So this began as a plotbunny that randomly ran by me while at work, so when i got home i chased it and after diving at the rabbit hole i caught and murdered it.
After the succesful capture of it i sent it to the cheff (my beta reader) to make it consumable to the audience.
Again big thanks to : THE CREATOR and Hydra, for beta-ing and fixing my mess.
If you are into Pokemon i would recommend checking their fic: Pokextinction.
For those waiting for the Jaune-Diskworld update i am like 1600 word in it and i will try to push it to reach 2k.
As the pandemic raged, she stayed inside and closed everything out. Some of Her people did the same in the past; When the plague of some kind came, they took enough things with them to live through the warm months of the summer and autumn, went to the mountains, and came back to find emptied cities. The less fortunate who couldn't afford to do the same thing were culled by the disease.
While staying alone on the couch, she thought of her past, the present and the future.
She remembered when Khan Kubrat gathered his sons. She was in the home of her father back then. In the land of the Onogundur Huns as that Byzantinian had called it, she later learned it was now called Black Sea- Caspian steppes. Her father, the Old great Bulgaria as they came to call him, came to be when the khan united the Onogur, Kutrigur and the Utigur protobulgarian tribes. Together they went to fight with the Khaganate. He was the first Bulgarian to be baptized by the church in Constantinople.
She saw how he gathered them. Now the great leader was old and decrepit. The legend of what happened was still told with minor differences. Some said the objects were sticks, other twigs and some even said it was spears. But at this point what it was didn't matter. What the old ruler told them is what mattered.
"Gather here sons of mine." He said. Before him stood his five sons, Batbayan, Asparuh, Alcek, Kotrag and Kuber. All good riders and warriors.
"We are here, father." One of them said. The Khan pointed at some of the sticks meant for the fire and told them.
"Bind and give me those spears!" His sons rushed to do as they were told. After looking over the bound poles, the khan gave them to his first son. "Snap them!" The young man tried with all his might, to the point sweat beads on his brow were visible, but failed nonetheless. Despite their best efforts, the others followed suit.
"I will show you how it is done," said their father, taking one of the spear poles and breaking it. The action gathered the confused stares of his sons. "Together you are strong, unbreakable like the bound wood. When you are alone, you are like the single spear, alone and weak."
She saw that and remembered it. Seeing the irony in that, she laughed. She wouldn't be who she was if those men had taken that advice to heart. Her father gathered his own children, Her and her 3 siblings.
When the first son Batbayan fell defending the land of their father, they left their home, never to return.
Her father died soon after.
She went with Asparuh and his people, riding with her people, she went. And the rode to the Danube flatlands to Moesia, around the great river. There her people met with the Slavic tribes, she could remember their knyaz's, tall and blond the leaders of the Severi and the other tribes. They gathered under her banner.
It was the year of 680. Byzantium decided to crush them. With their more accustomed to the terrain allies, they went into the swamps, in their wooden encampments. The attackers could not advance together because of that.
Some time passed and their Emperor had to go to Mesembria. The ruler of the Eastern Roman Empire suffered from gout and went to relieve his aches. The morale of her enemies plummeted, thinking their leader to have deserted them, the cavalry of the enemy being the first to leave. Seizing the opportunity, we fell on them like an avalanche onto a small village.
As spoils of our victory, my size grew down to the edge of Stara Planina in the south.. My people began raiding Thrace and won another victory against Constantine IV.
That was her first step to the greatness she had 2 centuries later.
She remembered many battles where she rode shoulder to shoulder with her people. She saw as Krum slaughtered his enemies and conquered cities of her southern neighbor.
Byzantium was enraged for it, the current head of the empire to go on a warpath. The expedition plundered and killed all the way to the capital. The Burning of the capital city and the savagery on her people, no matter their age or standing, brought her great grief. Even her youngest children were killed is a terrific way.
On his victorious path back home he was intercepted. Near the Varbica pass she and hers, ambushed and trapped their enemy, too laden with loot from their plunder preventing them from traveling with haste. It was there where the roman head of the state, lost his head. Krum lined it with silver and used it as a drinking cup. She remembered the vengeance-born happiness from seeing it. Krum made their first written laws. As her neighbor would have said Lex dura lex. The laws were to prevent begging and to help the poor, while punishing severely crimes.
She remembered the crisis that followed his death, while short lived it was seized by her rival. After the end of it a new khan was put on the throne – Omortag the builder, he made peace with his neighbors and built things.
Inscription of his still remained on a column:
...Even if a man lives well, he dies and another one comes into existence. Let the one who comes later upon seeing this inscription remember the one who had made it. And the name is Omurtag, Kanasubigi.
Sometimes she wonders if she will see it happen to herself, like it did with her father and her siblings.
She was going to tackle it when it came to it.
Time passed and the cacophony of the different languages and believes in herself was grating on her nerves, it signified the lack of union between her people. The solution came soon. One of her sons, while a poor warrior, was a great diplomat. To end an unfavorable war, he accepted Christianity, and forced Christianity onto his court and nation. The tsar was Boris the First, a bit of integrity was forged between the different parts of her nation. And the headache lessened. Christianity was being given to the masses in greek, and not their language.
Soon that problem was solved by the work of the brothers Cyril and Methodius. Born to a Military man of high ranking named Leo and mother of Slavic origin. Cyril became priest first and a teacher in the University of Magnaura. The brothers realized that a new language is needed and devised the glagolitic alphabet. They defended it in front of the pope. While he agreed with the would be saints, many others didn't. Adrian the second authorized the usage of the Slavonic liturgy.
The disciples of the brothers went and spread their language, and some of them came to her lands. Tsar Boris saw the usefulness and gave them sanctuary and the opportunity to preach and teach the masses. Clement of Ohrid devised the Cyrillic alphabet.
Time passed and that ruler decided to become a monk, leaving his oldest to rule. Vladimir-Rasate tried to abandon the work of his old man and return me and mine to our paganistic origin. Upon hearing this, his father was furious, and so was she, the unity that she had felt within herself, being threatened. Leaving the monastery, the old Tsar Boris, now going by the Christian name of Mikhail, soon defeated his wayward son, and as a punishment, blinded him. He then shaved his wife and sent her to the monastery. The unity she felt brought her happiness.
The other son of Boris brought an age of prosperity and success to her lands. Simeon gave ways to scholars and monasteries helping with creating the literature of the Bulgarians. Seeing sons and daughters prospering was joy like no other.
It was around the start of the second millennium when everything went to hell. She could remember quite vividly what happened around the village of Klyuch. She suffered a crushing defeat. She saw her sons being taken as prisoners of war. She cried tears of grief on that day.
What brought her to an apathetic depression was the return of her captured sons. The day when the motley army of fourteen thousand returned, she saw blind and deliberately disabled men. Ninety-nine percent of them were bound to never see the light of day. The one percent were left to see with one of their eyes to help bring the completely blind ones home.
She felt broken on that day. The tsar of the period going by Samuil got a heart attack when he saw them.
She barely remembered the 4 years until the first Bulgarian Tsardom fell.
Her people became part of the Empire. For almost a century her people were ruled by the Byzantinians. In hindsight, while they were a bunch of holier than thou assholes, they were tolerable. And compared to the Ottomans, the Romans were sunshine and happiness.
Even through the bad times of the ruling, She noticed new people coming into what were once her lands. Cumans and Vlachs. With time they were assimilated by the Bulgarian locals. Over time more and more were her children becoming rebellious. Until it happened. The beginning of her second incarnation.
The Asen dynasty of Turnovo. They led an uprising born to combat a new taxation. The emperor of her rival apparently needed money for his wedding with a Hungarian princess. To gather the money, he decided to set a new heavy taxation.
She bore witness as the brother Petar and Asen of Turnovo became merely city rulers of mixed origin. With their ancestry being mixed Bulgarian with Cuman or Vlach, people were assimilated by Her people. Thus followed times of prosperity both cultural and economic. There were some rough patches, like the crusaders being more trouble than they were worth.
The epoch of what would have been called Renaissance in western Europe was almost upon them by the start of the 14th century.
By the end of the 14th century, she was so small and insignificant. She and hers were basically slaves to the Ottomans. Seen as infidels and from there with no rights. For some time, her eyes couldn't even produce tears from how dry they were.
At times, her chains felt looser and times they felt tighter and longer. But she persevered, seeing girls being taken away. Young boys being forcibly taken as blood tax, to join the janissaries corps. So much time of sadness and grief.
Almost five centuries of depression. Around the mountains was where she felt her people were strongest in their belief. Christianity, while punished, also persevered. Religion and beliefs helped to keep her people united. Slowly but surely by the end of 18th century and the start of 19th century, she entered her renaissance. She felt the shackles keeping her a slave becoming loose slowly. People were becoming more progressive and educated. Some of the revolutionary schemes they planned were more and more elaborate. And all that progress they were making felt like it was lost when one of her sons died. Captured and left to hang in the cold winter airs near Sofia. The apostle of freedom as they called him. Essentially betrayed by his own people.
Then came the April uprising in the year of 1876. The accursed attempt of her people to free themselves and her. She saw as it started prematurely, and knew it was going to fail. That awareness made her pray for things to not be the worst possible. The brutal suppressions from the Turkish army send her into another short lived state of apathy. She had seen what happened at Batak and the small villages. All the needles,death and bloodshed brought upon her people. This time, the depression was short lived. People were livid. And for once, the great powers of the west were going to learn it.
Eugene Schuyler and Januarius MacGahan, people who didn't see themselves as Bulgarians but she was ready to adopt them at one point. Them sending out correspondence to the London Daily News and the New York Herald swayed the public opinions of the great nations. The British populace had such an outcry that Arthur could not help the Ottomans against the Russians when the Russian-Turkish war came to be.
After many grueling fights, where her children and the nations inhabiting the Russian empire fought and died shoulder to shoulder, she was finally free. And not just free, the treaty from San Stefano made her a giant. Which was something that the great powers of Europe were strongly against. After all, she was on the verge of becoming a great power. And the game had been too long in play for a new player to join. Especially if this new player was going to be pro-Russian. So they broke her apart with the Berlin treaty, leaving her only with the lands to the north of Stara planina and the region around Vitosha mountain.
She remembered her first tsar, Alexander Battenberg. A youngster chosen to be king while she was to remain as a dependent part of the empire while being given the right of self-governance. For a short time, she even had a small case of a split personality. With her people from the short-lived Eastern Rumelia in Thrace being part of her but not exactly part of her. That was solved by her nation on September 1885.
And yet again the great powers intervened. Russia didn't get notified nor was told beforehand.
Serbia was promised help from Austria and the idea for territorial gain made the Serbian king agree to invade her.
It was a victory, but not without its casualties. The Serbian invasion had low morale because of the idea to fight the Bulgarians. The battle at Slivnica went for nearly three days, where she was amongst her people seeing yet another bloodshed. She was sick of it. How many families will be left grieving at the end of it?
She hated the Balkan wars and first World War. Cursed be that bastard Ferdinand for even involving her children in yet another conflict.
The bloody suppression of the September uprising of 1923 was maddening. There is no greater grievance than that of a parent having to bury its child. She had done it so much at this point; she couldn't stand it anymore. Why were her sons and daughters killing each other? Bombings and uprisings.
She grew and shrank frequently during those times.
The second World War came. The son of Ferdinand, Boris the third was the tsar of her people. Having seen what happened with the Armenians, and having seen enough genocides and massacres, she did everything she could to sway the ruler. And she succeeded, she kept as much of her jewry as possible, either through sending them to Palestine. She grew back some of the lands lost from the Versailles and Neuilly treaties.
Her ruler did everything he could to not send troops against the USSR and adamantly refused to deport her jewry. They were as much her children as the Bulgarians.
More time passed. She had seen the socialists, and the communists. What had plagued her mind is how for some strange reason her politicians were so goddamn incapable.
The bark of the recent efforts of her people ended her musings. Looking down, she saw her dogs. She enjoyed hunting. It was one of the things she did when she was young and her sons and daughters did to this very day. After all, everybody could use a friend. And what better friend than the men's best friend. Putting her dogs on a leash and a mask on her face. She could go for a walk, lest she decides to dwell on past horrors and glories.