Deep within one of the ancient Royal mines, far beneath halls long abandoned by sane dwarven miners, two dwarves paused to rest. Their lantern cast a meager glow upon the spiraled stone path that wound endlessly downward into a darkness that defied comprehension. With weary sighs and low chuckles, they sat, legs dangling carelessly over the lip of the abyss, their booted feet silhouetted against absolute nothingness.

Here, at the edge of the Great Void, gravity played tricks crueler than an elf’s promise. The two dwarves laughed quietly as they raised their bottles of strong dwarven mead—not upward, as one might expect, but sideways. Liquid defied all dwarven logic, flowing perpendicular from the bottles in a languid arc, spiraling gently, as though unsure which direction down truly was. Drinking required careful maneuvering, angling one’s head just right so that the sweet, potent mead found their lips rather than drifting eternally into the void below.

“Ya reckon anyone else would handle this, Bjurn?” one dwarf asked, wiping stray droplets from his beard, his voice echoing oddly into the infinite expanse.

“Nay, brother,” Bjurn replied, taking a practiced swig, “they’d slip straight down, caught forever in a damned orbit around Ralabar Vu’s cursed boots.”

They laughed louder at this, their mirth amplified by the eeriness of their surroundings. The dwarves finished their drinks, clinked empty bottles together in a toast to reckless bravery, and hurled them casually into the infinite blackness. For a moment, the bottles spun gently, tumbling end over end, before vanishing entirely into the darkness.

Above, a long climb awaited them, past treasures discarded without care—diamonds larger than a dwarf’s proudest helm lay scattered about the spiral path, kicked aside like worthless rubble. These gems held no value to dwarven miners who knew the truth: the real treasures, the living veins of the earth, lay deeper, hidden far beneath the world’s surface, beyond even the madness of gravity.

With a sigh and one last amused glance into the abyss, they stood, turned from the edge, and began the winding ascent back towards realms of stone more predictable, leaving the eldritch void and its twisted physics behind—for now.