A/N: So this is super short, mainly because I'm starting to hate where this is going. I talked to a friend about it and kind of ENTIRELY shifted how I want this war to go, which would involve a good amount of alterations to the previous chapters. I also realized just badly written this whole thing is, and I kind of want to go back and just start over. I'm not usually opposed to "starting over," but I'm afraid it'll have a bad side effect here on FF. Like I'll lose some of my readers since people won't want to reread or anything. Not that it would be rereading. I dunno. I don't like this very much.

BUT I thought I owed it to those who've been reading. Thank you so much for the support to those who've been reviewing! I don't know if I'll be updating this weekly anymore.

THE OFFICIAL VIEWING of the new princess had been more or less cancelled due to the rebellion, furthermore referred to as the Castle Town Rebellion. After witnessing Lord Ganondorf's sinister attack, Impa made no attempt to battle anymore, to follow the Gerudo on his mission; she made her way straight for the castle. Things seemed to be taking a turn, and her first and forefront priority was the newborn princess. When she made it to the nursery, she saw Rauru inside, holding her tightly to his golden-yellow robes.

"Impa!" he said, rocking the baby slowly so that she did not wake.

"The city…" Impa said, unsure of how to find her voice. "Dinerat rebels have attacked."

Rauru nodded in acknowledgement, saying he had come to protect the newborn. When Impa asked where the King and Queen were, he said he wasn't sure. He had gone, just like Impa, straight to Zelda's nursery.

When the fighting had finally ended, Impa exited the castle. Leaving the princess in the good hands of Rauru, who was an incredibly experienced Light magic healer, she saddled her silvery-white horse to leave for Kakariko. She'd heard about Kakariko's subtle takeover not long before General Vincent of Erudone came to speak to her about the Sheikah. The strange figure in green, a round-ear. The sorcerer sisters of the Gerudo had spotted him, discovered his name, and the information had been passed invisibly through the shadows, all the way across the desert and Hyrule Field to Impa's quarters within the castle. She'd seen the note sitting on her bedside table, the Eye of Truth insignia drawn in red ink on the thick paper. Notes—that was her only form of communication with the people she called family.

"The rebel leader, Link, is in Kakariko," the note read. Impa had stared long and hard at the name, at both names. "Link" was no coincidence—it was a name carefully hand-selected to make a point, to provoke a response from the Adventaries. But Kakariko… The little village was founded by and once harbored the Sheikah during a time of need in Hyrule, intended as a safe haven for those escaping oppression by the terrors that plagued the land. And now, people were using it as a haven against the people the Sheikah had sworn to protect ages ago. Impa needed to speak to the people in Kakariko, preferably this rebel-leader Link. And being Sheikah, she had ways of finding him.

So Impa mounted her horse and left Castle Town through the eastern gate, heading straight for the mountainside village to the northeast. She still wasn't used to traversing Hyrule on horseback, especially when travelling to Kakariko. But being sent to protect the Royal Family, she simply didn't have the luxury of hiding in the shadows anymore. Might as well get used to the travelling habits required of non-Sheikah humans.

Night had fallen over Hyrule by the time Impa caught a glimpse of Kakariko. As counter-intuitive as it seemed to anyone who knew little about the Sheikah, night was not their strongest suit. The powerful tribe thrived on shadows cast by sunlight; when there was no sunlight to cast any shadows, their magic was weakened. Even so, Sheikah were stealthy by nature, and could still easily avoid detection in the poor eyesight of a non-Sheikah.

Impa dismounted swiftly and silently and tied her horse to a tree a good distance from Kakariko. She snuck quickly over to the town's entrance and easily scaled the natural rock wall, averting the watchful—yet tired—eyes of two indistinct guards. From atop the rocks, Impa squinted her red eyes; although the Sheikah did not thrive without the sun, their eyesight did not discriminate between shadow and the night's darkness. She gazed around the village, unusually crammed with tents and campfires belonging to the Castle Town Rebellion refugees. She focused her inner eye, the Eye of Truth all Sheikah were born with. She searched for the soul of the round-ear who seemed to be leading this rebellion, leading the Dinerats in their conquest against unification.

Something pulsed from deep beneath the ground, right in the center of the village. Impa centered her focus on the well, the deep channel leading directly into Din's red earth. How appropriate for the leader of the Dinerats.

But Impa began to move down the interior wall upon realizing the impact of Link's presence at the bottom of the well. It had been created solely for the purpose of extinguishing any fires caused by the towering volcano overhead, but the Sheikah had also used it as a kind of home during a temporary crisis involving mishaps within the Royal Family's security. At the bottom of the well they created a temple of shadows, and forged there with the magic of Impa's ancestors was a tool intended for a world without Sheikah. Her ancestors could see the truth of the future and promptly purged the ability from their magical repertoire so that no other generations had to witness such events and tumultuous possibility. But they still saw the future of a world without Sheikah, and the information could not be unlearned. Thus this tool was created.

The well was flooded again, meant to seal the tool away along with the bodies of the Sheikah elders who clouded their ability to see the future. But they did not leave without parting words of premonition: when a human of non-Sheikah heritage would remove the tool from within the temple, the Sheikah would be in danger.

Impa skirted the sleeping civilians with the swift intensity of a rabbit running from a fox and stopped abruptly before the well, peering down. It had indeed been purged of water, a low flickering light came from within. Panic searing through her chest, she descended down the metal bars that served as a ladder, folding her hood up above her head to shield her white-blonde hair from view.

Her attempts at remaining invisible were in vain however, and the second she turned to face the tunnel that led deeper into the temple, she saw a tall round-ear standing in the torchlight, staring at her with vivid blue eyes. His tunic was green with Hylian words embroidered in gold around the hems. Impa did not have time to read them before the man stepped up to her, blue eyes flickering gold in the dim light.

Impa couldn't speak. She had planned an entire interrogation for this rebel, who she'd imagined to find lying unwittingly in a bed somewhere in Kakariko's residencies. But here he was, looking at her with a somewhat incredulous humor, and she couldn't speak. Eventually the man chuckled lightly and looked down at the item in his hands. Impa followed his gaze and saw what looked like a purple magnifying glass, a red, slitted eye in the middle.

"The Lens of Truth," said the man, admiring it as he passed it between his hands delicately. "To tell the truth"—he paused, grinning at the joke—"I expected something a lot more… significant." He lifted the lens up and down in one hand, as if weighing it, with an expression of mediocrity on his face.

"Link," said Impa. She wanted to say more, to accuse this heretic of everything he was doing to the innocent people of Hyrule, but he was laughing and shaking his head.

"I'm going to take a wild guess," he said, "and say that you're Impa."

Impa felt the fiery heat of rage boiling from inside her chest, but her face did not even twitch. "What are you doing with the Lens of Truth?"

"I'm going to use it to see the truth," said Link. "I thought that was fairly obvious."

"It doesn't belong to you," Impa said simply, red eyes never leaving his own blue ones. He had it down to the tee, she thought. This man looked like the hero of legend. His dark blond hair was cut in the way depicted on the tapestries within Hyrule Castle, his tunic was the same pattern, and a long hat of green dangled behind his head, mimicking the Minish tribe that inhabited the land centuries ago.

"Does it really belong to anyone?" Link said, eyebrows raising to meet his blond bangs.

"Enough," Impa said sternly, stepping forward so that her face was inches from the rebel's. "Clearly your intentions behind using the Lens of Truth are questionable."

"Questionable?" Link said, eyes glimmering with the fierce determination of a young warrior. "How could my intentions—which are unknown to you, by the way—be more questionable than Daltus' intentions on a 'unified' Hyrule?"

Impa's eyes narrowed, the only real expression she was capable of showing. "A unified Hyrule is beneficial to all its inhabitants."

"Funny how most of its inhabitants disagree," Link said. He slipped the Lens of Truth into a brown leather pouch and nodded to Impa as if concluding a meeting. He moved to walk past her, back up the well's ladder, when she whipped an arm out to stop him.

"How did you drain the well?" she asked.

Link blinked down at Impa's arm, then smirked at her. "The Dinerats have the Zoras on their side," he said. "As well as plenty of able-bodied sorcerers."

Impa seethed beneath her stolid expression, mostly at herself for not being able to ask the right questions while in the presence of the enemy. Of course the Dinerats had sorcerers and Zoras. But her grip on Link did not relax.

"You have a lot to answer for, boy," she said.

But then she let go. Link regarded her with shielded blue eyes, and she could not read them. She was still Sheikah though, and as the human turned to climb up the well's ladder she swiped her hand out silently and grabbed the small satchel with the Lens of Truth in it from his pouch. He unwittingly climbed to the top.

Before Link could realize what she'd done, she picked up at full speed into the inner depths of the well—into the remains of the Shadow Temple.