A Hero at the End of the World by Erin Claiborne Page A

hesitating. Inside, the tower was ice cold. His flesh broke out into goose bumps, he could see his own breath, and he could hear tiny clicks coming from Sophie as her teeth clattered. There were no windows or other doors, and it was too dark for him to see what was above their heads. All he had was the sense that the chamber was vast.
    “You’re not scared, are you, hero?” Kaur asked smugly. He closed the door and the room went completely and horribly black. “Go on now, it won’t bite.”
    Though blinded, Oliver scowled in his general direction before taking a single step forward. The moment his foot touched the floor, a drop of light glowed inside the sphere, which began filling with a luminous silver liquid as if a tap had been turned on.
    “Show off,” Kaur muttered, the gray-white light slowly creeping up his face. He looked at Oliver oddly. “Most people pass right out after turning it on; it’s why we’re required to have at least two agents here at activation.”
    “I can’t help that I’m bursting with power,” Oliver replied loftily.
    “This is fantastic,” Sophie said. She turned to Kaur. “Does Agent Yates know that you’re letting us walk all over your crime scene?”
    “Nope,” replied Kaur. He smirked. “I thought you might owe me one. Now, watch this second spell. Abrams may have turned it on, but here’s the proper show.”
    He walked toward the sphere, which was now completely full. It looked solid and heavy, but it remained suspended in the air, radiating just enough light for them to see each other; everything else, if the room could have held anything more than the sphere and their shivering selves, was still hidden in darkness.
    “
Ágief mē thæt sihth Wodenes
,” chanted Kaur. His voice bounced off the walls.
    The glowing sphere hummed. Oliver’s stomach did an involuntary somersault.
    Kaur recited a serial number off of the file he was holding. Without warning, there came a sudden flash of white light; Oliver flinched back, covering his eyes with his hand. When he lowered it, the chamber—which he could now see was an enormous, circular room—was filled with the interior of a pub. The vision laid out before them looked real enough to touch, from the rickety wooden tables to the pint glasses to the patrons, but it was like being surrounded by ghosts: every person and object was drained of color to the point of being almost transparent except for a thin, shimmering outline that was the same silver as the CCH.
    Oliver spun around, looking at the frozen faces of yesterday’s witnesses.
    “Look at that,” Sophie said in a hushed voice. She was staring up at the ceiling.
    He followed her gaze and saw that the domed ceiling of the chamber was covered in a bas-relief of tendrils and knots. A three-headed dragon was carved around the widest part of the dome, with each head shooting up toward the cupola, separating the ceiling into three sides. When he turned his head, different parts of it seemed to glitter.
    “Over here,” said Kaur. The way he clutched at the totem around his neck told Oliver that pulling up the snapshot had used more magic than he would’ve liked. Even though he must have been exhausted, Kaur walked purposefully through the images as if they weren’t there. They didn’t seem affected, but watching him left Oliver with a funny feeling.
    He and Sophie followed Kaur into the far corner, where three chickens of various monstrous heights were disrupting the pub-goers’ evenings. Some people were suspended in the air, as they’d been jumping back at the precise moment the CCH had taken the snapshot, others were gazing at the chickens with expressions ranging from confusion to fear, and even more hadn’t even seemed to notice.
    “I was taking the names of everyone involved in the incident when Louise Gardener Hobbes’ came up,” Kaur explained, walking around a hovering pint of beer that had been on its way to the floor. The real pub’s staff had no doubt