As we leave the village, we see an airship dock at the nearby tower. That can't be good.
We go to Highwind Tower, where we find Barbara trying in vain to rouse three dragons. She tells us again to leave, but Ricard shows up, helped along by the boy we saved earlier. Don't think too hard about how a cripple and a kid made it through that death valley.
He's ecstatic to find Barbara alive. The kid tells Barbara to trust us, because we brought dragongrass to cure the dragons. Sol remember he has that on him, and tosses it to the three dragons, who munch down on it and revive. We also give Barbara her father's spear.
Since we saved her "family", Barbara now trusts us. She invites us along into the tower to save Ceres. Barbara joins the party!
Like Elgo before here, Barbara can't change jobs. Which means she's destined to be a temporary party member, but hopefully she leaves in a much less irrevocable manner.
We also get 4 JP, which I badly needed. On to Mythology Gag: The Tower!
When we get to the second floor, we cut to Cid's airship, which is under attack by dragons. Ha, ha! He's facing a weird looking orb, and the experiment/creation thing we saw at the end of the prologue, Argy, is there with him. Apparently, the ship has a magic generator that creates a Shell and Protect effect around the whole thing. And Cid invented it. That's actually pretty cool.
He orders the soldiers not to harm the dragons, and we cut back to Sol dungeon crawling.
As we go up the tower, we cut to the Imperial a few more times. Eventually, Cid gets what he was looking for and activates Argy. He's going to deploy it to the top of the tower, but a man with grey hair shows up and tells him not to tip his hand yet.
Along the way up the tower, Dusk takes a pitstop to communicate with his mysterious friends. There's apparently something about this tower.
Finally, we get to the top. Ceres is there, but she's too weak to eat the dragongrass. The poison has driven her insane, and she attacks us.
Barbara tells us not to hurt Ceres, and jumps in front of the party. She takes quite a bit of damage from Ceres' attacks before the dragon finally calms down and ends the battle. With the last of her strength, Barbara pushes the dragongrass to Ceres, who eats eat. She then collapses.
The grey-haired man teleports in and introduces himself as Vata of the Wind. He then heals Barbara, saying that the dragon won't lay her egg if her mistress dies. Sol warns Vata to stay the heck away from Ceres and Barbara, and we have us a boss fight.
Vata's no pushover, but he's not too terribly bad.
After defeating him, Ceres lays her egg, but she's too weak for the effort and it kills her. Barbara has a series of flashback about the day her father died and Ceres came to comfort her and take her away. She takes the egg and thanks her surrogate mother, then holds her father's spear aloft. The spear starts throwing off sparkles, and it turns out the gemstone in the spear is actually a piece of Crystal.
Four of the five sparkles drift down and touch the Light Warriors, giving us the Dragoon job and 5 extra JP. The fifth makes for Barbara, but Vata suddenly revives and intercepts it. It seems this is what he was after all along. He heals us to full health and initiates another battle.
This time, Vata has all the Dragoon abilities: breath attacks, jump, and lancet. While it's not a curb stomp battle, he's much tougher than he was before. After a few rounds, he flees the battle, telling us to come see him again when we're stronger.
Vata teleports back to the airship, where Cid is furious and threatens to have him before a tribunal, but Vata doesn't seem all that worried.
We cut to a village with a giant tree outside. Standing near the trunk, looking out at the mountains, are a man with a crown, a woman, and a child. All have pointy ears. Prince Adrian, the child, asks what something is, and the Elf King replies that it is not unexpected, and that it's mankind's fault.
Yeah, humans are kind of bastards that way.
And thus the chapter ends. Join us next time as we discover what could possibly happen next. Seriously, I have no idea.
