She was drunk. For the first time in centuries, Celestia was drunk.
It took a couple bottles of some of the strongest vintage Celestia had in the palace, but she managed to get herself a little wasted as she lied miserably on the floor by a lit fireplace in her private study. Such a wonderful achievement that was.
Celestia sighed.
Not a single thing was going right. In fact, everything had gotten so much worse.
The changelings were a stone's throw away from Canterlot, and bombs fell over the city nearly every day. The army was doing everything they could, and Equestria was giving everything they could spare, but it still wasn't enough. The war demanded more from Equestria, and Celestia was at a crossroads.
The solution presented itself to the princess, but she did not like it at all. More conscription for the military, more labor for the factories, and a tighter rationing of goods were in order, but how much more could Celestia take away from her people and throw into the hungry, bottomless maws of war?
There wasn't much of a choice, unfortunately. Equestria had to fight back or lose everything, and survival at the moment depended on how many soldiers were in the front with a gun, and how many workers were in the factories making those guns.
Celestia sighed once more, absentmindedly moving her glass of wine about in her grasp and watching as the colors danced in the light.
The week had been one of the most stressful ones Celestia had experienced since the start of the war. Changeling spies and infiltrators were showing up all over the place and wreaking havoc with army logistics, production was severely disrupted when air forces failed to stop a large bombing raid that destroyed several factories and killed many in the process, and a general was temporarily taken out of action after nearly getting killed in the field by an artillery shell.
However, none of those compared to the one thing that had finally cracked the thousand year old Princess Celestia like it had.
It was a recent intelligence report about the administrative operations that the changelings conducted in occupied Equestrian lands. The investigation started when Equestrian refugees from the west were claiming all sorts of things as they fled east, and the amount of horrible stories that were told was simply too much to ignore. When escaping Equestrian prisoners of war were later heard claiming the same things, the Equestrian government had finally instructed S.M.I.L.E to look into it alongside their usual rounds of intel gathering and sabotage behind enemy lines. Celestia would never forget the information that agents eventually brought back to Canterlot weeks later.
They all already knew that the changelings had little regard for pony life. What invader would treat the people they've conquered well in the middle of a war after all? However, it was so much worse than Celestia and her government could have imagined.
The princess stopped mindlessly swishing her drink and slowly shifted her gaze onto the pile of papers laid down haphazardly on a table nearby.
The changelings ruled western Equestria with fear. Everyone under the occupation were at the mercy of changeling soldiers and whatever orders they were given. Every day was a day lived under the watchful eyes of the changelings.
Sometimes, a day went without a problem. Sometimes, there were arrests. Sometimes, there were beatings and executions.
Then, sometimes, changeling high command ordered people - usually those suspected of having connections with Equestrian resistance members - to be rounded up along with their families and moved somewhere else.
Mares and stallions.
The sick and the elderly.
Foals.
They were all dragged out of their homes, and there were no exceptions made.
It wasn't officially known what happened next whenever these cases of "relocation" occurred, but if the stories and rumors were to be believed, then forced labor and execution was almost certainly the fates of many. However, changeling biology as was currently understood dictated that horrifically fatal love extraction was also an option for the poor souls who were rounded up.
Celestia felt like vomiting when she read those papers. Nothing had been confirmed yet, and likely wouldn't be anytime soon, but the evidence was basically already there. Her people were being tormented and slaughtered, and it deeply hurt her in a way that she hadn't felt in a while.
It was a painful reminder of why they were fighting, and Celestia wished she could do so much more than she already was.
Finishing her drink in one sudden motion, Celestia closed her eyes. She let out a shaky breath.
The princess felt pain, but there was something else. Something was there, rising from the depths. It cried for justice. It cried for revenge. It cried for retribution against the changeling ilk.
Hatred. Celestia felt hatred for the changelings as well as hatred for her own failures. A voice at the back of her head whispered to her and told her to do the right thing - to take the fight to the changelings in order to make them pay for their crimes against Equestria in blood.
It was sweet and tempting. It was emboldening. It was lighting a raging fire inside of her that she didn't even know she had.
Maybe...
Maybe she should listen.