Do NOT go see the priestesses until you're ready to advance the plot and move on to the next dungeon. The airship will become unavailable for normal travel once you do. While a black chocobo still gets you most places, it's slower and, between the inability to cross mountains and the lack of a wider view, harder to navigate.

The screen dims.

The reactions of the priestesses range from confused...

...through cautionary...

...and repetitive...

The EasyType changes じじょう (jijou, circumstances) to わけ (wake, reasons), though both are equivalent in this context.

...to helpful.

The EasyType rewrites this line as: やくにたつかどうか　わかりませんが　 ちかのたからを　もっていってください。 (I'm not sure whether they'll help, but please take the treasures in the basement). That and the English version seem more closely related to each other than to the original text.

With permission to enter granted, the guard finally allows access to the largest of the treasure chambers. Contents include various healing items, a Greatbow and assorted arrows of the types sold in town (which would have come in handy earlier), and even a Silver Apple (JP version only; the others have an Elixir instead).

Cain's airship approaches immediately after liftoff.

There's no actual verb here, just the Earth Crystal raised as the topic. A good actor could get the point across with nothing more than those words, the right tone of voice, and a bit of body language. Unfortunately, we don't have those to work with here, so extrapolation it is.

The airships ascend...

If that name is supposed to mean something, I'm not sure what.

...and the party ends up in an area with a high-tech look. There's no sign of Cain, Rosa, or anyone else.

Note that you can leave the tower where the party entered, but the airship will only fly between here and Troy until you clear the dungeon.

The Marionetters in this tower will summon more Marions if you kill off all its minions. Use them to farm experience if you'd like. Note that this doesn't seem to work in the DS remake, as they tend to run away when alone. The DS remake also gives them a chance to summon stronger Fraud Puppets.

Many (but not all) of the monsters here are weak against Flame. Equip Yang accordingly. There are also quite a few chests here containing elemental Flame weapons and armors for Cecil and Cid. The rule of thumb for this game is that anything with "fire" or "flame" in the name is good against anything Ice, but poor against Flame. The new equipment is usually a step up; just be aware of that weakness, especially at the chest on the 2nd floor containing a Flame Dog. Switch armors for that to avoid taking excessive damage, use the Ice Claw to help kill it faster, and then enjoy the Flame Sword you win for the trouble.

Also watch out for the Hell Turtle (Carapace) in random encounters, since its elements are backwards compared to basically everything else. Come to think of it, Fire Claw + Ice Claw may not be a bad idea for Yang here in general. Except in the DS remake, of course, since elements work differently there.

A chest on the 5th floor has a Hell Claw for Yang. Though lacking any elemental or racial traits, it has a strength bonus, better accuracy than his previous claws, and a chance to inflict Poison status, making it a good general-purpose choice. Another chest here has an Earth Hammer for Cid. A reasonably strong Flame weapon, its true power lies in the item effect: a relatively weak, but hardly negligible, Quake spell. Yet another chest has a Priest Robe for Tella, too.

The DS remake switches the Earth Hammer to the new Earth element. It still has the Quake spell effect when used.

Also on the 5th floor, slightly past the save point...

The EasyType changes つかさどる (tsukasadoru) to おさめる (osameru); both roughly mean to govern, rule over, or manage. われら　しまいの　デルタアタック (ware-ra shimai no DERUTA ATAKKU, we sisters' Delta Attack) becomes われらの　ひっさつわざ　デルタアタック (ware-ra no hissatsu waza DERUTA ATAKKU, our lethal technique Delta Attack).

Boss time! Dogu, the tall one in back, will periodically cast Reflect on Magu, the stout one in the middle, with the following line:

Magu responds with the following as she attacks a random character:

Ragu, the little one in front, follows up with a spell on Magu, cycling between Fira, Thundara, Blizzara, and Bio, in that order:

Things start falling apart when they aren't all present, though. In addition to being the cornerstone of their Delta Attack, Magu will fully revive the others after a turn delay if either of them goes down, so she's the priority target, even though she has nearly twice the hit points of the others. Taking Magu out of the picture reduces Ragu to casting Fire, Thunder, Blizzard, and Poison, while Dogu cycles between Confuse, Berserk, Slow, and (on herself) Cura. Confuse rarely works, and everything else is negligible at this point. Cecil and Yang should attack, Cid can either attack or use his hammer for Quake, and Tella goes on buffing and healing duty. All in all, this battle could have been much worse.

Each of their actions is scripted independently, so appropriate use of Slow might be able to throw them off, though really all that matters for their combo is that Reflect be active on Magu when Ragu throws magic at her, so at most it would just disrupt the text a bit. Status effects won't work since they're bosses.

In the DS remake, I found that Silence works on Ragu to shut down most of their offense. It reportedly also works on Dogu, preventing her from casting Reflect on Magu; Ragu will fail to notice this and happily nuke Magu for you at that point. Since Magu can now counter physical attacks, that would be particularly useful, though I didn't have any problems regardless. They're just not much of a threat without their Delta Attack working.

This clears the way to the 6th floor. Cain and Gobeza himself stand on the far side of the room.

You really ought to see this coming, but just in case... make sure to unequip Tella now if you want anything he's using.

As in the dialog with Cain earlier, Cecil's question about Rosa's condition, though still technically a question, is the sort of question that has only one right answer and implies unpleasant consequences for anything else.

Tella pushes forward, shoving Cecil out of the way, and gets in Golubaeser's face.

Battle commences, Tella versus Golubaeser. Tella opens with Bio and Figa, which deal piddling amounts of damage (mostly because a glitch affecting single-target spells in scripted battles results in one hit per spell instead of the five that Tella should get even with just his base Intelligence of 16).

In the DS remake, he skips Bio, which seems like a pointless change. Regardless, the scripted spell hit count glitch is fixed, and apparently has been at least since the GBA version, so these spells will inflict several thousand damage, dulling the contrast with Meteor. It's almost a shame.

Undeterred, Tella follows with Thundaga and Blizzaga, which inflict similarly meager amounts of damage.

As Legends of Localization points out, "I'm spending my life" can make it sound more like he's making defeating Golubaeser his purpose in life than like he's literally consuming his life force to power the spell. Using "expending" in place of "spending" might have avoided that. On a related note, the English DS version translates this line as "So be it! Let my life fuel the spell that ends his!", and that frankly does quite a good job of combining dramatic flair with accuracy. Except that in the original he doesn't directly respond to what anyone else said, and may be so intent on vengeance that he's not even aware of them.

Tella casts Meteor. In addition to being approriately flashy, it invariably inflicts 9,999 damage here.

Golubaeser has a severe weakness to Holy for this battle, which certainly contributes to the damage. However, Meteor is quite a powerful spell regardless. Despite Tella's unimpressive 16 base int, it would inflict 4,000 to 6,000 damage without any weakness at all. Although this version of Golubaeser also has no magic defense, even 255 of it (the maximum), still with no weakness, would only reduce the damage to an average of 3,725.

Golubaeser is weakened as combat ends. Tella, though, just cast 209 MP worth of magic despite having only having a maximum of 90 MP, so it's perhaps unsurprising that he's in worse shape. Curiously, Cain also collapses.

Golubaeser starts to leave.

Golubaeser lightning bolts Cecil across the room, starts to approach, and then suddenly stops.

Golubaeser exits, leaving Cecil rather confused.

The EasyType changes Tella's たおせなんだか (taosenanda ka), a nonstandard conjugation that even some native speakers reportedly choke on, to たおせなかったか (taosenakatta ka), the standard equivalent.

And Tella is gone.

The door is locked, so I suppose we'll check on Cain.

Cain leads them upstairs, where Rosa remains tied up, with a blade (or iron ball) looming over her head.

The implement of death begins to fall, and Cecil snatches Rosa out of the way just in time.

Cain looks ashamed, while Cecil and Rosa get in each other's personal space.

Cecil and Rosa break apart, and we don't see their shared sprite again until much later.

Cecil hesitates briefly, then:

Before doing anything else, give Rosa some equipment! You should have a bow and some arrows handy (or a Healing Staff), plus Tella's old equipment and the Gold Headdress from Mist. Cain already comes with a Wind Spear and a full set of Mithril armoring, so he's fine on that count. Then heal anyone who needs it and rearrange the party if you'd like, keeping in mind that Jump ignores row. Try to leave the tower only after preparing.

A pretentious laugh interrupts.

The EasyType uses きず (kizu, wound) in place of てきず (tekizu), a less common near-synonym that implies the wound was received in combat.

Another demon from Dante's Inferno, this one's name might mean "curly beard" or "one overflowing with malice" or "savage one", or so I've read.

She attacks! Barbariccia has a number of nasty tricks that make her problematic to deal with. Shortly after combat begins, she goes into a whirling mode that gives her considerable evasion (greatly weakening the effectiveness of most physical attacks) and near immunity to all forms of magic. Additionally, as long as the whirlwind lasts, she'll cast Tornado AND use Fingertip (Gradual Petrification (1/3)) every other turn. Attack despite her defenses for a clue:

The English and EasyType versions apparently decided that wasn't obvious enough, so they changed it:

Hitting her with Cain's Jump breaks the whirlwind, resetting her physical defenses to nonexistent and her magical defenses to moderate. She attacks immediately upon resetting state, then again her next turn, then goes back into the whirlwind after a delay. Keeping her out of the whirlwind as much as possible helps the battle go far more smoothly.

Casting Slow once or twice when she's not spinning also helps quite a bit, as do Berserk on Cid and Yang (and Cecil, if you don't mind giving up his White Magic), though the extra messages every time they attack during whirlwind mode get annoying. She has no resistances or weaknesses, so use whatever hits hardest.

In the DS remake, the worst thing about Barbariccia is her counterattacks. She may respond to physical attacks (other than Cain's Jump when it breaks her spin) with Lightning, which in this version seems to inflict raw damage rather than being a percentile attack as before. The Gold Headdress will protect Rosa from that to some extent. She may also counter magic with Maelstrom. Yikes. While a single Lightning should be survivable, especially with Shell in place, several in a row, or one after Maelstrom, can easily wipe out the whole party. Minimize her counterattack opportunities by using fully charged attacks with Yang as your main source of offense. Anyone with the Counter augment will also help, since she can't counter a counter. Cid and Cecil may want to spend much of the battle defending, and Berserk is just a bad idea all around. Overall, though, she actually seems less dangerous than in the original, once you know to avoid the counters.

The tower shakes violently as Barbariccia disappears.

Incidentally, you might not have even realized Rosa knew Teleport. She didn't have it until rejoining just now, and even if you had noticed, you can't manually cast it inside the tower.

Come to think of it, where is this tower, anyway? Floating somewhere in the high skies?

The party warps out of the tower and appears safely in...

The EasyType changes Cid's ニセもん (NISEmon) to the more standard ニセモノ (NISEMONO), though it's unclear why, since both should be easy enough to understand, and slightly quirky speech suits Cid.

So, not only have we been given the impression that it's not unusal for Rosa to visit Cecil late at night, but she would seem to be familiar enough with his bedroom that it's her choice in destination for an emergency teleport. The writers may not have said outright that they're sleeping together regularly... but isn't it obvious?

All this talk of おもて (omote) and うら (ura) doesn't translate as well as I'd like. Japanese philosophy often views things in terms of dualities: light and dark, yin and yang, red and blue, male and female, outward and inward, appearances and realities, the mundane and the fantastic. The omote and ura here make up one of these dualities. Though the term also applies to such things as the face of a playing card or heads on a coin, omote more generally refers to the aspect of something that lies in plain sight, such as the facade of a building or the public face of a business. Similarly, ura includes not just the back of a card or tails on a coin, but also those things that are normally kept out of public view. Using the word omote to characterize the crystals that everyone knows about immediately implies that there must be other crystals of the ura sort, crystals that exist outside of common knowledge. While "outward" and "inward" (which I previously translated as "exposed" and "hidden") sum up the basic meaning, "outward" doesn't necessarily demand an analogous "inward" quite as strongly as omote demands a corresponding ura. Additionally, omote carries a sense of "on the surface" while ura has a sense of "beneath the surface", so they also link to the underground better than "outward" and "inward" do.

The English DS version sort of writes around all that by calling the surface ones crystals of light and saying that every light casts a shadow. Which isn't necessarily true, and implies a sort of dependency between the crystals that doesn't seem to exist. Still, it flows better than the SNES translation.

The EasyType replaces えんかくそうじゅう (enkaku soujuu, remote guidance system) with じどうそうじゅう (jidou soujuu, autopilot). While that may be a more common term, it implies that the airship flew itself back, rather than a remote operator taking control of it.

Consider raiding Eblana Castle at this point if you didn't already. While it may still be challenging, having a full party with higher levels, better equipment, and a dedicated White Mage should help. On the other hand, some of Tella's advanced spells could have come in handy.

We should probably tell the elder what happened to Tella.

As the closest thing Tella has to a living relative, Gilbert deserves to know, too.

Meanwhile, Rosa's mother is overdue for some reassurance, not having seen Rosa since she headed toward Mist in search of Cecil.

Clues from the earlier world tour point here. The villagers spoke of being descended from dwarves who came from an inward land under the mountains. Putting together the mention of a sun called "magma" and the legend that the way to their homeland will be opened when the stone of the sun is returned there, Cecil tries dropping the Magma Stone into the immesurably deep well. The stone falls an improbably long way, then the screen turns red...

With a great rumbling, the nearby mountain bursts open, revealing a large hole leading to untold depths!

The DS remake makes this scene a bit longer, with more dialog as the stone heats up and Cid fumbles it into the well, and culminates in a geyser of magma bursting through the nearby mountain. That at least explains what blows the hole open.