Affection Unisex Sweatshirt

Arthur’s footsteps echoed through the endless corridors of Orin’Dral, each sound swallowed by the otherworldly atmosphere that seemed to press against his eardrums. The obsidian walls stretched infinitely in both directions, their surfaces polished to mirror-like perfection, reflecting his solitary figure in countless fragments. Orange-hued mosaics spiraled in helical patterns along the walls, their geometric dance both hypnotic and unsettling.

He had been wandering these impossible halls for what felt like hours. Time moved strangely here, measured only by the rhythm of his breathing and the soft scrape of his boots against the volcanic glass floor. Sometimes the corridors would shift to polished white stone, the helix patterns continuing their eternal spiral, but always the architecture defied understanding, defied the laws of any world he knew.

Then, quite suddenly, the narrow passage opened into a vast chamber.

Arthur paused at the threshold, his breath catching. Grand archways soared overhead, their curves so perfectly proportioned they seemed to sing in silent harmony. The walls here were pure obsidian, darker than the corridors behind him and less reflective, and set into them were windows - or what appeared to be windows - shaped like frozen helixes. He approached one cautiously, pressing his face to the surface, but beyond lay only impenetrable darkness, as if the universe itself ended just beyond the glass.

But it was the far wall that drew his attention like a magnet.

A series of glyphs had been carved into the obsidian with exquisite precision, each one spaced evenly across the surface in an artistic pattern that made his chest tighten with inexplicable recognition. They varied in subtle ways - some curved where others were angular, some possessed additional flourishes or simplified lines - but all shared an underlying elegance that spoke of profound meaning.

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Arthur was something of an artist, and joined the seekers after a chance encounter with Dravendir. He was deft and artful with a brush, so was valued for many such excursions into ancient & strange places, able to record elegant script with ease.

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The glyphs on the wall seemed to pulse with their own inner light, though perhaps that was merely the orange mosaics reflecting in their depths.

One glyph called to him more than the others. Without conscious thought, he raised his hand and placed his palm against the cool obsidian surface.

Warmth flooded through him.

Not the physical warmth of heated stone, but something deeper - an emotion so pure and encompassing that tears sprang to his eyes. It was the feeling of coming home after a long, difficult journey. It was the sensation of a loved one’s hand in his during a moment of pain. It was the comfort of a familiar embrace when the world felt too large and hostile to bear.

The emotion washed over him in waves, each one more profound than the last, until he felt he might dissolve entirely into that golden feeling of unconditional love and acceptance.

When it finally receded, Arthur found himself breathless, his hand still pressed against the glyph. He stepped back on unsteady legs and fumbled for his sketching materials with trembling fingers.

The drawing came easily, as if his hand remembered the shape better than his mind could process it. As the lines took form on the paper, he began to see what had called to him so powerfully. The glyph depicted two forms - simplified, abstract, but unmistakably representing beings reaching toward one another. Their forms seemed to merge at the point of contact, creating a symbol of connection that transcended mere illustration.

Arthur stared at his sketch, then back at the wall of glyphs, understanding flooding through him with the same warmth he had felt moments before. Each glyph told a story, carried a meaning that his rational mind couldn’t quite grasp but his heart recognized completely.

He wrote beneath his drawing in careful script: Affection.

The word felt inadequate, too small to contain the vast emotion he had experienced, but it was a beginning. Around him, the impossible architecture of Orin’Dral seemed to hum with approval, the orange helixes pulsing gently in the eternal twilight of this strange realm.

As he pondered the glyph, he swore he could hear something, in his mind or echoing through the chamber... it sounded like words, though faint -

Sairenath-ra thalun-in aethernath dorvaleth


Arthur smiled to himself "Another mystery to unravel" he said.