This is a fan translation of Wrong Time for Dragons (Не время для драконов) by the Russian science fiction and fantasy authors Sergei Lukyanenko and Nick Perumov.
I claim no rights to the contents herein.
Hymn of Apollo
The sleepless Hours who watch me as I lie,
Curtained with star-inwoven tapestries
From the broad moonlight of the sky,
Fanning the busy dreams from my dim eyes, -
Waken me when there Mother, the grey Dawn,
Tells them that dreams and that the Moon is gone.
"Hymn of Apollo", Percy Bysshe Shelley
Prologue
There were worlds where the sun was green and the sand was black. There were worlds where the mountains were made of crystal and pure gold flowed rapidly in rivers. There were worlds where the snow was the color of blood, while the blood itself was whiter than white. There were worlds where castles hadn't yet given way to the towering grey multistory needles, and there were those where the needles were long abandoned, with castled being erected on their ruins.
There were worlds where the dawn was greeted by the joined flapping of a myriad wings of creatures that soared high above the earth, where the glorious hymn to the rising sun merged with the screaming of the wingless prey dying on the unworthy ground. There were worlds where the sunlight was greeted with nothing but closed shutters, for it was more bitter than poison there.
But this story was not about them.
There were worlds where night and day had become one. Where one could look up at the sun and see stars. Where one could step out at night and see sunlight.
This wasn't about them either.
There were worlds where the sun was as yellow as a dragon's pupil, the grass was green, and the water transparent. Where castles of stone and buildings of concrete reached towards the blue sky, where birds flew, and people smiled to one another.
Onward.
