The sun was almost touching the horizon when the supplicant arrived for her latest attempt. She climbed over the wrought-iron fence that separated the estate from the outside world, finding handholds and footholds with practiced ease before hopping over the spikes and down onto the ground. She could still remember the week she spent waiting outside the gates, spending night after night camped out expectantly before she realized that no one would come to let her in. If a supplicant wanted a place within the halls of obedience, they had to show determination as well as devotion.
The supplicant scurried across the grounds of the estate, the grass tickling her bare feet as she ran. The air felt cool against her naked flesh, but anticipation kept her body warm enough to ward off the evening chill. She had more important things on her mind than the weather-if she didn't make it to the front door before the sun set, she would need to wait an entire week for her next attempt. The supplicant had no intention of waiting, not when she was already all the way to the fifth chamber. She put on a burst of speed, outracing the turning of the earth to make it to the steps in time.
Nobody knew for certain how many chambers there were between the halls of obedience and the outside world; the supplicant knew from her research that there were at least six, but there might be many many more. After a certain point, the information that she found online simply dried up; either the supplicants who got past the fifth chamber stopped talking about what they found, or they made their way into the halls of obedience and nothing else mattered to them anymore. She hoped she would find out tonight. She raced up the steps and knelt in front of the doorway just as the lower edge of the sun brushed against the horizon.
She waited like that, eyes down, for what seemed like forever before the door finally opened. A tiny knot of tension unwound in her stomach as she rose to her feet and entered the first chamber-every time she arrived for the tests, a little part of the supplicant wondered if she would be allowed back in. She didn't know what she would do if they found some flaw in her devotion that sent her back to waiting on her knees, all night every night, until she proved herself worthy to attempt entrance once more.
No. She knew. She would wait on her knees. All night, every night. Until she proved herself worthy to attempt entrance once more. The supplicant had come too far now to go back to the life she left behind. Even the submission she experienced as a supplicant, training with a Master back in town who shepherded women through the trials and helped them discover their gift of surrender... it paled next to her dreams of the halls of obedience. Within these walls, she would be taught how to shed her free will forever. To become the purest instrument of compliance, dedicated to subservience and emptied of thought. The supplicant was already wet just thinking about it.
Or maybe it was the first chamber that did it. The supplicant stepped over to the pillow in the center of the room and knelt down on it before lighting the single candle that was the only source of illumination apart from the dying sunlight. The second her trembling fingers touched the match to the wick, the doors slid shut. The supplicant didn't look behind her to see who closed them. Instead, she stared at the flickering flame, centering her mind on it and allowing all other thoughts to recede into the distance.
She didn't know how long she watched the candle. Time lost all meaning in the silent darkness; it could have been a minute or an hour for all she knew. The supplicant felt like she fell into a meditative trance faster and faster with every attempt, her mind settling into a state of perfect contemplation as she watched the flame sway gently from side to side with every slow, lazy breath. Nothing existed for her now but the candle. Nothing existed now but endless, infinite patience. She could wait as long as she needed to for the first question.
When it came, the voice in the darkness didn't even startle her out of her calm, hypnotic state. "What is your name?" it asked. The supplicant could never identify the voice; it was carefully neutral, a soft murmur in the silence that held no emotion save expectation. She wondered sometimes if it was one of the teachers who spoke, or if someday she would apply this test to the next person who sought to become a perfect slave within the walls of the estate.
It didn't matter. Nothing mattered except answering correctly. The supplicant paused just long enough to make sure she had given the questioner a chance to speak-she had lost an entire week once through impatience, back near the beginning when she still believed that she had enough natural submission in her to pass the tests with ease-and said, "I am only a supplicant. Where I seek to go, I will need no name."
There were other answers that worked just as well-it was easy to find information about the first chamber online, from those who had given up on their quest and those who were still seeking entrance-but the supplicant loved the form of that one the most. It felt the truest to her; every time she said it, she could feel a little bit more of her identity slipping away. It had been so long now since she'd heard her name that she genuinely had difficulty remembering it on those rare occasions that she tried.
She loved that.
The candle flickered rapidly as the questioner walked past her, their red robes even darker in the dim light of the single flame that illuminated the room. They went over to the door on the opposite side of the wall from where she entered, opening it and stepping aside. "You may proceed," they said, their voice still devoid of emotion. They only had two answers. They always sounded the same whichever one they gave. The supplicant got back up and went into the second chamber.
