It’s an undead baby dragon, produced by a failed magical spell. It probably would be cute if it weren’t partially decayed.

Young dragons are relatively defenseless. They are born with relatively soft scales, which are shed and replaced with harder ones as the hatchling matures. Once a hatchling’s wings grow in, it typically marks the beginning of maturation. At this point they are often capable of hunting on their own and are usually left alone by their mother.

She had always been such a sweet hatchling. An Undine—a little bundle of glistening scales and silky fur and splashing water, glitters of magic following her like a comet's tail. But all the blessings in the world couldn't save her when the sickness came.

It was a dark month for the clan. Eggs softened, rotted beneath their mothers' bellies. The healthy mourned; those that fell ill were too consumed with ennui to care. Hatchlings grew frail and thin, sluggish and devoid of energy. Many slept. Some woke. She was not such a one.

The epidemic passed, taking her with it—but something remained. Sometimes there is a scrabble of claws at night, a desperate wheeze, a moan—and occasionally, a new victim, taken ill with a mysterious, brutal sickness whose cause cannot be traced. She is gone, but her shell still lingers, claimed utterly by her death. Whatever that little Undine would have been, only a bearer of plague remains.