Velma just barely manages to finish & move on

Velma squeezed her eyes tightly shut, weathering another hard blow that made her soft curved bottom ripple pleasantly upon impact and when she opened them she rapidly snatched the remaining pieces and fit them together with terror fueled zeal. Although she didn’t see any sort of device or mechanism inside the box, she heard the apparatus shift and move as she fit the final piece into place and the bindings on her arms snapped open, releasing her. She fell to the floor as her arms slid out of the box. She landed onto her hands and knees and slowly keeled over, curling into a tight ball, knees drawn up to her chest, sobbing as she struggled hold herself together. The very thought that every room of this house would be this harrowing, and that Daphne might have wandered through this hell hole for just over 21 days was enough to shatter Velma’s dwindling resolve.

She just laid there helplessly for some time, not wanting to move, wishing she was anywhere but here but knowing deep inside that she couldn’t abandon her friend to a fate locked within these walls. She finally tried to get up, rolling into a sitting position, which sent a horrible burning sensation across her entire lower body, still extremely sensitive and sore. She moaned and groaned but continued to try to get to her feet, using the table for support. Finally, after what felt like an eternity she pushed herself all the way back up and staggered to the door that she hoped to hell had unlocked for all the suffering she had gone through.

Luckily for her, the door opened and she was greeted by a rather intense blast of hot and humid air that fogged up her glasses. She was nearly blind as she stepped through, but she was too eager to leave the horrible puzzle room to bother looking before she leapt. The heavy door closed behind her as she cleaned her spectacles and put them back on. She found herself in a massive greenhouse. It was very hard to see how large the room was as so much of the plant life was overgrown and obscured the walls. The roof was glass and the night sky provided very little light, the clouds obscuring the moon above. After looking up at the ominous dark sky, Velma looked down as she felt an unnatural spring in her step. She was standing on a soft, almost bouncy rubberized gravel turf and as she glanced about the room she found much like the rest of the mansion thus far, there were 2 distinct paths leading from the door she had come through.

One was a clear path right in front of her that was at least 40 feet long and turned sharply to the left and continued out of sight. It looked neat and orderly, with the plant life pruned back to allow unimpeded progress. Suspiciously, there was nothing immediately off about the trail, aside from the obvious notion that whatever hazard it possessed was likely well concealed and wouldn’t reveal itself until it was far too late to turn back.

The other trail went off to the right and it was much more overgrown with not foliage but thick red rose bushes. They were beautifully in bloom but the stems clearly possessed unnaturally pronounced thorns and the brambles were so tightly packed, it was obvious she’d need to fight for every inch of ground she would need to cover. Perhaps that was horrible enough and that path held no further dangers, or maybe she was liable to become entangled in the thorns and left helpless until something or someone came along to claim her. She also was fairly certain that she couldn’t possibly see anything through the bushes. There was not enough clearance to safely crawl through either, the mess of branches started about a foot from the ground, at least for most of the path, as far as she could see as she got down on all fours and peered down the darker path. The good thing was that it seemed to be far shorter than the other trail.