Chapter 1

Elsa floated in the middle of the passageway, naked, other people as well as naked girls passing by, using the ladder-like handholds on each side to propel themselves. Except for a smile or a glance at her tits (mostly from the males, though a few females glanced at her, too), she was completely ignored.

Except for low conversations, mostly male voices, it seemed, the castle ship was remarkably quiet. Elsa could feel conversations brushing against her mind – obviously psychic in nature – but there was no sense of urgency. ‘This seems to be a sleep period for most of the people here, ‘ she decided.

She turned one way, then the other, wondering which way she should go exploring. “Looking for the Rec Room?” a female voice suddenly said.

Elsa looked ‘up’ over her head to see a pretty girl with short, bright red hair, scooting by with one hand on the handrail, bracing herself so she could stop and talk. “Uh, yeah?” she grinned, hoping to look as innocent as the rest of the crew.

“You’re almost there,” the girl smiled back. “Third entrance up.” She indicated ‘up’ with an upward nod of her head. “You’re new here?”

Elsa sighed and nodded. “Yes, on the last...” What should I call whatever these people travel in to get here?

The girl straightened herself, her eyes getting wider. “Wow! I bet that was a rough ride! I’ve talked to some of the other survivors, and some of them had never been so scared in their lives! I can’t imagine what it would be like to be shot down out of the sky!”

Shot down? Wow! These people are having a rough time of it! “Yeah, well...” Elsa shrugged, not knowing what to say. She’d made a huge mistake picking the last transport. The thing had been shot down!

“It’s okay, That had to be pretty frightening!” the girl replied, noticing the new girl’s unwillingness to talk about it. “I bet you were glad to see Tia there.”

Elsa nodded. Not allowing herself to ‘mind raid’ definitely left her at a disadvantage.

“Oh, sorry! Where are my manners?” the girl exclaimed, still holding herself steady with one hand on the handgrip. She extended her other hand and chirped, “I’m Beth Ann! Pleased to meet you!”

Elsa took her hand, making sure she was psychically shielded so as not to overwhelm the other girl with her lengthy track of memories. “Lis ... Elsa.” In contact with the other girl, she ‘uploaded’ her most recent memories, including the girl’s conversations with other transport survivors. She allowed her name to slip into Beth Ann’s unguarded mind along with a few memories stolen from the girl’s childhood. A quick update and changing the ‘point of view’ from child to adult kept Beth Ann from recognizing the locations.

“Oh! You’re an Elizabeth, too!” Beth Ann chirped. “Great! Well, I’ll probably see you around. I hope we become friends!”

And she was gone, with Elsa watching a pair of cute bare legs balancing the girl as she expertly guided herself along the corridor. Elsa had learned a lot from that brief handshake, besides the clandestine rendezvous that had been slightly delayed when the girl had stopped to help Elsa. The ship’s layout was much clearer in her mind, now, so she decided her next destination was – the Bridge!

Linear thinking was how Elsa kept her mind straight about what all she needed to handle – taking one thing at a time. Since her decision to board the castle ship was made before New Eden had suddenly vanished, the castle ship took precedence. But that didn’t keep her from wondering ‘Where the fuck did New Eden go?’ anyway. It concerned her, but she wasn’t worried about it. The little moon hadn’t blown up (like before), so all she had to do when she was finished here was arrive in the correct time and the correct place to return to New Eden, then she would find out what happened. After all, she had all of time at her disposal.

Plus, if the Earth People had discovered a new method of transportation, it was possible that the scientists at New Eden had, as well. But she hadn’t noticed any gravitational distortions around the moon before it had vanished, so whatever method of relocation was involved, it was different than what these people had developed. And whatever method was being used here, it involved Phoenix fire. She could feel it all around her.

Wolfgang was finishing up his watch on the Bridge of the ship, and wondered if he should go find food or visit Tia in her quarters. The poor girl had been exhausted after rescuing all those people from the doomed StratoCruiser, even though she’d sucked up most of the witch fire from everyone else to do it. It still awed him that a witch could command so much pure, raw power. He thought back to the last great civilization on Earth fifteen thousand years ago, and though witch fire was used by many females during that time, no one had demonstrated the ability to channel everyone’s power the way Tia had, and although she’d been exhausted afterward, she hadn’t burned herself out – not like his queen had during Atlantis’ last day.

He and Tara had worked out the variables to use Tia’s newfound ability – to ‘relocate’ the entire space station from its current orbit around Earth to a new location – orbiting around Jupiter. If Tia could manifest that kind of power using all three thousand witches currently on board, rocket power would become a relic of the past. The new technique would be...

He had no idea what to call it: A conduit through space? A fold in time? Tia had referred to it as a ‘vortex’, but that was because she had used it like a vacuum cleaner to suck all the StratoCruiser survivors into the Rec Room of the space station – like a giant tornado in space, using pure life-force instead of a change in pressure to attract all those people. ‘Pressure wouldn’t have worked, anyway, ‘ he mused, as it would have been impossible to create enough of a negative vacuum in space to attract anything.

There was a lot he didn’t know about the mechanics of what Tia had done, and the ‘vortex’ she’d created had not only collapsed space but had manifested itself earlier in time so that she arrived at the moment the StratoCruiser was exploding – when most of the passengers and crew were still alive and screaming in panic. ‘If she had thought it out more carefully instead of reacting emotionally, could she have traveled earlier and prevented the catastrophe altogether?’ He didn’t know. It was likely that her emotional reaction was what had enabled her to draw on the witch fire she’d used to rescue everyone. She might not be able to do it in a normal state of mind.

But if she could, he and Tara had worked out plans while Tia had lain unconscious in her quarters; plans to create a vortex to allow the entire space station to travel across the solar system instantaneously. Using the telescope in the nose of the space station, Tara had carefully worked out the exact locations Tia would need for their transition.

“Hey, Wolf,” a man greeted Wolfgang as he opened the hatch. “Anything exciting happening?” Another question meaning the same thing might be, ‘Anyone from Earth shot any missiles at us yet?’ but a question like that might hex them.

“No, Greg,” Wolfgang yawned. “Everything’s exactly like it should be.” He unstrapped from his seat so that Greg could take the ‘Captain’s Chair’ and pushed away into the center of the room. Greg used the edge of the desk bolted to the floor deck to swing around. Wolfgang stopped his forward motion with a gentle push against the overhead, then pushed down toward the open hatch. “See you in six.”

“Yep!” Greg replied. “Oh, toss me that book clipped on the ‘head there, will ya’?”

Wolfgang did so, then twisted through the hatch, closing it behind him. As he turned to travel down the corridor, he came nose-to-nose with a very attractive pair of almond eyes. Black hair flowed around the girl’s face as she quickly halted her forward motion so she wouldn’t run into him.

“Whoops! Sorry!” Wolfgang breathed out. The girl was, as were most witches on board, completely naked. They seemed to like having themselves so ... available. It had something to do with the sexuality of using witch-fire – it made the girls so horny that, after a shift change, there was usually an interesting amount of activity in the Rec Room – more than enough to satisfy the male crewmembers.

“Um ... you lost?” he asked when the girl slid sideways to let him pass. “There’s nothing up here but the Bridge.”

Elsa smiled. “That’s what I was looking for.”

Wolfgang frowned. Now that he put his attention on the girl, herself, he didn’t recognize her, and he knew most of the witches on board by name – more than two thousand of them, anyway. “And you are?”

“Elsa,” the girl replied. “I need to talk to someone about the jump you’re going to make in a few hours.”

‘How would she know about that? Tara and I haven’t told anyone, yet!’

“You’re a friend of Tara’s?” he asked.

Elsa paused for a second. “I know her; in fact, I trained her.”

Wolfgang smirked at that. The Simpson twins were the original witches. They’d invented witch-fire! This time around, anyway...

Elsa sighed. “No they didn’t. How can someone ‘invent’ something that’s always been here?”

“I think you need to come with me,” Wolfgang told her, his voice sounding official since she’d read his mind, which he’d thought was shielded. He held out his hand to allow her to turn around on the hand grips.

Elsa held out her hand, but before she touched the man, she said, “If you really know Tia and Tara, you know what this means,” and glanced down at her hand before slowly moving it toward Wolfgang.

Wolfgang flinched for an instant, suddenly realizing he was confronting a powerful witch – one that was about to invade his mind with her thoughts and memories. He would learn from her, but she would learn from him, as well. And if there was enough memory exchange at one time, it could knock him out, cold.

The simple fact that she was warning him gave Wolfgang the courage to reach for her. If she was a traitor, she could have touched him at any time, either to exchange memories and knowledge or to simply knock him out with an influx of witch fire. If a witch was determined enough, she would be unstoppable, unless confronted by another witch.

He braced himself, then clasped her hand with his.

Tia sighed, still mostly asleep, but unwilling to move in the light gravity of her quarters. The slight movement let her body know she wasn’t alone in the gravity net she used as a bed. A soft moan – more like a sleepy growl – came from the other body sharing her net; Tara. The pair of them were wrapped around each other, slowly awakening as they’d done thousands of times in the last half-century, wrapped around each other, cheek to cheek, mouth to shoulder and neck (much easier to do in this light gravity), breasts pressed against each other, arms around each other, legs tangled together with their thighs pressed against each other... you know where!

‘You bet I do, ‘ Tara replied silently, then giggled. Squeezing Tia closer, she stretched and writhed her body against her twin, bunching the muscles of her thigh against her twin’s slippery slit. The nipples on those big knockers were hard enough she could scratch herself with them – if she contorted herself around so that they...

‘Don’t even think about it!’ came the reply. ‘I’ve had my nips up your butt before. They didn’t smell very nice after... ‘

Tara giggled again, then pressed her lips against Tia’s neck to kiss her. When she pinched Tia’s neck with her teeth, Tia shrugged her shoulders tightly upward to push Tara’s face away. “Off! Fiend!” Tia growled, chuckling as she tried to push her twin away. Tara responded the way she always did – her thighs crushed together against Tia’s trapped leg and pressed upward. “Ooohh!”

“Like that?” Tara asked, her sleepy voice not as smooth as she thought it should be.

Tia didn’t reply. She didn’t need to, as the twins had been together for more than just this lifetime. Neither of them really remembered much about ‘before’, but they remembered enough to know they’d been together – sisters with the same names, even. How could that even be possible? They didn’t know. But they accepted it – after years of discussions and questions and cries to ‘Please tell us!’ to whatever deity had set all this in motion. They were here for a reason; they just didn’t know what it was.

“To bring me a bunch of Phoenix girls,” a feminine voice softly replied from somewhere in the compartment.

Both twins jumped, turning quickly around to see who was in the compartment with them – or tried to, anyway. The twins, sisters and lovers since forever, were having trouble disengaging their legs and lower body parts from each other. The stale scent of aroused pussy flooded their senses, embarrassing them as much as their apparent inability to disengage from each other.

Then Tia simply teleported out of their gravity net and reappeared on the far side of the compartment, still naked with her hair wildly surrounding her head. “Who’re you?” Her voice still sounded scratchy, but there was some anger in it, as well. Someone had interrupted their ritual wake-up tryst.

The dark intruder had long black hair which flowed in tantalizing waves when she turned her head to look at Tia. “Neat trick,” she smiled. “I’d forgotten you two; it was so long ago when I last saw you.”

“Well, I’ve never seen you,” Tara grumbled from the net, easily facing the intruder now that her twin had separated from her, “so...”

“Who are you?” Tia repeated, finishing her sister’s sentence.

“Aren’t you going to sound an alarm of some kind?” Elsa asked, smirking at the disheveled twins she’d loved so long ago.

“Don’t need to,” Tia began.

“Everybody already knows there’s an intruder on board,” Tara finished.

“Dragon’s just deciding what to do with you,” Tia scowled, trying to sound intimidating. She was bluffing, of course. She was so confident of her own abilities that she hadn’t even bothered to broadcast an alarm – not that it would do any good, as the intruder was already here.

“Dragon?” Elsa asked, then seeing the image of Tia’s lover, grinned and said, “Oh, you mean Wolfgang.” She shrugged. “Nice guy. We talked for a couple hours while we were waiting for you two horny sluts to wake up.”

“You’ve met him?” Tara asked, finally startled into a brighter wakefulness, her night of squirming lovemaking with Tia fading against this possible emergency.

“Met and bedded,” Elsa chuckled, then she added, “Not really.”

“Yeah, well,” Tia grumbled, somehow feeling at ease with this odd newcomer. “We’ve had a rough couple of days.”

“He told me,” Elsa agreed, smiling.

‘Who the fuck is this girl?’ Tia asked privately. ‘I almost love her already and she probably intends to murder both of us!’

‘How should I know?’ Tara growled back. ‘You were awake before I was... ‘

“Waking or sleeping,” Elsa interrupted, “If I wanted you dead, I’d just leave. In a few hours, everyone on board your little castle will be dead anyway.”

‘What do you mean, ‘you almost love her’?’ Tara silently demanded. ‘Did you guys do something before I woke up?’

‘You know we didn’t!’ Tia shot back, defensively. ‘She’s just ... I can feel her! She has... ‘

“Power!” Tara finished her twin’s sentence out loud. ‘Yeah, I feel it, too.’

“So,” Tia replied out loud, “What are we going to do?”

“You mean, besides die?” Elsa asked, her eyebrows raised in a question. “Get back on topic, kiddies, you’re all going to die today.”

“Really?” Tia asked, calling up her witch fire to softly cloak her naked body. Tara did the same.

Elsa smirked. “That won’t save you – not from Jupiter’s atmosphere.”

“How do you know about that?” Tara demanded. Going to Jupiter was supposed to be a secret – even from the other witches on board.

“Because,” Elsa began, “in about six hours, your amazing flying castle will crash into Jupiter. There will be no survivors.”

“We won’t hit Jupiter,” Tara protested. “I’ve worked out all the calculations. We will emerge right next to that little...”

“Tara!” Tia interrupted. “Don’t give away so much! Make her work for it – you know, a bit of information for a bit of information? We don’t know anything about her...”