“That is so not cool.” Eva sighed.

Taeral gently pressed the lever he’d set his sights on, motioning for us all to be quiet as he listened to the mechanism within the wall. We heard the faint screech of the metal as the lever was twisted. A click followed, and we all froze, eyeing one another with sharp concern.

Minutes passed in heavy silence, until we realized that nothing had happened.

“Okay, this one doesn’t do anything,” Taeral concluded.

“Which is good,” Eira said. “It means not all of them are traps.”

“Great. Some might kill us, some do nothing, and only one is right. Just great.” Herakles scoffed.

Varga chuckled. “Hey man, I’ll take ‘some do nothing’ over ‘all do something horrible’ any day of the week.”

“You next,” Taeral said to him. “We said we’d take turns.”

Varga scowled. “No, Raphael suggested it. We didn’t agree on anything.”

“Seriously?” Eva chided him.

“Fine,” Varga shot back and took a moment to study the wall. “What are the odds that there are two neutral levers right next to each other?”

Silence settled over the room. I certainly didn’t have an answer. I was too busy holding back the panic that kept threatening to cloud my judgment. The last thing I wanted was to be a liability to anyone, but I had trouble shaking off this wretched sensation of utter uselessness that had come over me.

“Minimal, at best,” Lumi finally said.

“Yeah, that’s what I thought,” he replied and pressed another lever. This one went down with a disturbing clang that echoed through the chamber, but nothing else happened.

I didn’t even realize I’d gripped Herakles’s arm until he cleared his throat, demanding my attention. I’d been too busy sweating bullets and waiting for something terrible to happen. Giving him a faint smile, I pulled my hand back, but he caught and squeezed it gently. “It’s okay,” he whispered.

“Your turn,” Varga said, looking at me.

My knees were weak. “What?”

“Your turn,” he replied, raising an eyebrow. “Come on. Three down, hundreds more to go. Chop-chop.”

I wanted to object, but I worried it would push us all back. I’d just worried about not being a liability, yet my first instinct was to obstruct our mission by not doing my part. Taking deep breaths, I reached out to another lever with a shaky hand.

I could feel their eyes on me. My skin tingled, sweat dripping down my temples. Whatever happens, it happens for a reason, I thought. Maybe the purpose of all this was to test our characters and our wit, more than anything. After all, if I was nothing without my powers, I was nothing overall, and that certainly wasn’t what my parents had taught me over the years.

My fingers touched the cold metal, and I gripped the lever and pulled down on it. I heard the screech, followed by a delicate click. A second later, as I glanced back at the crew, I heard the hiss coming from above.

“Oh, no…” I managed and quickly fumbled through my front pocket for the healing potion vial that Lumi had already slipped in.

We all took a dose and waited, quietly. The hiss finally stopped. Breathing heavily, I waited for some kind of poisoning symptom to work against the potion—it would fail, of course, but there would still have to be some kind of discomfort.

“Even with the potion in us, shouldn’t we feel something?” Taeral asked, slightly confused.

“That’s what I thought,” I said.

We were all baffled. Even Lumi. “This is weird. I’ve taken potions before a poison, and there is always a reaction, albeit not as violent as first ingesting the poison, then the potion.”

Seconds passed in silence, until Varga burst into laughter. “Poison, then potion. You’re quite the poet, Lumi.”

“Accidental rhyme. It happens,” Lumi replied.

“Take the poison, then the potion. Take the potion, then the poison.” He giggled, unable to stop.

We threw each other confused looks, until Raphael chuckled. “Take the potion, then the poison. Take the poison, then the potion. Wait, no, it was the other way around…”

The two of them doubled over. Moments later, Eva was laughing, as well. Lumi stifled a smile, while Herakles joined Varga and Raphael in their display of… uncontrollable humor. Before I knew it, I was laughing, too.

Suddenly, the whole potion-poison bit became unstoppably hilarious. The greatest bumble we’d ever blurted. It was so funny that we were all on the floor, literally, laughing our hearts out. I couldn’t stop it, for some reason.

Part of me was terrified, yet my body just kept convulsing with laughter.

“Holy crap!” Taeral said, cracking up between hiccups. “It’s some kind of laughing gas. Guys… It’s laughing gas…”

“Oh, good, killing us with humor, then!” Raphael roared.

Lumi was on her back, laughing hysterically as tears streamed down her cheeks. “I’m not sure how it works, but I think it would’ve been… ugh, it would’ve been so… much worse without… without… without the—”

“POTION!” the others screamed in unison, practically falling apart. The greatest word ever.

“You know… You know what the worst part is?” Nethissis chuckled. I stared at her in genuine horror, though I could feel my lips stretched, my chest compressing as another wave of laughter threatened to dismantle me. “We have very little potion left… If we get hit once or twice more… we’ll manage, but after that… damn… Amelia, we’ll be screwed.”

We couldn’t take it anymore. We just couldn’t hold back. Our bodies had become our greatest enemies, and, despite the potions we’d taken, we simply couldn’t control ourselves. We laughed so hard, it became increasingly difficult to breathe.

My air supply was cut off. I tried… I desperately tried to stop, to calm down, to regain my senses. Nothing, absolutely nothing worked. I was helpless. My flesh no longer mine. I looked at Herakles with tears in my eyes, until my consciousness simmered away completely.

I blacked out—of all things, from too much laughter. If the Soul Crusher or the Hermessi wouldn’t kill us anytime soon, irony definitely would.

Varga

Upon waking up and realizing what had just happened, we were all pretty flushed, trapped in an awkward silence. None of us dared speak for a while as we took deep breaths, thankful that the gas had completely dissipated.

“Well, that was weird,” the Soul Crusher said, startling us.

“Maybe if we ignore him, he’ll go away,” Raphael whispered, loudly enough for the Reaper to hear him.

Herakles pinched the bridge of his nose. “I never thought I’d pass out from laughing.”

“The gas was effective. I’ll give credit where it’s due,” Eva said.

I got up, my abdominal muscles still sore from all the giggles. “We need to try again,” I said. “We don’t have time to recover like we’d probably like… or need.”

“You’re right,” Lumi replied and gave Amelia a sly smile. “Your turn, then.”

As expected and based on our experiences thus far, Amelia didn’t look happy.