>>151274830
>The only thing worth talking about is the riddle.
On some level I agree with you - a riddle is inherently the most important thing.
The problem here in AT is that a riddle delivered by your mentor in a hallucination is fucking stupid. It's a contrivance to make the character run around like a crazy person trying to solve it like some kind of religious fanatic chasing some kind of prophecy. There's really no fucking reason why a mentor would not straight up tell you how to solve the problem and making up some retarded excuse to be obtuse post-hoc, if they even bother, isn't going to justify it.
Like this guy pulled HW out of her bullshit situation and presumably promised her power in exchange for a gruelling training regimen and ultimately her hand - the terms of the deal are clear there. Why waste her time with a fucking beet metaphor. There are no mystical honor-bound rules in AT, there's no necessary "discover the truth on your own" or "pure of heart" bullshit need to test HW this way. There's no destiny or prophecy nonsense in AT, the world of AT is unrestrained dog-eat-dog power held in check only by beings who have some kind of restraint. PB would be screaming at HW about this beet bullshit and it's actually a bit crazy that the other people of Ooo haven't realized PB has science'd their stupid magic horseshit out and in all likelihood would know how to cure Finn if only you told her the Spirit wounded him because in all likelihood she already fucking stole sap and trimmings from the tree without any of the Green Wizards knowing.
Finn does a lot of shit because he's pure of heart but it's not because a divine order helps him but because being good has value in a hellscape like Ooo but he also gets fucking punked all the time because magic retards fuck with him like how the Lich-Billy convinced him in a dream to warn Billy, who as the Lich convinced him to chase down the Enchiridion.
