Don't bring Gau, Mog, and Umaro, as the boss battle is dependent on your ability to attack by your own choosing. Shadow's good, because he can steal and he has fire skeans. I had no luck with stealing, alas.

After you've climbed the stairs, a diary appears.

It's like the Mandragoras in FFXII.

Make sure you turn it on.

Is that anything like being as intelligent as library paste? What happens if you got a Mr. Bucket and put paintballs in his mouth? Maybe it's abstract art and Owser doesn't get it.

Uh oh, time to investigate! But be warned, for all who gaze upon it will go mad!

They're dogs! And they're playing poker! AAAAAAAAAAH!!!

Let's check out the paintings.

That's because they are! Nightshade has charm. Charm is not confuse, so you can't protect against it. It has a base hit of 80. Charm gives no indication that you're charmed. Charm is not removed when you clonk the person on the head. Charm can be removed if either the charmer or charmee dies. Charm does not work if the charmer already charmed someone. I used charm way too many times in one paragraph. They're immune to status ailments, and they'll just use poison rod and fight after charming someone.

This can be made useful in a rage. Charm breaks the AI script and they attack themself. It's a bit unfair and cheap, so I'm not going to suggest it, much like I do not suggest the Vanish-Doom combo that works on pretty much everything.

OH, that Emperor. There's a lamp, a bucket, and remember: nothing is scarier than going to school.

A painting of a lovely lady. Also cursed! When looking at it, you fight Dahling. Dahling uses sightless or mute. Sightless makes you look dumb. That's it. She counters by using Cure 2 on you when you attack her because she's from Soviet Russia. They have a Moogle Suit for you to steal if Shadow's really lucky with that thief knife. After defeating them, the painting reveals a door. Let's go in!

SoulDancer has a magic power of 30 and some spells in its control list that it will never use, instead favoring dirks, mithril knives, guardians, thiefknives, or assassins. That's bad, as image can't help you. Red Dance is a counter that drains a negligible amount of HP.

Crushers have a super ball for stealing. Super balls do a power of two damage, maxing out around 2048, four times. If you want them, get them. Blow is rather nasty, as is lifeshaver.

If you sit in the throne painting, you get attacked by the Crazy Cat Lady.

She doesnŐt throw her cats at you. If she did, this game would probably get 12 out of 10 rabites. She throws dirks. Not cats. Why? The cats, called Wild Cats, offer tabby suits to steal, and occasionally pounce. When alone, wild cats use brown Mag Roader's script and use Fire Ball.

Vindrs are birds, and it's Old Norse for wind. Being vikings, they're the strongest small birds and offer chocobo suits for stealing. They can turn you into stone as well.

This guy has a painting of Celes? Did that painting just move? Must be my imagination.

It's still life! Instead of a living suit of armor, it's just some gray cloud of smoke with green vagina cookies (no, really, the people who performed the vagina monologues at my college were selling vagina cookies) for lips. Too bad, because armor is so much cooler. Bane kiss poisons you. Lullaby puts you to sleep. Condemned is a counter. You can steal a fake mustache from him. No big deal if you don't get it, they're on the Veldt, just hovering there instead of being in the wall which makes sense.

Owzer looks like Jabba the Hutt. If you don't help him, he'll feed you to the rancor!

The painting is made with magicite.

Actually, you can sort of see the monster.

Numbskulls? Are you serious? I'm supposed to feel threatened by that?

Chadarnook has two forms. One is Starlet, which you are not supposed to attack. Starlet has Doom Kiss to condemn you, fight, lullaby, and charm.

Attacking him leads to Phantasm, which is much cooler than shown, I swear. It sets HP leak which is the Seizure that is not a Seizure. It's pure evil. And you can't protect against it.

Charm wears off when Chadarnook reveals his demon form. The demon form favors lightning elemental attacks and Flash Rain, which is a water and ice elemental attack.

Once you're done...

When you look like Jabba the Hutt, that's not hard.

With that, you get the famed Starlet esper and Relm joins the party. Starlet uses Group Hug, which costs 74 MP and is in between Cure 2 and Cure 3, both of which you get from Starlet. Group Hug, fortunately, ignores reflect.