The Stubborn Light of a Dying Flame [Isekai - LitRPG]

Emma raised her fist to knock on the door, hesitating at the last moment. Was it really a good idea to knock?

"What are you waiting for?" Nathan asked in an anxious whisper.

"Should we go around the back and find a window?" Emma asked quietly. "There might be someone inside."

"Isn't that the point of knocking?" Andrea asked.

Emma swallowed the lump in her throat and knocked three times. Dust shook loose from the old wood, coating Emma's hand in a grimy grey powder. She wiped her hand off on her pants, grimacing in disgust.

No noise came from inside.

"Nobody home?" Britt asked.

Andrea moved forward and knocked as well; much louder and longer than Emma had. Emma backed away from the waterfall of dust that fell off the door. Andrea didn't seem too bothered.

They waited for a response, but none came.

"I think it's empty," Nathan said. "That's a relief."

"Is it?" Britt asked. "I thought we were hoping they would help us out of this hole."

"I'm just hoping for a bed to sleep in," Nathan said. "Some food would be nice, too."

Emma wasn't too sure about eating anything they found inside. The place looked like no one had lived there in years, maybe decades.

"So, we go in?" Britt asked.

Andrea shrugged, trying the doorknob. It didn't budge. She tried pushing on the door but it didn't so much as shudder.

"It's locked," she said.

"We can see that," Nathan said. "Get out of the way, I'm gonna break it down." He rolled his shoulder.

"Do you know how much force it takes to break a door down?" Britt asked incredulously.

"I've got stat points now," Nathan said with a shrug. "I'm sure I can handle a door."

He swung his arms to loosen them up as the rest of them backed away.

Nathan took a few steps back to get a running start and rammed his shoulder into the door as hard as he could.

"Mother of—" He gripped his dislocated shoulder, biting his arm so hard he left marks.

Emma rushed over and healed the injury. Nathan swore emphatically as his shoulder popped back into place.

"I'd be laughing if that wasn't so painful," Britt said dryly. "What was that about System stats?"

"Oh, shut up," Nathan snapped. "You can't open it either."

Britt nodded. "I agree. It's warded."

Nathan frowned at Britt. "You couldn't have said that before I dislocated my shoulder?"

Britt pointed at the baseboards of the cabin where runes glowed slightly in the dark. "They didn't glow until you hit the door. Can't tell you what I don't know."

Emma shook her head. "So, breaking in isn't an option."

"Not necessarily," Britt said. "Give me a sec."

She walked around the perimeter of the cabin, examining the runes as she went.

"Over here," she called from the back.

Emma rounded the cabin to find her kneeling by the back wall.

"See these?" Britt pointed at some runes that were darker than the ones around them. "Rune spells degrade over time. This is a weak point. If we cut a hole in the boards, we can just climb through the wall."

Andrea frowned. "We're cutting a hole in their wall now?"

"No one's lived here in a long time," Nathan said. "If you feel bad you can leave something on the way out. What are we gonna use to cut the wood?"

"Either Andrea's sword or Emma's glaive," Britt said. "I picked a staff as my weapon and no offense, your darts are kind of useless unless we're in a fight."

"That was uncalled for," Nathan muttered.

Andrea stepped forward with her sword. "Just above the dark runes?"

Britt nodded.

They all stood back as Andrea repeatedly stabbed the wood. She gave up sawing a hole after the first couple minutes and just decided to hack the wood apart until they had a jagged opening about three feet high.

"After you," Andrea said, gesturing at the hole with her sword.

Emma took a deep breath and crawled through first. The rough wood caught on her clothes, tearing a small hole in the bottom of her shirt, but she made it through without hurting herself.

The air inside smelled foul, but it was bearable. She held her mage light up to examine the interior. She was in a bedroom, as luck would have it. Six beds were arranged along the walls, each with an accompanying nightstand. The weird part was how big it was. The spacious room took up more than half of the tiny cabin. Did this place even have a kitchen?

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She poked her head back through the hole. "Coast is clear."

The others came in as she examined the beds. The inside of the cabin was almost dust free, and the bedding didn't seem to have any holes. Whatever preservation spells the previous owners placed on the cabin, they worked much better on the inside than they did on the outside.

"Ugh. It smells like something died in here," Nathan said, covering his nose.

Britt dropped into the bed furthest from the hole. "I don't care if it smells like a pig pen in here. I'm too exhausted to think."

Seeing her lay down sapped the rest of Emma's energy. She yawned, placing her mage light on one of the nightstands and crawling into the bed. "We can explore more in the morning."

"What if there's some serial killer waiting for us to fall asleep?" Nathan asked, glancing around nervously.

Andrea sighed. "I'll take first watch. Who am I waking up in a few hours?"

"Not it!" Emma and Britt said in unison.

Nathan groaned. "Fine, I'll take second watch. Britt next, then Emma?"

"Sure, whatever," Britt groaned. "Just shut up so I can go to sleep."

The conversation continued but Emma missed the rest. She was asleep as soon as she closed her eyes.

* * *

Emma rolled over in bed, the sunlight that streamed through the ragged hole waking her from the blessed sleep.

She sat up and looked around blearily. Britt was still asleep, and Nathan slept soundly two beds down from her. Andrea was propped next to the hole, fast asleep with her head leaning against the wall.

So much for night watch, Emma thought tiredly.

She carefully climbed out of bed, not wanting to wake the others. She would have slept longer but her bladder was ready to burst. There had to be a chamber pot around here somewhere. Emma missed toilets. She never realized how inconvenient it would be living in a world without plumbing. She was never good at house maintenance herself, but surely someone from earth was in the process of reinventing toilets. They would be on the mainland, though, so it wouldn't help Emma in her current predicament.

Finding no chamber pots in the room, Emma snuck over and opened the door leading to the rest of the cabin. She didn't have high hopes, but she would rather not pee in a random cave where any of the others could accidentally interrupt.

She paused just over the threshold, frowning at the hallway. This couldn't be right. The bedroom should take up the majority of the back side of the cabin. She was expecting to exit into some sort of entry way. Instead, a straight hallway extended forward with several doors on either wall. Cautiously, she crept forward, placing her hand on the first doorknob. Her pulse sped up. Should she wake the others before exploring? Something wasn't right here.

Emma removed her hand. There was safety in numbers. They should vote on what they wanted to do next. Retreating back into the bedroom, Emma quickly relieved herself behind the cabin, grateful that everyone else was fast asleep, and went back inside. She waited impatiently, reading a book while the others slept. Every now and then, she glanced at the door that hid the impossible hallway.

Unable to contain her curiosity any longer, Emma snuck back to the hallway. She pulled her glaive from her Inventory, but returned it immediately. The hall was too narrow to allow movement with the long polearm weapon. Mage lights lined the wall, illuminating the hallway, but Emma kept her light with her, just in case. She had no way of knowing what the lighting inside the other rooms would be like.

Emma took a deep breath and opened the door, poking her head inside. It was another bedroom, like the one she had just left. Six more beds sat empty in the silent room. Emma stepped inside and looked around, opening drawers in the nightstands. Random items and nicknack's clinked as the drawers slid out. Coins that Emma didn't recognize, a book, a hairbrush; they were all ordinary items that she would expect to find in a college dorm.

Emma took the items. This place was obviously abandoned, and some of the items might come in handy.

Moving to the next room, Emma found the same thing. She tried not to think about what happened to the previous inhabitants of the mysterious cabin.

Emma found three more bedrooms, a large kitchen and dining hall, and a couple of communal bathhouses. It was like a giant retreat center built into a single hallway. There was food in the kitchen still, all of it preserved by unknown spells and looking as fresh as the day it was made. Emma left all of the food for now. She didn't have a way to test if it was safe, and she wasn't planning on eating bread that might be older than she was.

Emma stopped exploring when she found the library. It was huge; two floors of books, all perfectly preserved and waiting on the shelves to be read. The strangest part was that Emma could read them. She browsed the second floor, thumbing through old pages, examining diagrams and trying to understand the gibberish that masqueraded as English.

Miasmic Runes continue to cause issues within the stabilization process. As the Miasma grows in strength, the portal becomes supercharged with Essence, creating an instability that effectively renders all experiments as a failure. Correction to the Essence-Miasma ratios only leads to even less stability. It is as if the two energies are at war with each other. Until this point, we have thought about the explosive nature of energy as a simple magical reaction, could it be more than that? Could the energy have a mind of its own?

More research is required to prove if the…

Emma frowned. She understood the individual words, but she wasn't sure what the book was talking about. Miasma hadn't been mentioned by anyone on Ember thus far. Was this something they knew about? If so, why hadn't anyone explained it?

"What the hell is this place?" Andrea asked, scaring Emma half to death.

Britt walked next to her, spinning around as she examined the vaulted ceiling.

"A library," Emma said, her excitement outweighing her annoyance. "And everything's in English."

"Seriously?" Nathan grabbed a book off the shelf, flipping through the pages. "How does that make sense?"

"Seems obvious to me," Andrea said. "There's some sort of translation runes on the cabin. Like the ones we had in the city."

"How do you know?" Nathan asked.

"Because I'm speaking French," Andrea said with a grin.

Emma returned her book to the shelf and went down the stairs. "There are only a few doors left to check. Should we split up or go together?"

"Go together," Nathan said immediately. "This place is creeping me out."

"I agree," Britt said. "But I'm coming back here when we're done exploring. I bet there are hundreds of books on runes in here."

They explored the rest of the rooms, finding the front entrance of the cabin in the last door on the right. It was just a small sitting room with the cabin's exit on the front wall and a couple of charts on the back. Emma stowed the charts in her Inventory. One was a map of the archipelago that she hoped was accurate and the other was dangerous flora to look out for.

That left only the door at the end of the hall. It was thicker and heavier than the previous doors they had gone through.

Whatever was behind it seemed to be the source of the foul odor in the air.

Emma tried to force it open, but it wouldn't budge. They each took a turn trying to open the door, then they tried all together, but it was no use.

"Well, at least we got into the library," Britt said. "I don't think it's a big deal if we miss one room."

"The kitchen is well stocked, too," Nathan said.

"You're going to eat that stuff?" Emma asked incredulously. "You don't know how old it is."

"I know that if it was dead, we'd be able to tell," Nathan said. "And even with the food we swiped from the kitchen back in Emerald house, we won't last more than a few weeks down here. We need time to find a way out of this place."

"Don't even suggest that we'll be down here that long," Britt said with a disgusted shiver.

"Let's go back to the library and see if we can find some record of what happened here," Emma said. "Even if we can't get it open, I'd like to know what's behind this door."