“I understood then. Understood it all. Somehow … even before reading the journals. Understood he’d been hanging there … oh, dear God … seven years. Living. Dying. The cruciform … forcing him to live again. Electricity … surging through him every second of those … those seven years. Flames. Hunger. Pain. Death. But somehow the goddamned … cruciform … leeching substance from the tree maybe, the air, what was left … rebuilding what it could … forcing it to live, to feel the pain, over and over and over.… “But he won. Pain was his ally. Oh, Jesus, not a few hours on the tree and then the spear and
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