<span style="font-family: 'Arial'"><span class="fixed-color" style="color:#666600">The cool night breeze filtered in through the silken entrapment that kept the bugs from the bungalow from the stone encased window that looked out into the sea of sand to the east. Its twin, planted directly opposite of it, opened to the west to much the same: endless hills of darkness against a canvas of midnight covered in stars. Out here, the entirety of the world was still, unburdened by the man made lights that poisoned its natural beauty. Far away, oil lamps no doubt still glowed to highlight the filthy streets of the city to guide drunken beggars home, too far away from here to be seen anywhere but in one’s imagination. The House of the Obsidian Sun stood alone, isolated from it all, though anyone who assumed that the vast complex was truly cut off from the rest of the world did not know what it stood for.<br/>
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Out beyond the inner courtyard below the eastern facing window a massive bonfire still raged, its roar swallowed up by the sounds of men shouting. Even though the sun had long ago disappeared behind the stark beauty of the sand dunes in the distance, they still danced around the infernal heat, bare chested and glistening with sweat. Unheard from the distance, cold steel clashed with the heat of the flame that flickered off the weapons that clashed against one another as the bodies that flowed with their blades' dance twisted and turned, much like the fire itself. They had been at it for hours, tirelessly, like immortal things that did not tire and had an endless amount of stamina. Or at least that was the way it had seemed until the sun had finished its descent and those who remained out there and it had become less about practicing their finesse and more about the ritual of it.<br/>
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The boy, because that was what He was calling the tinkerer from Ilimos, had not been allowed outside of the inner courtyard during his stay those past two weeks. Despite the fact that the House had been nothing but accommodating to its Master's favorite, this one had not yet yielded to his new home, his new life. Though the world had not proven to be kind to him and his ilk, caught in the cross fire of a war that they, no doubt, had been forced into in the first place. Viktor Tallos had given the villagers a choice in the face of unfavorable odds. Join the House and server or be sold as the spoils of war into even more foreign territory than even the vast desert those who had chosen the former now found themselves. Some had been dispersed to other Houses; the more compliant of the ones who had submitted after the fighting had been culled and the bloodshed had stopped. The opposing had faction had raised a bloodied white flag in mercy and there were those who had come willingly to the other side. And while their talents might not have been more than cooking, manual labor, or servants for the wealthy, they were skills nonetheless, and it was these humble skills that were sent out to serve the other eleven Houses throughout the world.<br/>
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And then there were those like the boy whose talents were more raw, just like their pride and their spirits. Those Viktor took back home with him, but with a more observant eye focused on the tinkerer, Mischa, as Viktor had coerced from him. However, the tyrant had not touched him during the long journey across the ocean and then more – across a quarter of a continent and deep into the wastes. Nor did he allow anyone else to touch him, instead claiming him as one of his own. And yet he did not hesitate to swipe the feet out from under the tinkerer's feet when the boy had tried to strike the warlord when, no doubt, he thought that he was catching Viktor unaware. You did not get as far as he had by being caught off guard. He had pinned the boy, taken the device he had tried to use, and whispered in a voice sharper than the steel that he had pressed against the other’s throat with a deadly promise.<br/>
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“My patience and generosity are only so unerring, boy, and last only so long as yours. If you try again, your eyes will not open for another morning,” he finished with a quick flick of his wrist that dragged the dagger he had presented back and away, slicing cleanly through skin to nick the tissue and draw a faint line of blood. A shallow cut, a mark and a reminder, and then the warlord had not so much as glance at the tinkerer for the remaining duration of the remaining trip.<br/>
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A month had passed since then. Those that had been taken back to the Obsidian Sun in the sprawl of Aiemlan’s desert were given free reign over the complex, with the exception of a few locked chambers. They were doled out assignments ranging from simple chores to other mundane tasks such as scribe work to test their use in some areas. Others were assigned to train as warriors while others were looked at by House Heads for more specialized tasks. Then there were those that resisted. Like the tinkerer. And not even a flogging, given both publicly - to set an example - and privately, which were harsher, by a whip thin man in scarlet robes as a form of discipline persuaded Mischa to do more than peel a potato for a nightly meal. It was why tonight was different, and why the priest, known as Meister Regan, had come to Viktor Tallos himself over any of the House Heads. If the boy had no skill to be had, then the Master of the House himself had to be told.<br/>
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The singe of fire still clung to him like an afterglow, smelling faintly of burning wood and spice. The sweat from the day’s exertion had been washed away, and recently, as prominent by the droplets that clung like a sheen in the crown of hair as dark as the volcanic stone that the House was named for and gleamed damp across sun burnished skin that had been derived under the desert heat. His presence was a lurking shadow when it slipped into the bungalow that Mischa had been given, outlined only by the glow of moon with its array of stars shining around it. His eyes glittered black in the dark as they paused over the form covered by a sheet in the middle of the bed. The boy looked to be asleep, but Viktor could hear the quickening beat of his heart from where he stood, statuesque for a long moment, in the doorway. Silent as the dark itself, he prowled like one of the cats that stalked the mountains in the west until his knee hit the edge of the bed, carrying the rest of his body like living ink on top of the thin blanket that dressed it. His weight sunk the down, and yet still the man did not falter, make a sound, or display anything but grace when he propelled himself forward until he was a looming presence above the boy.<br/>
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“Look at me,” came the voice that penetrated the air, curving around the syllables with its faint trace of an accent, the only sign that the common spoken tongue was not the first or only language that he spoke. He used his body as well as his voice and reached down to slide his palm, rough and calloused from holding a weapon for the long years that he had wielded one, along the side of Mischa’s neck, his fingers strong and curling as they latched around the younger man’s lower jaw to drag his face up and back to meet his stare. Pretending to sleep or simply ignoring him, Viktor was going to make the boy meet his eyes whether he wanted to or not. “I think that it is time that we spoke, you and I, yes?”<br/>
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Viktor should have looked vulnerable stripped down as he was, so that only a pair of pale linen breeches clung to the taper of his hips with a pair of sandals on his feet. At the very least, he should have looked more at ease in his comfort where he usually wore supple leather marked with metal, a warrior’s wardrobe, rather than what he was now garbed inside the solace of his own walls. But even now he commanded presence and embraced power with the ease of someone born with it; different from the men and women who grasped for straws in their search for true power. It had little to do with the carved marble of his physique, chiseled and smoothed down to a polished finesse, and yet still moved like molten fire, supple and quick. Physically, he was not as large as some of the men that he commanded, and yet deafened them by a simple word alone.<br/>
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His eyes were calculating as they swept the features of the boy, his expression hooded and unyielding. He let the silence linger between them in between heartbeats without loosening the grip that he had on his jaw. Viktor’s own pulse thundered hard in his veins, belying the stillness that otherwise encompassed him. Directing his attention down to the boy’s mouth, he spoke again whilst the pad of his thumb trailed along his plush lower lip. “Do you enjoy the pain?” The question was tossed casually, followed by the dart of his eyes to meet the larger brown ones of Mischa’s. “Or is your pride so much that you will endure it?”<br/>
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There was a shadow of amusement that flickered across the stone walled expression on Viktor’s face, soon gone, replaced in a blink with that former look of intensity. “You made your choice to serve the House rather than be broken as a slave to another Master, perhaps a cruel one. It was a gamble that you all made when the battle was lost and you became mine. Here, you have an opportunity to become a better self, to learn, to acquire talents and skills and put them to use. You will be well taken care of, respected. As a slave, you have no such choice. Yet you have expressed no interest in acquiescing to anything that the House has to offer… Mischa.” Viktor dipped his head down low, his thumb striking harder across the full bottom lip, dragging it down so that the boy’s mouth was forced to part. His grip once more tightened around his neck. Viktor’s forehead came to rest firmly against Mischa’s. “Unless you would prefer to service your flesh instead of your talents. It can be arranged that you share the beds of those who seek the pleasures of the flesh. You are pretty, almost like a woman. A full mouth, big eyes…” He jerked his head back deliberately. In the same motion, his hand slid around his neck to grip his nape, his fingers curling in the brown curls there to jerk him up hard.<br/>
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“So tell me, boy, how you are going to be of use to the House.”<br/>
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