The blows of dozens of hammers landed on his naked body and Lattimore writhed in pain, but his tormentors did not let go and brought the hammers down on him again and again.
Red and warm blood ran down his body and he saw the eagerness and pleasure in the faces of his punishers, the ones who claimed to be angels. He smiled triumphantly, as it turned out that his way of thinking about them was right, but the tormentors did not like his reaction, and the passion disappeared from their faces, and anger took its place, and they beat the hammers on him harder.
Little by little the dazzling light around Lattimore dimmed and he felt that he was finally coming to peace. The punishers had told him that his guilty soul would go to the void after his death and stay there forever, but Lattimore was not too upset about this and the fact that his body would be thrown into the sea was enough for him.
He could hope that the sharks wouldn't eat his body and that his love, Percivall, would swim to the bottom of the sea and pick him up and take him to the beach and lay him down on the sand and start calling his name and when Lattimore doesn't answer, he would hug him and cry.
These thoughts brought tears to Lattimore's eyes and down his cheeks. If only he had listened to Percivall's pleas in the past, he thought to himself, and he had been an elf attentive to the orders.
At that time, he thought that his life as a slave was like hell, and if he was killed on the way to his goal, he would not be sorry. But now he understood that he was wrong then. The thought of Percivall's suffering over his death was tearing his heart to pieces.
The tormentors hammered and hammered until life passed out of Lattimore's body, and his beautiful body, reduced to a shapeless mass of bones and flesh, was removed and thrown into the sea.
When Percivall came to the prison to see his love, they led him to a bloody bed and then pointed to the sea. While his face got pale and his eyes widened, Percivall quickly went to the rocks and jumped into the water and reached the bottom of the sea and took the mass of flesh and bones from there and took it home with him and put it on his bed.
As he tried to take deep breaths and stop his eyes from filling with tears, he took out some dried herbs from one of his drawers and began to powder and mix them.
"You were no ordinary elf, Lattimore, were you? I will bring you back to life by making this potion and performing an ancient spell."
He took the ladle and stirred the potion for a while and then checked its concentration and poured it on the mass of flesh and bones and whispered some words in the ancient language. The potion was diluted, but there was no change in the mass of flesh and bones.
Percivall stood over Lattimore's remains for a long time and uttered the spell, not thinking that his work might be fruitless. Because he knew that accepting his defeat was equal to pure madness for him.
Days and nights passed and when the rest of the elves saw that there was no news of Percivall, entered his house and saw him standing on top of a pile of bones and flesh with a face similar to a corpse and repeating unintelligible words.
They talked to him and tried to make him understand that Lattimore was dead and would not be revived by his actions, but Percivall paid no attention to their words and only asked them to leave the place and not to disturb his work.
Now centuries have passed since that incident and no one knows what happened to Percivall, but people say when they pass by his abandoned house, they can hear ancient whispers.
