew this girl, too well in fact.
“What are you doing with my sister's name
and looks?” He interrogated her, as he
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effortlessly slipped out of the chain that bound
him to the rock.
He pulled Ana’s sword and dragged the tip
across her throat. The girl seemed to be weighing her options. After no response, Robert asked.
“Are you some kind of witch?”.
“No!” Ana shrieked.
“Okay, if you won’t tell me who you are, I
guess you will suffer the wrath of my sword,” Robert declared, swinging the sword, then closing his eyes to give her a chance to 42
escape.
When he opened his eyes a few seconds
later, Robert saw nothing but a wooden board with no blood involved. Robert practically sighed with relief. He turned around, and suddenly he was on the floor, his head cracking on the wooden board. Robert tasted blood. The
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animal that was attacking him, Robert realized, was a panther.
“It can’t be,” Robert shrieked, his finger
breaking, against the force of Ana’s weight.
If he wasn’t mistaken, Iliana, the guardian and
goddess of the island of saints, was the panther pinning him to the rock. When she changed back into her human form, Robert asked her “You're a Therianthrope”.
“Robert, I have no idea what you're
saying,” Ana replied.
“Oh, sorry, Iliana, goddess of the Island
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of Saints, I am honored to be in your presence”.
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By the time Robert was halfway done greeting
her, she was laughing so hard she was killed over.
“Did I say something wrong?” he asked. “No,
it's just I’m no goddess, Ana wheezed.
“So…what are we gonna do?” Ana
asked, thirty minutes later.
“Well…. I know a little girl like you
cannot survive in the wilderness by herself.
“So, I guess I will have to come with you,” Robert smirked.
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That night, while sitting around the fire, it
was so silent. Ana could hear the crickets chirping. Finally, Robert broke the silence “I’m sorry for throwing you into the tree
earlier,” he winced.
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Ana's eyes went so wide they almost fell out of their sockets.
“Then uh... I guess I’m sorry for stabbing you,” she apologized.
“I was only trying to warn you about the soul takers,” Robert defended.
Then he started to retell the story to Ana.
“So, I was...” he started but was interrupted by a hissing.
Robert immediately shifted into his tiger form; following his lead, Ana shifted into her panther form. Robert and Ana stood back-to-back. Robert's orange and black stripes
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were contrasting with Ana's slick black coat.
Then out of the darkness came a nineteen-foot-long snake. It was at least eight feet taller than Robert, and Robert in all his glory, was ten feet tall. The snake's scales
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caught the light of the fire, making it look as if it had golden scales, but anyone, even with normal eyes, could see that its true color was purple. Its red eyes made it look even more like a monster, but the only problem was that the snake's eyes were already on its face, so who’s eyes were in the dark.
Then out of the darkness stepped a hooded figure,
then another, then two more, and now Robert and Ana were surrounded by hooded figures.
“How dare you come into my woods and disturb my people?” said an unnaturally deep voice.
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All the people took off their hoods to reveal white hair and red eyes.
“Father, do we really have to kill another person today? You promised you wouldn’t
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remember,” pleaded a teenage girl by the man
who spoke.
“My apologies, it must have slipped my
mind. throw them in jail, we shall deal with them tomorrow,” the man ordered.
After about ten minutes of walking, they
arrived at a palace wall. Inside the walls, lots of huts made entirely out of trees were scattered in a neat but messy way. The cloaked figures, also known as the reapers of death, and the most violent and vicious creatures on this side of the continent. Robert and Ana were now their captives.
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“Thanks a lot,” scoffed Robert, when they got to their cell.
