CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Everything was gray.
Aramis looked out over a desolate landscape. Dry grass and dead trees covered the terrain. He wondered briefly where he was, and when he tried to remember how he got there, his mind went blank. He was standing on a hilltop, looking down into a small valley. And everything was shaded in a gray hue. Even the shafts of sunlight that filtered through the clouds seemed to be devoid of any real light.
From his vantage point, he saw that a stream ran through the valley to the far right. He was thirsty, and so he made his way down the hill and toward the water. He noticed a slight breeze was blowing because brittle leaves tumbled across the ground and flitted about in the air. Oddly he couldn’t feel the wind at all.
As he neared the stream, he noticed that
