I have updated this story on 8/16/15 to add in this prologue. Chapter 13 is hopefully to follow soon afterward. Please read and review!

13 years ago…

Yarozj Varakutag approached the farmhouse. His mission, he had been told, was a simple one. When the appropriate signal was given, he was to enter the house and kill his target. All in all, a rather normal assignment, especially considering some of the other things Yarozj has done in his past. At least, that was how it appeared on the surface. For Yarozj Varakutag was an assassin, a hired killer, and had been for many years.

However, he had not always been an assassin, in fact, he had not always been called Yarozj. Although he know bore a Southern name, he was in fact born in Minas Tirith, the capital of the most glorious empire in the world: Gondor. He was born in 3002 T.A., just less than 16 years before the War of the Ring would begin. Yarozj's original name had been long lost to the mists of time; even Yarozj could scarcely remember it.

Yarozj's parents had been wealthy and well-connected before his birth, as they were some of the most full-blooded Númenóreansleft in Gondor. However, the next few years were very difficult ones for the people of Gondor, as the Dark Lord finally completed his return. They lost most of what they had, and it took all they had in order to give Yarozj a moderately comfortable living.

In his youth, Yarozj was a kind, compassionate boy, always keen to stop the suffering of others. As he grew older, he became more and more respected by his community. However, all that was about to change. When Yarozj was 15, he and his father enlisted in the Army of Gondor to help fight. Both of them were present at the battle of Pelenor as combatants. However, only one of them left the battle alive. Both men had been stationed near the gates of Minas Tirith when King Théoden had made his entrance into the battle. Yarozj could still remember the horrifying screams of the Witch King when he died. His father died fighting some Haradrim shortly afterward. Yarozj only narrowly escaped with his life.

After the War of the Ring concluded, Yarozj was one of many veterans awarded for his bravery during the War. However, Yarozj had changed in that one battle. He was no longer the caring man he had once been; now his focus was ever only on death.

Yarozj's situation was not helped by other factors at home. He had trouble finding a job, for his mind kept drifting back to the war. No job could content him for very long and he soon left most of the ones that he found. To make things worse, his mother fell sick and was unable to work, leaving the family soon short of money and forced to sell most of what they owned.

Stricken by grief, Yarozj's mother soon grew sicker and sicker, eventually passing away in 2 F.A. This was the final straw for Yarozj. The night after his mother's funeral, he crept away from Minas Tirith, heading south to Harad. He soon put up his services as a killer-for-hire. This was an occupation most needed in Harad, where bitter battles for succession combined with the takeover by Gondor had turned the landscape into a battlefield. He renamed himself Yarozj Varakutag (meaning Deadly Lord in one local language) and became a prominent assassin.

Yarozj had taken on many jobs in his life, and had completed each one successfully. That's not to say that there had never been any problems, because mistakes were always made in his line of work. However, Yarozj became famous for his ability to recover from mistakes that would leave any other assassin dead. Indeed, Yarozj became quite successful, making plenty of money from the turmoil of the civil war.

Unfortunately, as Gondor's presence became stronger, they began cracking down on security, making the life of an assassin very difficult. By the time of 24 F.A., Yarozj was one of the few men still left in the business, and demand was shrinking by the minute. Ironically, it was the assassinations that had ruined business the most. Most of Yarozj's targets were also the men most likely to employ assassins. Eventually, all the war-minded men had been weeded out, replaced by cowardly men who sought peace.

Yarozj had been considering moving on to other locales where death was still in demand when he received a strange letter. The strangest thing about the letter was how it had found him. You did not get to be an assassin by advertising your location to every which person. Yet, somehow his contractors had found him, or deduced where he was going to be, and had this letter delivered to him. The letter in and of itself was also rather strange.

Yarozj Varakutag,

We are writing to you to hire you to kill a man. If you accept this job, then meet us at Linhir in three weeks time.

This man must be killed because he is a danger to us. He has threatened us and been cruel to us, forcing us to do many things against our will. For that, we have decided that he must be removed.

It is not as though we could not dispose of him ourselves. However, it is best that this action not be tied back to us, and for that reason we have chosen you to be our killer. Do not fail us, or you will discover what it is like to be a target.

We have gone to great lengths to find and contact you. Should you refuse our job, we will have to find someone else and that will take a great deal of time. Should you refuse, we will be most unhappy.

Otetubiyt

The letter still gave Yarozj the creeps just thinking about it. There was something so detached and alien in the writing, something that unnerved even a hardened killer like Yarozj. And then there was that strange sign-off at the end, in a language that Yarozj didn't even recognize. Not to mention how they had threatened him in the same letter they were contracting him.

However, Yarozj couldn't resist a job offer, especially when they were so hard to find in Harad these days. He made to trek to Linhir, a city on the banks of the Anduin in two weeks, leaving himself a week to prepare before he met his contractors.

On the day that he was expected to meet with them, Yarozj woke up to find a note slipped under his door.

Meet us at the Shaky Warlord, a tavern in the middle of the town. There will be three of us, sitting at a table in the corner.

Yarozj felt a chill run down his spine. How did they know I was here? He asked himself. He steeled himself, resolving to be ready for the conversation that was about to take place. He couldn't let his contractors unnerve him, or else they would be leading the discussion the whole way, something that would not end well for his pockets. He headed down to the tavern and quickly spotted three figures sitting by themselves. He sat down at the table, seated across from them.

All three of them wore hoods, cleverly concealing their true identities. There were a few minutes of silence as both parties waited for the other to begin talking. Finally, the hooded figure on the left spoke.

"Do you know why you are here, Yarozj Varakutag?" From the pitch of his voice, Yarozj surmised he was male. Most of his contractors were, but you never knew.

"I was told that you had a job for me," he said.

The man nodded. Then the figure in the center spoke. "That's right. We decided that we would discuss your fee prior to details of the operation. How does that sound?" This one, Yarozj decided was a woman.

"I don't like the sound of that so much. Seems like an easy way to trap me into a low payment for a difficult job. I don't really have the luxury to waste time like that," he replied smoothly.

This time, the figure on the right spoke. This one was also a man, but he sounded a little younger than the first man. "What if we told you that our price was 100,000 golden coins?"

Yarozj couldn't prevent his eyes from widening. "How could you possibly have that much money on you?"

The second man held up a piece of paper. "This is a voucher for that money. If you go to any of the national banks-"

"-set up throughout all of the Reunited Realms," interrupted the woman.

"Yes, that's correct," the man responded. Yarozj thought he detected a hint of annoyance in his voice. "If you go to any bank, you can use this voucher and collect your money. We will only authorize the voucher if the job is completed."

Yarozj leaned back in his seat. 100,000 was a lot of money. If he spent it carefully, there would never be any reason for him to seek work again. He could even try to find a way to make an easier living. His set of talents did allow for other better paying, if less exciting jobs. Suddenly, a thought crossed his mind. He narrowed his eyes. "How do I know you won't cheat me and not validate the voucher?"

The first man spoke again. "We thought you might ask that question." The man put a large bag onto the table. "There are many gems in here, each worth many times their own weight in gold. I estimate their value at about 20,000."

Yarozj looked inside the bag. His many years as an assassin had taught how to easily assess the value of many valuable, as well as to determine whether or not said valuables were real. His brief examination revealed nothing false about the gems.

"All right, I accept."

"Good." If Yarozj had been able to see the first man, he was sure that the man would be smiling now. "Our job is simple." The woman pulled out a very detailed map of Lebennin. She pointed to a location on the map.

"Memorize this map well, because you are going to need to know where this location is. At this location, there is a farmhouse. Your target lives there. Two weeks from now, you will hide out in the forest on the northern side of the farm as twilight. If the job is still on, a lantern will be lit outside of the house. If there is no lantern, the job is off. Return here and we will give you half of what we promised you for your troubles.

"As the night goes on, you will hear shouting. This will be your signal. When the shouting begins, enter the farmhouse. Inside, there will be several people. Your job is to kill the oldest of them. He will most likely be holding or using a knife. After you kill him, say these words." She handed him a scrap of paper. "After that, leave."

Yarozj nodded and stood up, clutching his bag in one hand. "I understand." He quickly walked out of the tavern, picked up his belongings from where he had been staying, and then left the town.

And now, Yarozj was waiting outside the farmhouse. As expected, a lantern had been lit outside of the door. Inside of the house, it was silent. In fact, there were almost no sounds at all. Yarozj was once more unnerved by this strange effect. It was very bizarre that even the animals were silent. However, when he heard shouting erupt from within the house, his momentary unease was forgotten.

He approached the farmhouse under the cover of the night, confident that no one had seen him. He was an assassin of the highest caliber, and he knew how to creep across the landscape. On one of his more exciting missions, he had been forced to cross an open field in the middle of the day. He had managed to do so entirely undetected, the only man of 50 "trained" assassins to do so.

Yarozj reached the door and opened it. Or, at the very least, attempted to open it and then promptly discovered it was locked. The assassin grit his teeth. This was a complication he had not been expecting.

At first Yarozj moved to pick the lock, but then he realized that the door had been barred from the inside. He sighed. He had not wanted to make a grand entrance, but apparently that was what was required of him. He drew his foot back, preparing to kick it in. An instant before he made contact with the door, a scream erupted from within the house. He quickly finished beating down the door and rushed inside.

Within the house, as he had been told, where several people. What surprised Yarozj was the apparent youth of some of these people. One of them looked like she was scarcely 18. All seven of them had been staring at something else, but when he entered they turned to face him and he was able to get a good look at what had held their attention.

At their table, a woman sat with a large knife wound across her throat. She was obviously dead. Sure enough, as he had been promised, there was a man holding a knife with blood on it. Suddenly, Yarozj grasped a fact that he hadn't realized until now: this was a family. A man had just killed his wife, and now Yarozj was about to kill him in front of his children. This was a little much even for the immoral Yarozj. However, the lure of money was still too strong. He lunged forward and slew the father instantly, screaming the words that had been written on the paper given to him.

"As you have dealt death unto others, now death has been dealt unto you!"

He then ran out of the house, never to accept a job as an assassin again.