Chapter 24 Initiation Rites
Initiation Rites
When we arrive at the gate of Quinta da Regaleira, we’re greeted by a group of several men dressed exactly the same.
They wear pantaloons, their collars popped, thick bushy white beards chopped off just above their little white bow ties, wiry hair parted sharply down the center.
I approach one who cradles a praying mantis in his hand.
“Are you António Augusto Carvalho Monteiro?” I ask him.
He uses one finger to pet his praying mantis gingerly. “I am.”
“Do you have a clue for us?”
“I believe I do,” he says, producing a clue envelope.
Yumi tears it open. “Team Challenge: WELL or ACTUALLY?” she asks.
I snort. Sometimes the challenge clue titles are just completely useless. “I don’t know. Do you want to do WELL? We can always switch if it’s something impossible.”
“Sure.” She shrugs.
WELL: Quinta de Regaleira is a sprawling estate, built by the eccentric businessman António Augusto Carvalho Monteiro.
The grounds contain many hidden mysteries, but the greatest of these is the Initiation Well.
This strange structure descends eighty-eight feet into an underground labyrinth.
Many speculate Monteiro was linked to the enigmatic Knights Templar, and his Initiation Well was used for ritualistic purposes.
Today, teams must make their way through the underground cave system in total darkness. The last team to meet your Master of Ceremonies in the Quinta da Regaleira chapel may be eliminated.
I breathe a sigh of conflicted relief. Darkness doesn’t bother me or Yumi, but every moment The Adventureverse doesn’t give us a heights challenge brings us a moment closer to them giving us one.
It’s like the moon pulling the tides, the sun coming up in the morning, me panicking—inevitable. But for now, we’re fine.
In unison, we look up at the man and his mantis. “Would you like to begin the initiation?”
“Yes, please,” Yumi says cheerily.
“Then, come this way and allow me to explain the ritual.” He gestures for us to follow him through a stone arch and down a flower-lined path.
“All brethren of the Knights Templar must brave the Initiation Well and the labyrinth below. Any light source is strictly forbidden. If, by God’s grace, you escape, you will find yourself in a garden oasis with a river.
Cross the river stones and head to the chapel, where a saint will be waiting to initiate you. ”
Garden oasis. River stones. Chapel. Got it.
Yumi cocks her head. “Is this saint Saint-Pierre-comma-Jonathan, by any chance?”
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 the Adventureverse-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 by The 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 an ADV writers’ 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, not see, but bump into…get it?” She really is sunshiny.
“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 the Actually challenge 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.
“Mazes have options and dead ends. Labyrinths don’t. That’s why monks use them for meditation,” he says, like the practices of monks are common knowledge. “It’s about the journey internally, not externally. If this is truly a labyrinth, then it’ll just spit us back out eventually.”
“So we just…keep going straight?” I ask.
“That’s what the monks do.”
“Well, if it’s good enough for the monks,” Yumi remarks, overseriously.
“So, technically, since it’s a single path, we’d be walking together anyway,” Morgan says cheerfully.
“I guess,” Matt concedes. And, honestly, I’m with him on the grumpiness this time.
If anything, I don’t think he’s being grumpy enough.
Yumi and I have always agreed that helping other players on any competition show is the worst possible choice.
It functions better as catnip for viewers than as a useful in-game move.
That being said, I’m more than happy to be on the receiving end of unwise generosity.
“You know a surprising amount about labyrinths,” I say, partly to keep conversation going and partly for navigation purposes.
“I did a report on them in eighth grade. Got very into it. My teacher was concerned.”
Is he voluntarily chatting with us? I wish I could shoot a surprised look at Yumi, but then her grip on my hand tightens and I know I don’t need to. I feel a rush of affection for the person who still knows me better than I know myself.
“What was so concerning about your labyrinth report?”
“I may have gotten a bit fixated on the Minotaur part. Made a very detailed papier-maché bull head. Brought in raw meat as a prop.”
Yumi makes a noise of disgust. “Oh God. She was right to be concerned.”
Morgan’s laugh shimmers in the air. “My love, I hate that so much.”
My love feels too intimate to witness. Like we are seeing Matt stripped bare to the person beyond what he looks like and how he acts.
A person who is loved. I imagine a person watching me and Yumi.
I wonder if they would see a distinct lack of Morgan and Matt’s connection, a relationship that’s forgotten what its own face looks like.
“I knew you would hate it,” Matt says. “That’s why I didn’t tell you about it before. The Adventureverse tricked me into it—”
“They’re inside my head!” He and Morgan intone together before they burst out laughing. I feel them exchange a look. I know it in my bones. And I find myself staring in Yumi’s direction, wistfulness settling on my shoulders like a yoke.
I am so tired of being lonely.
The realization resonates through my entire body. I want someone to know me, even in the dark.