“You are the perfect replica of me,” the Elder Wyrm went on. “We share the same blood, the same DNA, but it is more than that. You were specifically engineered to house my memories, my essence, if you will.” In the shadow cast by the overhead lights, her eyes glinted. “You are my vessel, Ember Hill,” she told me. “The envelope of my soul. Once I am ‘programmed’ into your brain, I will live for another thousand years. I have not come this far, and built so much, to abandon it to something as trivial as death.”

“But...” I was having trouble breathing; this felt like a nightmare. A paralyzing, horrific nightmare, something that couldn’t be real. “What about the other vessels?” I asked, my voice coming out small and desperate. “Can’t you use one of them?”

“No. The vessels were created for one purpose only, and that is war. Because their growth rate was so rapidly accelerated, their brains did not develop fully. They are able to accept simple programming. Anything more complex, and there are...complications.” The Elder Wyrm made a vague, disgusted gesture. “For a time, we experimented with implanting the memories of a runaway hatchling or rogue into a vessel. But something always happened—the vessels went mad or became catatonic, and we would have to destroy them and the donor dragon.” She said this calmly, like she was discussing a TV sitcom, not casually admitting the experimental mind rape and murder of numerous dragons.

“The vessels are unsuitable for memory transfer,” the Elder Wyrm continued. “They excel at what they were bred for, which is obeying orders and dying for our cause. But they cannot imprint memories or personality. For my objective to work, I needed a daughter, someone who shared my blood and my DNA. Who had the chance to grow up, to learn and develop normally, even as she rebelled against everything we stand for.” One elegant white hand rose to frame my face. Her nails lightly scraped my cheek before I flinched away. The Elder Wyrm smiled. “You will be my vessel, Ember Hill,” she said, and though her touch was light, her eyes were cold. As if she was inspecting an outfit for flaws. “My new body, in which I will live forever.”

“But...” I scrambled for a response, a way out, anything to stop this horrific reality from going forward. “You don’t know if this procedure will work, you just said so yourself. The vessels can’t imprint memories or personality. What if you get into my head and we both go nuts?”

“Oh, my dear.” The Elder Wyrm chuckled again and shook her head. “What makes you think you and Dante are the only children I created?”

My heart seemed to stop. “But you said—”