The man smiles. “Perhaps. I do not want to give away secrets of the Brotherhood.”
He leads us through a courtyard to a white wall with a fountain in the center. When he pushes on one side of the wall, it rotates. “Here,” he says, “your journey begins, and I leave you. Best of luck.”
All of Quinta da Regaleira is beautiful, with verdant gardens and elaborate architecture. But when we get to the rotating door of stone that hides the entrance to the Initiation Well, it feels like I’m stepping into a completely different universe, the kind you only find in fantasy-adventure movies about fair folk and lost maidens trying to find their way back home to Michigan, or whatever.
The Initiation Well is less of a well and more of a tower turned upside down—an empty central column enclosed within a spiral staircase. Large arches face open air in the center. Vibrant green moss drapes solid lines of detailed trim along the stone, like piped frosting on a wedding cake.
It’s unreal, conjured into existence by someone with a better imagination than me. If I saw a picture of the Initiation Well online, I would be certain it was AI-generated.
I know we’re in a race, but I can’t resist the urge to pause halfway down the winding steps to take in the circle of sky and trees above us. Beams of sunlight pour into the well, warming the interior parts of the otherwise chilly staircase. Rainbow-painted water trickles from behind the moss, fracturing as it falls. The individual drops splash against the terra-cotta-tiled compass rose at the bottom.
I have seen red(ish) rocks. Paris is a city—and at the end of the day, a city is just a collection of buildings and people and occasionally rain. A bookstore is still a bookstore, no matter how big it is. Despite how beautiful theAdventureverse-specific versions of those things were, I haven’t felt compelled to stop until now. But the Initiation Well is a fairy tale. And I know, as certain as I’m standing here, I will never see anything like it again in my life.
At the bottom of the well, we cross through an archway and into the labyrinth. My first thought is that they really undersold the darkness.
I assume that when this area isn’t being co-opted byThe Adventureverse, there’s ample lighting—maybe those strip lights you find in caves that are on lists of “TOP TEN FAMILY-FRIENDLY CAVES YOUR KIDS WILL LOVE.” Right now, however, I can’t even see my hand in front of my face. Someone on the cast has to be claustrophobic. The producers wouldn’t have set this challenge if there wasn’t a contestant who was terrified of either the dark, crypts, or being buried alive. An applicant with all three fears would be anADVwriters’ room wet dream.
“What’s our strategy here?” Yumi asks. She’s close, her breath grazing my cheekbone as she whispers. I try to ignore how her proximity sends a flutter through my chest.
I think back to the show’s previous maze challenges. They’re not usually too complicated, which means Yumi and I have watched plenty of teams succeed just by keeping one hand on the wall and letting it lead them out. Whether that technique works with every maze, I don’t know. But it seems like a reasonable place to start.
I suggest as much to Yumi and we begin shuffling carefully down the tunnel, each of us clinging to a damp stone wall so that we don’t miss any turns. As we inch along, I imagine how I’ll cringe watching this back, our caution made comical by the classic green-and-black grainy night vision. Yumi and I flinching away from absolutely nothing, wide eyes turned demonic-possession white by the filter.
Water drips somewhere in the distance, the echoes making it impossible to pinpoint the source. The darkness swallows us, and time, so I don’t know how long passes before we hear the humming. The sound would be creepy, if it weren’t an off-key rendition of a hyperpop hit that played exclusively on car commercials and in grocery stores all of last year.
“Great, now I’m going to have that stuck in my head all day. Thanks,” Yumi jokes, announcing our presence to whoever has just arrived.
“Yumi? Noelle?” Morgan’s words tumble out with an excitement that makes me smile. “Where are—oh! Which one are you?”
“Yumi,” Yumi replies, clearly unperturbed by their collision. “Hiya.”
“It’s nice to see you guys—Well, notsee, but bump into…get it?” She reallyissunshiny.
“Ha ha,” Yumi attempts to deadpan, but I hear the smile in her voice.
I ask into the void, “Weren’t you guys ahead of us?”
“We were,” Morgan says. “But we took theActuallychallenge first and had to switch.” She makes a shuddering sound.
“Oh? What was it?”
“Bugs,” Matt says simply.
“Like, a full pit of bugs. An unconscionable number of bugs. We couldn’t do it.”
I wince, just a reflex since nobody can see me. “I guess that explains the praying mantis guy.”
“Oh yeah,” Morgan says. “Montiero is the reason for the bugs. That dude basically built this place to study them, that’s why there are so many gardens. He was an entomologist.”
“I hate to interrupt,” Matt interrupts anyway, “but the clock’s ticking, Morg.”
“Whoops!” A shuffling sound echoes off the walls. “Do you guys wanna walk with us?” she asks. I bet Matt is shooting her death glares right now.
Yumi answers, “Do you know the right way through? We don’t want to get lost.”
“We can’t,” Matt says gruffly, his voice moving farther down the corridor. Apparently, he doesn’t care whether we want to walk with him or not. “Unless they were wrong when they called it a labyrinth, you can’t get lost. A labyrinth only has one path.”
“What do you mean?” I ask, reaching out for Yumi’s hand. Our wrists bang into each other midair and she laughs, intertwining our fingers more deliberately this time. We take off together, following Matt’s voice.
