The Elemental Collective: Volume One: An Elemental Paladins Spin-off Series Read online

  The Elemental Collective

  an Elemental Paladins spin-off series

  Montana Ash

  Contents

  The Elemental Collective:

  A Note From Montana

  Book One

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Epilogue

  Book Two

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Book Three

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  What’s Next In The Paladin World?

  Also By Montana Ash

  Meet Montana

  Follow Montana

  The Elemental Collective:

  Volume One

  An Elemental Paladins spin-off series

  BY

  MONTANA ASH

  Published by Paladin Publishing

  The Elemental Collective: Volume One

  Copyright © 2020 by Montana Ash

  All rights reserved

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of Montana Ash, except for the use of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  Cover design by: Jennifer Munswami, J.M Rising Horse Creations

  Formatting by: Sariah Skye

  A Note From Montana

  Dear, Readers

  This is just a reminder that The Elemental Collective: Volume One is a collection of novellas and short stories. It is a direct spin-off from the Elemental Paladins series (completed seven book series). If you have not read the Elemental Paladins, this collection will be super spoilery for that series. I highly suggest reading them in order. I wish you all happy reading and fun within the pages xxx

  Book One

  Mordecai

  Prologue

  In Otherworld (10 weeks ago)

  Dana laughed, shaking her head as her son-in-law face-planted onto the wooden floor. The look of stunned joy followed swiftly by dawning horror was a sight to behold, and she took as much delight in it as his family did. As the others laughed and joked, stepping around the fallen soldier, Dana couldn’t really blame him. The thought of another Max in the world was daunting even to her. Though she shouldn’t really be observing, she found she was unable to look away from the rapturous joy on her daughter’s face. The gentle, protective hand on her womb cradling the delicate young soul within, had tears rushing to the forefront and Dana blinked rapidly to dispel them. Now was a time for happiness. Her daughter had returned to her family.

  Dana watched as Darius unceremoniously slapped his Captain awake and Ryker bolted upright, the name of his love the first sound on his lips. Dana sighed, watching as Ryker’s and Max’s souls literally reached out to each other. Theirs was a one in a billion love to be sure. Although, looking around at all the happily matched couples, she decided that the one in a billion chance was occurring at an alarming rate within the wooden and stone walls.

  Despite her best intentions, Dana sought out Mordecai – the father of her child. The guardian and keeper of death was immersed within the festivities for once, instead of standing on the sidelines – his four trusted and noble companions still loyally by his side. As she watched, she saw Mordecai’s deep, green eyes travel to his daughter where they lingered, hungrily tracing her features as if he were afraid she would disappear from his sight. Dana pressed a hand to her stomach, feeling it churn and rebel. It always acted so whenever she thought about the grievous wrong she had committed. Even so, the urge to reach out and smooth away the lines of stress present on Mordecai’s face was overwhelming.

  Unable to help herself, she passed her hand through the veil and ever so lightly, brushed the back of her hand over his forehead. Mordecai’s frown deepened, and he reached up, his hand passing untouching through hers without pause. She knew he didn’t feel her – he couldn’t when she was between worlds like she was now. But the way he straightened and looked around suspiciously made her wonder if he could somehow feel her watching him. It certainly wouldn’t be the first time she had done so.

  Despite the futility of her desires, she longed to feel Mordecai’s strong arms wrapped around her once more. She yearned to see his cool, green eyes warm as they stared down at her, his muscular body trapping hers in a cocoon of heat and lust. But she knew what she would see if their eyes were ever to truly meet now; hate. She exhaled shakily, pressing the heels of her palms against her eyes, physically forcing the tears back. She had no right to cry and deserved everything Mordecai said, felt, and thought about her. She had betrayed him in the worst possible way. Yes, she had asked permission and gained consent to do what she did that night so many years ago in Germany. But the consent was dubious at best because she had not divulged all the facts. And she knew they certainly would have made a difference to the man. Mordecai would never have agreed to the night of incredible sex had he been fully aware of the outcome. By the Gods, she would never have agreed either.

  In the early hours after the Great Massacre, with so many of her guardians slaughtered, nature’s balance so horribly skewed, and the Earth crying in mourning, Dana’s senses were so raw that every breath was agony. The voices of her warriors calling for her aid had been deafening. But she could do nothing. As omniscient as everyone believed Gods to be, they were still limited by the laws of nature and governed by the laws of their kind. She could no more enter the Earth plane and fight battles for her wardens and paladins than she could become human. She was what she was. But that didn’t mean there weren’t loopholes.

  On that day, one man’s pain had pierced her shields more than others. One voice had called to her and resonated within her so clearly, that she had spun where she stood in Otherworld, thinking him beside her. The voice had been beautifully accented with the echoes of the Scots, but had been brutally painful and full of curses. Breaking her own self-decreed rule to never pass through the veil again, she had swiftly pushed aside the figurative curtain and sent her body to the time and place of Mordecai, Liege of Valhalla. The man had been everything his voice had conjured; a mighty Scotsman warrior, imbued righteously with the element of Death – and in so much physical and emotional pain Dana had promptly fallen to her knees upon first laying eyes on him.

  After quickly picking herself up and listening to a few more of his half-drunken accusations and recriminations, she had boldly approached him with no forethought as to where
the night would end. Mordecai’s offhanded remark about creating something to cure the chade infection had sparked an idea. Yes; she could create a weapon – a tool – that would act as a cure for the disease wiping out her precious wardens. Little did she know, that tool would one day be her beloved daughter, known affectionately as Max. Dana had in fact named her daughter for what she would become; the great one.

  Titania.

  That night, Dana knew she would be creating life – it’s what she did – she was a Creator. But never having carried and birthed anything from her physical body before, she had been ignorant of the feelings it would inspire. From the very first moment she felt the stirrings of life in her womb, she knew she had made a grave mistake. Not about conceiving her daughter – never that. But that her daughter had been made solely to serve a purpose. Dana knew what it would cost Titania – Max, rather – to rid the world of the taint evolution had wrought and had considered aborting her initial plans innumerable times. She had even once resolved herself to let the wardens and paladins die out, for that was exactly where their path had been headed. The loss of nature’s guardians and their knightly protectors would have meant the total extinction of every living organism on the planet. But looking at her precious daughter as she laughed and played in the Eden Gardens in Otherworld, Dana had been prepared to let the world descend into oblivion. It had been Max who had insisted on fulfilling her purpose.

  Dana sighed, thinking of Max’s inner strength and wondering for the millionth time how she had managed to raise such an awe-inspiring woman. Max had just been entering the first blushes of womanhood when Dana had felt another cataclysmic shift in the balance. Emmanuel and his deranged parents had begun to make greater strides in their evil plan, consuming more and more vitality and infecting more and more wardens. The poor rangers were inundated with chades and the Councils seemed oblivious – or they had simply given up.

  Thinking of it now, Dana knew Max had been correct in her initial assessment and judgement of their government and society. It had degraded into complacency and had placed inappropriate emphasis on warden hierarchy and the caste system. At the time of the power shift, Max had insisted she be allowed to enter the Earth plane and begin her task of healing the lost souls. Dana had cried rivers of tears and clung to her flesh and blood child so hard that Max had needed to pry her off. Max had then given her one of her now well-known, righteous speeches leaving Dana feeling like she was the child and her daughter was the wise crone. Unable to deny Max anything, in the end, Dana had kissed Max on her forehead and bestowed her blessings.

  Passage from one plane to the next was not necessarily a difficult task, but it was governed by rules and the laws of nature. Souls had no trouble passing through the veil between worlds. But physical bodies? That was another act of physics entirely. Dana had no such issues because she was a pure goddess, but Max, on the other hand, was a mix of mortality and divinity. She was a custodian of the flesh, and though she had been able to successfully cross, maintaining the physical body of a young woman on the cusp of adulthood, the passing had some unforeseen consequences.

  Amnesia.

  Dana had been absolutely horrified and had been about to pass through the veil and retrieve her when a piece of paper near the metaphysical barrier had caught her eye. There, in her daughter’s neat handwriting, were the words; Don’t you dare!!! Max had apparently foreseen the complication even though Dana herself had not. Dana shook her head, mouth quirking when she thought about the note and sketchbook Max had left for herself this time. Her daughter was nothing if not prepared. Dana had obeyed Max’s wishes and had left her alone and afraid in a foreign world with naught but the clothes on her back. She had trusted her daughter to know what she was doing and where she was destined to end up.

  Observing the joy and happiness of Max with her family now, and the revolutionary healing of the chades, Dana still couldn’t honestly say that she did the right thing or that she would do it all over again had she seen the outcome. Though she didn’t need to wonder what her stubborn daughter thought. Max had told her in no uncertain terms what her opinion was upon her return to Otherworld just weeks prior. The moment Max had crossed the veil in her pure soul form, her memories as Titania had returned and Dana had an armful of laughing, sobbing energy. Their happy reunion had lasted a blissful matter of minutes until Max had let loose a string of creative curses and demands to know what was going on. After that, Dana had been forced to endure three weeks of whining, cursing, and pouting until Max had been able to reform her physical form. Dana had been under no illusion that Max would return to Earth the moment she was physically able to, but they had both been surprised and overwhelmed to learn of the presence of the tiny being nestled contentedly in Max’s womb. Though Dana was able to essentially birth souls in the form of Custodians, she did not get to choose where those souls were housed. That was the responsibility of a different deity. Besides, Dana had refused to create any more Custodians after the last of her creations was taken against its will.

  Naturally, the discovery of her own daughter made Max even more determined to return and Dana had aided her as much as she was able to. Unfortunately, all the preparation in the world still had not been enough to prevent the resulting memory loss. Human bodies simply weren’t supposed to cross the veil. Dana had watched on tenterhooks as Max found her way yet again and although she was overjoyed at the scene in front of her right now, she was even more gratified to hear Max call Mordecai dad and ask him what he thought of being a grandfather.

  Dana laughed out loud as Mordecai noticeably paled. Seems that small fact had escaped him. To be fair, he responded to the good-natured ribbing from his Order and Ryker well, even smiling a time or two before finally threatening them all with bodily harm. I wish he would threaten my body again, Dana thought without meaning to. She immediately flushed, though there was no one to see her embarrassment. Mordecai had been her first – and last – lover. The title of Great Mother was more symbolic than literal. Yes, she had birthed the first souls and the first seeds of nature, but like her fellow gods and goddesses, procreation had not involved sex. Even with Mordecai being exceptionally drunk and herself aware of the purpose of the act, it had still been the most incredible night of her life. She could well understand why humans placed so much emphasis on sex. Too bad she was doomed never to experience it again.

  Her sigh this time was big enough to displace the air minutely, and Max’s head popped up, eyes searching keenly. When they looked directly through where the veil was hovering in the doorway, Max gave her a small grin and a wave, even though Dana knew she couldn’t actually see the shimmering, pearlescent curtain. It was invisible and impervious to all – other than pure divinity. Still, Max was sensitive enough and astute enough to know Dana was there.

  The small gesture from Max had Dana slumping in relief. When Max had said she remembered everything, Dana didn’t know if that included herself or not. Thankfully, it appeared to and she wondered when Max would see fit to tell the others about her trip to Otherworld and what she remembered of her time growing up as Titania, the beloved daughter of Mother Nature.

  Max raised her eyebrows and patted her stomach one last time before turning her attention back to Beyden and Jasminka. Dana was glad the two had resolved their feelings for each other, knowing they had been destined to meet even before their births. But sometimes destiny wasn’t enough, and choices accompanied by actions often forged new paths. She was relieved to see these two had not travelled down different roads because Max was going to need them – need all of them. Or rather, Max’s daughter was.

  Max had only been partially correct when she had said her babe was a goddess. The little girl was half life paladin and half custodian in corporeal form. The resulting child – Dana’s granddaughter – was destined to be the first of her kind.

  A Spirit Goddess.

  The time would come when Dana would reveal the full potential of her grandchild, but that time was not now. Now, there w
as a society to rebuild and a government to re-establish, and one last paladin whose own destiny was about to come knocking on the door.

  Chapter One

  10 weeks later …

  “Have you talked to mum yet?”

  Mordecai paused in the act of making his first cup of coffee for the day. He wasn’t a man with many vices, but he could admit to being heavily dependent upon the bitter, caffeinated goodness that was coffee. It had evolved a lot over the years – the brewing of it as well as the flavours – but its desired effect remained the same, no matter the century. Fuel. Motivation. Love. Yes, he loved coffee. But it was a testament to how much he loved something more when he put his half-filled mug down on the kitchen counter and turned to the woman behind him.

  Five-foot-three inches of pure miracle, with startling turquoise eyes and a mouth – that was more often than not – quirked into a genuine and mischievous smile. He felt himself blinking rapidly and spinning back to his neglected coffee without answering because looking at her still hurt so bad. It also brought joy and happiness in equal measure, but the pain was ever-present as well. He wondered if that was ever going to change – or, more to the point – if he ever wanted it to change.