I've been thinking lately about the Dragon Tears.
A huge deal of the plot from Cross is supported uniquely by the Tears and their powers.
But what do we, I ask, really know about these Tears?
I definitely do not claim to be an expert (which is why I ask in the first place), but it seems to me the answer is: very little.
Direa tells us:
The key to activate
this ruin is the
'"Dragon Tear"'...
It was given to our ancestors
by the extinct Dragonians as a
symbol of our friendship.
and
This Dragonian ruin is a product
of their '"crystal of wisdom."'
Its power is unknown, yet much
too powerful for any human.
If the ruin were to be
activated by chance, it would
emit uncontrollable power...
Kid for her part says:
That fort's supposedly a ruin
built by the extinct Dragonians...
I heard there've been all
kinds of mystic rituals there.
It's said that the Dragon Tear
was needed for the rituals...
Concerning their powers, Harle suggested:
Regarding your mémoire
az zis Serge...
You may be able to rewrite it
if you use ze Dragon Tear.
Which seems quite different from returning to your old body (the opposite really, a final step to fully become Lynx).
Most interestingly, upon shattering the second Tear, Steena says:
There is nothing we can do
about the Dragon Tear...
Its shattering result does
not come as a surprise.
However, you also carry
the fate of the Dragon Tear
from another world.
The broken pieces of
love and hate: although
contradictory, they are two
sides of the same coin...
A mysterious force may
come to light when the
two pieces are united...
Perhaps this force will be
the legendary Chrono Cross...
The only problem is, the shrine,
which is said to give life to the
Chrono Cross, is nothing but a
cavern inside Divine Dragon Falls.
So yeah, it's no surprise to her that the Tear shattered... but I wonder how she... "guesses"(?) that the remains of both can be used to summon the Chrono Cross.
Either way, she also has heard a legend about a seventh dragon:
Great Dragon Gods!
We are yet unable to
utilize the altar...?
I know that we need
the six Dragon Relics
that offer up divine
supplication...
Could 'that' legend be
true... Is there a
seventh dragon, and a
seventh Element...!?!
...which is interesting because I don't recall Harle giving you any sort of seventh relic before merging with the other dragons.
And I think that's pretty much all we know. Which, like I said, is very little.
I don't have a problem accepting that the Tears, having been made by the Dragon God(s?), have the power to do all the stuff they do in the game.
Rather my question is... why would they possess these powers in the first place? What was their original purpose?
We know they were supposedly used in rituals within Fort Dragonia. What manner of rituals? Could there be anything that somehow relates to the ways they are used in the game (to switch bodies or melt away one only to let its owner be reborn) but not go to such extremes that the Tear shatters?
(Does this, perhaps, have anything to do with the depictions of evolution on the walls in the top chamber of Fort Dragonia?)
Or was that the first time they were used? And if that is the case, had the Dragon God(s) planned for the events to play out the way they have? Unlike Belthasar, they shouldn't have knowledge of the future, so that seems unlikely (or was it a wild guess that at some point some child would become the arbiter of the flame and FATE would possess his father to switch bodies with him? ...yeah, this is sarcasm, obviously).
Besides, if the Dragon Gods made them, couldn't they just give Serge is own body themselves?
When was it determined, and revealed to the guardians of the Tears in the two Guldoves, that some connection existed between the Tear and the Chrono Cross? They didn't even seem to know that another world with a second Tear existed until you revealed this to them...
Yet, it seems the Dragon Gods created the two-pedestals altar in only one of the worlds after the split, either realizing only then that with two Tears it was now possible to summon the Chrono Cross, or having planned it ahead when creating the Tear in the first place (but again, I don't think they should have known the world would eventually be split in two...).
In either case, it'd make little sense to have altars for both Tears in both worlds since there's not four of them, so I really am inclined to think it was made after the split.
But how does allowing someone to summon the Chrono Cross benefit them anyway? Especially if they are only an echo of the original Dragon God that only exists to further the Time Devourer's destructive purposes...
...and I thought Chronopolis made little sense