Chapter 1141: The Wandering View
Killian Nox was admittedly hyperventilating, but the moment he realized he was standing inside his own cabin once again, he almost sagged in relief against the nightstand despite his aching back.
Good.
So it really had just been a dream.
That utterly deranged, panic-inducing dream was finally over.
Or so he thought.
Just as he was trying to calm his breathing, his vision clouded over once again without warning.
"What the—"
The familiar room disappeared as though swallowed by fog before another scene slowly emerged, leaving the young official staring at something he recognized all too well.
A neck.
"Son of a—!"
Safe to say, he had very nearly suffered a heart attack.
But enough with focusing on that small bit when there was an even more pressing situation demanding an appropriate response, one that he was, unfortunately, still in the process of coming up with.
"..."
Nothing.
He had absolutely nothing.
So, gathering every last shred of self-control he could muster, along with whatever remnants of decorum he still possessed, the thoroughly frazzled Killian attempted to rationalize the situation.
It went something like this.
Okay, a neck.
Not particularly alarming, because it was a neck he’d seen countless times before.
Then came a broad, bare chest still dotted with droplets of water as though its owner had only just stepped out of the shower.
Hmm...
That wasn’t exactly unusual either.
Anyone who trained alongside Jax, or any other man for that matter, himself included, had seen enough bare chests over the years—practically every day—that the sight should hardly have been worth a second glance.
Should be fine, right?
Well, unfortunately, whatever was controlling this viewpoint didn’t seem interested in stopping there.
Killian watched in mounting horror as it continued drifting downward.
Past the chest.
Past the unnecessarily defined abdomen.
Past the suspiciously lean yet chiseled torso.
And then toward that unmistakable V that led to somewhere absolutely no respectable subconscious should ever feel compelled to investigate.
The realization struck him like lightning.
"No, no, no..."
His balance gave out in the real world.
Still standing beside his bed with one hand braced against the nightstand, Killian stumbled sideways and promptly smacked the back of his head against the wall.
"Ow! Oh fuck me!"
He clutched the offended spot with one hand while squeezing his eyes shut, as though refusing to look would somehow spare him from whatever fresh insanity his sleeping mind had concocted... and which, much to his horror, his fully awake mind now seemed determined to continue.
Absolutely not.
He wasn’t thinking about any of this.
He’d swear on his life.
His heart was beating so violently against his ribs that it felt ready to escape, and just when he silently prayed not to be shown anything that would forever serve as evidence of his own derangement, a familiar voice suddenly cut through the panic.
Definitely not in his room, but still, it came in loud and clear.
"Oh, hey! Little bee, how’d you get in here?"
Killian froze.
Completely.
"You realize if your wings get wet, you’ll have a difficult time flying. Good thing I saw you there."
In the comforts of his suddenly unreliable room, the official remained perfectly still.
Little... bee?
But before he could even begin making sense of those words, an outstretched finger entered his vision, growing larger and larger until it occupied nearly everything he could see as Jax patiently waited for the tiny bee to climb aboard.
It was only then that Killian’s frantic mind finally managed to catch up.
Of course, whatever he had in mind didn’t make any scientific sense. But it made sense to explain why he, of all people, would be having such dreams.
Those hallucinations...
This moment right here...
The haziness that had repeatedly appeared whenever his vision shifted...
It had never been blurred.
Now that he’d calmed down enough to actually look, he could make out countless tiny and extremely faint hexagons overlaying everything before him, like an impossibly intricate lattice that sharpened and softened the world all at once.
This couldn’t possibly be his eyes.
"..."
His thoughts screeched to a halt.
And then another realization quietly settled in.
It was a given that Jax was a redhead.
But if he actually looked, truly looked instead of stubbornly refusing to see anything like some guilty sinner avoiding divine judgment, he’d realize that what stood before him wasn’t even red.
As if Killian’s own mind had apparently been correcting the colors into what it expected to see. Now that he was fully awake, those familiar fiery locks no longer appeared crimson at all. Instead, they shimmered in strange shades of purple, vivid in a way no human eye should’ve been capable of perceiving.
The young official could only stare.
Meanwhile, blissfully unaware that one "tiny bee" was currently undergoing a full existential crisis several meters away, Jax gently set his little visitor somewhere dry.
"Here, stay there," he said easily. "Just let me get some pants."
The words hadn’t even finished registering before Killian’s borrowed vision naturally followed the movement of the freshly showered being. Unfortunately, with the bee positioned at such an unfortunate height, his gaze unknowingly settled in full view of the towel wrapped around the redhead’s waist.
That was the final straw.
The Empire’s most stressed-out Chief of Staff practically bolted out of his own cabin in blind panic.
Holy flipping fuck.
__
To this day, Killian Nox would never be able to properly explain why someone as poised and ordinarily composed as he was had suddenly been seen sprinting across the settlement in nothing but his pajamas, barefoot, and channeling enough spiritual energy to make it look as though he were responding to a national emergency rather than... whatever the hell this actually was.
Unfortunately for the people unfortunate enough to witness the spectacle, there was no time to ask.
One moment, Steward Han was peacefully making his rounds.
Next, a violent gust nearly swept him clean off his feet as a familiar blur shot past him.
The older steward instinctively reached for the top of his shiny head before letting out the quietest sigh of relief imaginable. Thank goodness he had ignored the online suggestion to wear a wig and instead trusted his natural beauty.
Because honestly, what chance would any respectable wig stand against a windstorm like that one?
Absolutely none.
Meanwhile, the very same force of nature had already decided that doors were an unnecessary inconvenience.
The medical bay had perfectly functional windows.
Those would do.
The window, as if detecting the hazard that was him, parted open just long enough for one frantic Chief of Staff to practically hurl himself through it like a burglar whose only crime was having far too much spiritual energy and absolutely no common sense left.
"DON’T YOU TAKE THAT OFF!"
"Oof!"
Jax had heard someone approaching quite some time ago.
The strange thing was that he hadn’t sensed even the slightest bit of hostility or danger.
So instead of preparing to fight, he simply opened his arms on instinct and caught whatever projectile was currently flying toward him.
Only after successfully stopping the incoming missile did he blink and realize exactly who he’d caught.
"...Killian?"
Normally, he’d have greeted his most frequent visitor with a cheerful, "Yo! You’re here."
Instead, after hearing that very alarming first sentence, the redhead looked genuinely puzzled.
"Take what off?"
The momentum from Killian’s desperate charge carried both of them backward until they landed rather unceremoniously on the floor in front of the wardrobe. Jax barely seemed bothered by the collision, but the official was breathing as though he’d personally outrun death itself just to make it here in time.
"I..." Killian struggled to get enough air into his lungs. "Don’t... don’t take..."
Convinced he’d arrived just before disaster struck, the young official triumphantly raised a finger and pointed straight toward Jax’s torso, fully intending to indicate exactly what absolutely must not be removed under any circumstances.
Unfortunately, human eyes had an unfortunate tendency to follow the direction they were pointing.
Killian’s did exactly that.
His gaze traveled downward.
Right toward the towel.
The towel, which, thanks to the rather enthusiastic tackle they’d just performed together, quietly chose that exact moment to unravel.
Neither of them moved.
Jax looked down at himself.
Then back at Killian.
He honestly didn’t understand what the problem was. It wasn’t as though he particularly cared about being seen.
Killian, on the other hand, understood everything all at once.
His expression emptied.
His soul quietly left his body.
A single drop of blood escaped from his nose, followed by what had to be a torrent of his life force.
Then, without so much as a goodbye, the Empire’s youngest Chief of Staff tipped sideways and passed out cold right there on the floor.
The last thing he remembered before consciousness abandoned him entirely wasn’t the sight before his eyes.
It was the unmistakable sound of wedding bells.
Somewhere in the distance.
And, rather alarmingly, getting closer.
