The Echo Kingdom Chronicles: Invasion

By CD Charles

When you go to sleep, what do you dream about? Do you have adventures? Do you have nightmares? Or do your dreams mainly consist of the average everyday events that make up your normal life? Thirteen year-old Liana Savard used to have every type of dream imaginable, until one night when her dreams became a little bit too real.
After moving to a new city in a new country, Liana tries to make the best of it. Only a night after her arrival into the new city, Liana falls asleep and then awakens on a completely differnt planet, Echo -- where she soon finds out shes in charge of a kingdom, as their queen. To make matters more interesting, every time she goes to sleep on Echo, she awakens on Earth, where shes just a normal teenage girl that still has to go to school! On Earth, she also meets Conner Rivers, who recently moved into the house next door only a few months before her own arrival. And as shell soon discover, hes not your average teenage boy.
In his first book in The Echo Kingdom Chronicles series, C.D. Charles has crafted an adventure that will satisfy your imaginative thirst, capture your heart, and tickle your funny bone.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Nov 6, 2015
• ISBN: 9781438971957

CD Charles

C D Charles was born and raised in Western New York. He is married and currently resides in the sheep covered pastures of Oxfordshire, England.

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© 2015 CD Charles. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse   11/03/2015

ISBN: 978-1-4389-7193-3 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4389-7194-0 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4389-7195-7 (e)

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Contents

Chapter One

Liana

Chapter Two

The New House

Chapter Three

Conner

Chapter Four

The Queen of Parooka

Chapter Five

Tryouts

Chapter Six

The King of Terrikota

Chapter Seven

How to Run a Kingdom 101

Chapter Eight

A Timely Friendship

Chapter Nine

Worlds Collide

Chapter Ten

Strategic Meeting

Chapter Eleven

Face-off

Chapter Twelve

Invasion

Chapter Thirteen

Captured!

Chapter Fourteen

Hanging

Chapter Fifteen

A New Day

- Chapter One -

Liana

Liana’s heart beat with such intensity, she was reasonably concerned that it might explode. After all, these were the Olympic Games! Within this single moment in time, her blue eyes scanned the crowd that filled the sold-out arena. A sea of flags from the United States, Romania, Russia, China, the Ukraine, Brazil, Australia, and many other nations were waved enthusiastically by spectators in a display of national pride, sparking an electrifying excitement that engulfed the atmosphere within the arena. A drip of sweat fell from the tip of Liana’s nose as her eyes zeroed in on a lone Canadian flag held high in the air by her mother and father. She smiled toward her elated parents as she briefly stood on the end of balance beam—the moment was over. With a deep breath, she projected her body upside down and landed solidly on the beam in a handstand, her feet now suspended in the air above her head and her tiptoes pointing toward the heavens. The crowd responded with a near deafening roar as Liana gracefully came out of the handstand, momentarily balancing her body upright. With her arms above her head and parallel to her body, she arched her back and proceeded to perform a backflip; her hands momentarily touched the beam to serve as a spring before she performed three more consecutive backflips without touching her hands to the beam. Her legs split in a scissor position while she was airborne and upside-down, allowing her left foot to land on the beam before her right foot, keeping up her momentum as her arms stretched out enough on both sides to provide her balance before landing both feet on the opposite end of the beam. As Liana aligned her tiptoes on the edge of the four-inch balance beam, she knew it would only take one final combination of perfectly executed gymnastic elements to leap off the beam and into Olympic history.

This is it! she told herself. This is what I have worked so hard to accomplish! She knew that all of her sweat, tears, sacrifice, and countless hours spent training in the gym came down to this one moment. All the trips to the mall and Friday-night movies she missed, all the weekends spent training when she could have instead chosen to lounge around and relax with her friends whom she rarely saw were about to pay off. All of the time spent drinking nothing but water and consuming nothing but vegetables, fruits, and whole grains, instead of cupcakes, hotdogs, and soda—now, finally, it was going to be worth it!

Why am I suddenly thinking about chocolate cupcakes with sprinkles? And puppies … where did the thought of cute and fluffy puppies come from? They have nothing to do with cupcakes? Refocus! Liana knew she needed to clear her mind of everything that wasn’t important at this moment—even cupcakes and puppies. She took another deep breath and glanced over to smile at her family in the crowd. Every movement her muscles made had to be in sync and perfectly executed. With the poise of a professional, Liana threw her shoulders back and pointed her arms and fingers directly to the ground, moving forward one step, and then another step.

Suddenly, without warning or reason, there was a loud noise, and Liana was thrown violently off the beam! She quickly threw her hands out in an attempt to grab hold of something, anything, to stop her from falling and shattering her lifelong dream! Her eyes jolted wide open as her body was helplessly tossed … across the backseat of the car, and she was thrust awake by her father’s abruptly jolting the steering wheel.

They almost took us off the road, he grumbled. Don’t the people down here know how to drive—or at least how to use a turn signal?

Liana’s eyes attempted to focus as her mind raced to catch up from her dream of an Olympic victory. She stretched her arms straight out in either direction and with a squeaky voice said, Dad, I was just about to win the gold medal!

Oh, sorry, sweetheart. He smiled and rolled his eyes at her in the rearview mirror. I was just trying to keep us alive.

Liana didn’t immediately respond to her father, her brain still slightly scrambled from being jolted out of her sublime subconscious. Her eyes didn’t need to come into complete focus for her to realize that the sun had tucked itself quietly under the horizon long before she’d awoken. After being on the road all day for practically two days straight, her body and mind were restless. Leaning back in the seat for several minutes, she attempted to stretch her body to full capacity, her bare feet pressed against the rear driver’s side window and her arms reached out toward the opposite rear ceiling of the car, forcing her hands to emerge from their previously hidden haven within her sweatshirt’s sleeves. Feeling as though she had completely reentered this world, she squeaked out, Thanks for keeping us alive.

Her father chuckled slightly and then released a long sigh. That sure was a delayed response, child. Welcome back. He glanced at the fuel gauge. The car needs gas, and I could use a little fuel myself. Let’s make a pit stop at the next exit. He yawned, rubbing his eyes with one hand while keeping the other tightly gripped on the wheel.

***

Several minutes later, Liana’s father pulled the car off the highway and into a gas station. Both Liana and her father slowly exited the car stretching and then went inside to use the restroom. She may have been tired, but after washing her hands, Liana squinted at the door handle and considered the possibility that previous users may have left the bathroom without first washing their own hands, so she used the paper towel to grip the handle of the door and then flung the soggy towel into the open wastebasket in the far corner of the restroom. Nailed it, she proudly mumbled to herself as she pumped her right arm at the tiny victory. Groggily making her way back to the car, she plopped herself in the passenger seat and closed the door. She pulled her legs up toward her chest and sat with her chin comfortably resting on her bare kneecaps. Her eyes began to slowly slide shut as her father returned with a cup of coffee and proceeded to refuel the car. As he got back behind the wheel, Liana heard him mumble something about a giant evil bunny. She glanced at him, not knowing exactly how to respond to the off-the-wall comment; instead, her mouth hung slightly open as her eyes narrowed and head tilted in confusion.

He didn’t notice. Buckle up, sweetheart.

She wasn’t going to fall asleep after her father made such a crazy comment, choosing instead to put her iPod on shuffle and listen to some music. Had she heard her father wrong? She was tired after all; it wouldn’t have been the first time she’d misheard something. While she listened to Taylor Swift sing about a mean boy, she’d periodically glance in her father’s direction; his eyes were focused straight ahead as though he was chasing this giant evil bunny. She concluded that she must have misheard him; her father was the most stable person she knew. However, Liana was tired and extremely bored. Her mind wandered and considered whether her stable father was indeed crazy. He may have become delirious from the accumulated stress of having to drive over a thousand miles in just two days’ time and begun hallucinating. Though as long as he didn’t start talking like SpongeBob or start ranting irrelevant, less-than-whimsical comments like, Where’s the beef?, she wouldn’t have to relinquish her once stable father to the snuggly white jacket and professional care of an insane asylum.

Liana removed her earphones and turned toward her dad. Want to hear about my dream? It was interesting, but aren’t they all?

Her father laughed as he stared ahead at the road. You’ve got that right. I’ve had some real doozies in my day.

Okay, so I was on the balance beam at the Olympic Games and about to win the all-around gold medal, she paused for dramatic effect, and that was the normal part of the dream.

Normal? her father asked as he took his bunny-chasing eyes off the road for a second to glace over at his daughter. I would think of it as a great foreshadowing—or better yet, your inevitable and unprecedented successful future as—

Liana, not really listening to her