This account was written in 1868, a few months after the attack of an mutated fire drake on the city of Aurot. It is commonly attributed to Dean Whilhelm, a candlemaker who lived in the city at the time. Since then, it has become the best known account of the incident, with most historical texts on the subject including it.
I woke up to screaming. I remember it more vividly than anything else that happened that night. It was the screaming of the dead, their bodies already charred, their fall already scripted by the fire coating them.
At first I thought the sound was the remnant of some nightmare, if only. No, the red of broken, glowing scales outside my window made that apparent. I was frozen in place as the monster thundered past, sounding like the crackling of a fire but so much louder.
When I went downstairs, I saw people huddled in my shop. Their faces were covered in soot, and their appendages blistered. Those pustules shined with a strange light, as though the fire still raged within them. Days later, they would burn them up from the inside, the fire itself like a disease.
I, foolish man that I am, exited to the city. The cobbled streets were covered in what can only be described as puddles of fire, the strands of burning air like hands reaching out to seize me. I payed them no mind, however, for I felt a terrible gaze fall upon me. When I looked down the way, I saw one, terrible eye fixed in my direction. It sat centralized above a maw of needle like teeth, set in rows continuing back into the beast's maw and down it's throat. Firey ichor dripped from there like spittle. Sets of eyes and pustles in equal measure dotted the thing's face, the rest of which was covered in scales of a deep, crimson red. It's body was proportioned in a twisted, sanity-wrenching way, claws extending not just from feet but from elbows and shoulders like protruding bones. These claws also jutted at strange angles from the creature's "toes", if they could be called that, glowing with a sickly burning orange light. But I kept coming back to the thing's eyes, for I knew they hated me. There was no two ways about it. The dragon wanted to see everything burn, down to the bone, just as it was burning from the inside.
I screamed and ran. I don't know how I got away, I suppose I just wasn't interesting enough prey. The bodies I ran past... Those who weren't yet dead... The children, oh the children...
I woke up to crying. I had collapsed on the street and passed out. A mother sat only a few feet from where I lay, holding a charred mass. I looked away.
It was midday by the time I made it past the rubble to my home. A bright burning sun lit the sky, antithetical to the dark devistation below. My shop had been blown apart; The reactants used in my candles had probably caught fire from the passing of the dragon, exploding all at once. Outside was a great pile of charred bones: the corpse of the monster. It was later found that the waxy reactants covered the dragon and dissolved it from the outside.
Even still, that eye... That terrible eye remained. Left in it's socket, dried out, but staring straight at me. Always. Accusing. Hating. They gave it to me, as a prize for "Slaying the Beast". I gave it away to some wizard for study.
I don't make candles anymore. I think I want to work with something less prone to burning.
Artist's rendition of the mutated fire drake of Aurot. Said artist was on her deathbed and delirious from fever. The only eye-witness depiction of the creature to exist.
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