NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: Ok guys. I am so, SO sorry I missed last week's update. I don't know what it was about this chapter, but it was really hard for me to write (and not for lack of trying. I've been at it daily, trust me). I barely finished it just now, so there are probably all sorts of glaring grammatical/spelling errors. Sorry 'bout that.

So, I found a winner of the Creative Insult Contest! It was actually from an old comment, not one specifically written FOR the contest. In it The Gord referred to Quintilian as "Quintidiot." - simple, elegant, effective, I like it!

There will be more opportunities for creative insults to come. Please feel free to share your ideas in the review section!

Ch. 38 – Light and Dark

Usopp generally had a high tolerance for critters that others deemed disgusting, but this experience definitely put that tolerance to the test. The rat creatures smelled putrid, like rotting meat. There were so many of them that Usopp and his party didn't walk to their final destination, they rode on an ever-moving carpet of warm, bristly fur. Gross.

Somewhere along the way Raqueline gripped his arm and shouted above the din of squeaking and hissing: "We're going the wrong way! I just felt something in the stones. Her majesty is below us!"

Whether or not the others had heard her, no one had been able to dismount the strange moving carpet. They rode on to their final destination at surprising speed until the rats came to a pattering stop. They disappeared from underfoot, and suddenly all became eerily quiet as the rats formed silent ranks.

They were in some sort of giant rats' nest, lined with fur and malabranche bones. The rats were about a quarter the lions' size. That they managed to eat creatures bigger than they were was enough to set Usopp's coward sense on high alert. After all, what was a human to a lion? The rats could easily make quick work of all them.

He also caught sight of some empty giant bug shells, now no longer luminescent. These glittered in the light of the travelers' mushroom lanterns, and immediately drew their eye to the center of the nest. There in what appeared to be a throne made of a beetle's wings sat a malacoda large enough to wear a malabranche skull on her head. She seemed to stare at them through her blind, milky eyes, her nose twitching as it took in their scent.

Usopp groaned.

"You asked them to take us to her majesty," he pointed out to Feta in a harsh whisper. "You didn't specify which majesty you meant. This must be their queen!"

"Parbleu!" Chef Feta cried, clutching his heart.

An underling malacoda approached the rat queen, its head and snake tale both bowed in submission before her. He relayed a message of low squeaks.

"If only Chopper were here to translate," Usopp muttered.

The rat queen let out a squeak of disbelief. Two eager mice started to prance around Feta excitedly.

"I think that's your cue, Chef," Andromache whispered.

"Oui, Lieutenant," he replied. "I will make it rain!"

Before Andromache had the chance to cry out in protest, the insane chef lifted his sticky fingers to the sky and spun like a whirlwind. The sprinkler effect of cheese shooting upward from his fingertips created a veritable cheesy downpour.

As it happened, Usopp had a large, collapsible umbrella on him. He had a knack for packing the necessary essentials. Raqueline, who generally stuck to the back of the group, was quick to take cover with him. Sanji, who had been hanging around Raqueline as her body guard, also side-stepped the cheesy downpour in the nick of time.

The others were not so lucky. A moment later Agamemnon, Andromache, and Feta were completely soaked in cheese whiz.

"You idiot!" Agamemnon cried. "Spray the rats, not us!"

The rat queen let out a squeal of astonishment, then squeaked out something that sounded like an order. A moment later the three cheese smothered wretches found themselves boxed in by malacoda guards, who pushed them eagerly toward the queen.

"We're wasting time," Andromache cried, unafraid of the apparent danger. Did she not notice that the rat guards carried weapons made of bones? More importantly, did she not notice the rat queen smacking her lips diabolically? "Raqueline, you said you sensed her majesty somewhere back there?"

"Yes, Lieutenant!" Raqueline called.

"You three, go!" the Lieutenant ordered. "They aren't interested in you at the moment. Get out of here while you can and save the queen!"

"I never abandon a woman in need," Sanji started, preparing to leap after Andromache's captors.

"Then take charge of this, Cook-San," Andromache called, tossing him a cheese covered projectile.

He caught it in surprise. Most of the cheese sloughed off of it as it flew through the air, revealing a soft glow and the gleam of glass. By the time it reached his hand, everyone could clearly see what it was; the Nemomora injection.

"Helena needs you more than I do right now," Andromache went on. The small woman smirked and drew her enormous sword. "Trust me. We'll be fine."

Sanji hesitated, but then nodded. Usopp didn't stop to see him do it, though; he had already taken off after Raqueline, who lead the way with hurried steps out of the rats' nest.

"I remember the way!" she called excitedly. "The stones told me it's in this direction!"

"Hey, Pirates!" Agamemnon called, "Take care of my daughter. And don't you try anything, blondie!"

Sanji shot him a sharp salute, then turned on his heel to follow the others.

"Wait for me, Raqueline-Chan!" he called.

Usopp rolled his eyes. Yup. DEFINITELY the wrong group.

Nami wasn't exactly pleased with her own group at present. When she had chosen this particular rescue party, it had been with Zoro and Luffy, two of the strongest people she knew, and Hector, definitely the strongest fighter in Ilium, Helena aside. Now all three of them had disappeared, and Nami was stuck with a weakling dancer and two idiot warriors.

Naturally at a time like this, fate would lead her and her party to find the one person she didn't want to run into down in this labyrinth: Nemo. –Not the short, weird lawyer dude either. They'd stumbled into the giant half-man half-bull half-horse creature-thing. –The one Troy had killed for show.

Ok, so Chopper had said that that was a hoax, but it didn't make the thing's giant fist (which was currently about to punch her into a solid stone cave wall) any less intimidating.

They'd apparently stumbled into its home or something. It had a whole family, complete with a wife, little ones (still bigger than the average human…or horse for that matter), grandparents and siblings. They lived in a chamber big enough to be its own city (probably a village by the monsters' standards). The enormous houses carved into the stone were illuminated by a familiar green fungus, along with other cave plants that grew in rows like gardens.

Yeah, so they were probably organized and intelligent, but they were still monsters. As the biggest monster there, the false-Nemo leapt into action to defend the others first, but its family was close behind.

Well, Nami wasn't about to roll with the punches. –Particularly not one that large. She ducked out of the way in the nick of time, pulling out her staff as her lantern fell and shattered.

Well, at least Menelaus and Paris weren't entirely incompetent. They both leapt to defend her, bow and sword at the ready. They drew the false-Nemo away from her with their attacks, giving her and Gloriadne a chance to regroup.

"Should we run?" the dance master asked.

"I don't think we can outrun that thing," Nami said. "Did you notice that the maze has high ceilings? They could follow us. And they probably know the way better than we do."

"What did we do to anger them? All we did was walk into their village. Woah! Heads up!"

One of the creatures threw a small boulder at them, forcing them to dive away from each other.

"Alright, enough is enough!" Nami threw a few hot and cold balls from her clima takt, creating a small air current that pushed away the mino-centaur thing bearing down on them. "Time for an underground thunderstorm. Or should we try a tornado?"

Gloriadne screamed. One of the creatures – the wife of the false-Nemo by the looks of it – had grabbed the dancer in one huge fist. Lifting her into the air, the mino-centaur-lady shook Gloriadne none-too-gently in obvious frustration.

It was almost like she was trying to communicate something to the dancer, but her shaking was powerful enough that she could potentially break the woman's neck. When Gloriadne screamed in response, the mino-centaur-lady slammed Gloriadne into the ground, hard enough to cause cracks and a crater.

Paris and Menelaus cried out in horror. There was no way Gloriadne, a non-fighter, had survived. Nami stifled a scream, clasping her hands over her mouth as she stared at the cracks beneath the monster's splayed hand.

Distracted by Gloriadne's demise, Nami didn't notice the false-Nemo approach her until it was too late. Like his wife before him, he scooped the navigator up in his fist and shook her angrily. Nami screamed in desperation, but already knew it was too late. She was as good as dead.

Unable to move, Zoro could only watch with gritted teeth as Helena faced Nemo on her own. At least the swordsman handled it with more sangfroid than Luffy, who struggled loudly against the shadows encasing him, shouting curses and what-have-you at the top of his lungs.

"Oy, Captain," Zoro muttered to him. "She's claimed the duel now. Even if Nemo let us go, we'd have to sit and watch."

"This isn't a fair fight," Luffy pointed out angrily. "He's using us as a shield."

Zoro saw what Luffy meant. If Helena started to win, Nemo would have no qualms about using them as leverage to get her to surrender. It wasn't like there was much they could do at the moment, though. They'd just have to trust that Helena could take the coward down before it came to that.

Though Nemo stood with swords at the ready, he didn't move to attack Helena with them off the bat. Instead a wave of tentacles shot out at her from the dark side of the temple. Zoro found himself tensing as though he were the one bracing for the inevitable impact.

Undaunted, the queen maintained her attack-ready stance. Zoro had fought those tentacles before; they were pretty solid. Why wasn't she moving for a defensive block?

The darkness crashed over her with a force that shook the underground temple, shaking some of Hector's glowing leaves loose so that they fell like radioactive snow. Zoro winced, positive that Helena had been pummeled into the ground by the sheer weight of Nemo's dark wave.

Or…not.

Her light broke through the surge, parting it as smoothly as the prow of a ship parts the ocean. Even the falling leaves continued in their spiraling descent, unmoved as they fluttered to the ground.

"If you are trying to intimidate me, Quin, it's not working," Helena called, a crooked smile tweaking her lips "You cannot harm me now."

The long mouth-line dividing Nemo's face maintained its inhuman smirk. He launched himself at her, using the dark tentacles as a springboard this time. "Oh, majesty. You've never been more wrong."

His ebon blades were solid enough. They met her illuminated swords with the telltale screech of steel on steel.

"I have waited…" he struck at her up close, forcing her to parry fast and hard. "…so long…" again he struck, again she blocked, "…to fight you like this."

Helena kept up easily with her ebon dance partner, though the onslaught became faster and stronger with each blow. Nemo continued to interrupt his own little soliloquy with strike after strike as a he spoke:

"Do you realize…how infuriating…it has been…hiding…this…power?!"

Helena pushed him back, her blades flashing with an empyrean glow. Flipping backward in a single handspring, she put the stone altar between herself and the demon. Now closer to Hector, she could have been the angel with a flaming sword, guarding the tree of life. Well, Zoro had never read the good book himself, but he'd heard something about that. If such an angel existed, he couldn't imagine it held swords in its toes though.

Nemo hovered in a dark cloud, his inky, featureless face barely brushed by Hector's light:

"I have watched men far below you, far below me fight for you. But that ends here!" he dove at her from above. "I should have done this ages ago!"

"Poseidon's Trident!" Helena cried. She launched straight upward like a geyser, meeting him midair with her three blades. The attack knocked him through some of Hector's branches and into the ceiling.

His body smacked against the stone, cracking the earth a bit with a satisfying crash. Zoro smirked as Luffy let out a little whoop. They hadn't seen her use that attack before.

"Blast this Tree to Hades!" Nemo cried as he peeled away from the wall and became entangled in Hector's branches. It was hard to see him amidst the leaves, but he obviously didn't like the light. Was he in pain? It didn't seem like the light hurt him before, but he writhed and covered his eyes as his dark shell slowly started to dissipate.

In the midst of his struggle, Helena leapt up again after him. Refusing to let her get close to him he threw both of his swords, quickly so as to conceal his as-yet overshadowed face from the bright light. Her eyes widened with surprise. A swordsman rarely if ever threw his swords. It left him too vulnerable.

The airborne swords really wouldn't have done much to stunt her ascent, as she easily knocked them aside. However as she did she checked her momentum and allowed herself to drop again to her feet with a little flip. Landing beside one of the blades while the other petered off into the dark, she picked it up with her one free hand, inspecting it with some concern.

"This…looks like Troy's," she murmured. The shadow around it started to crack within her light, and she knocked it against the stone floor. When the blade sparked and shone free of Nemo's darkness, Zoro recognized it even before she spoke; "This is Troy's sword. Quintilian, what have you done with him?!"

Zoro remembered meeting Troy in the maze earlier. What had happened to him since they'd parted ways? Quintilian apparently regarded him as an enemy now, which meant the Dodgy man was in danger.

Nemo disappeared into the dark stone above Hector, and his laugh again resonated from every shadowed corner of the temple.

"Wouldn't you like to know?" he asked. "Are you concerned about him, Majesty? Do you honestly care what becomes of him? If so, you should have married him ages ago, faithless wench."

More tentacles appeared from the darkness, but this time when they struck her they made contact. Helena flew backward with force, striking the wall a few feet from Hector's trunk.

"Perhaps my darkness cannot touch you, Sun Queen," Nemo simpered from the Cimmerian side of the altar. "But here at least the stones will obey me."

Helena fell away from the wall, landing on her knees in a crouch. She caught a trickle of luminescent blood that threatened to drip into her eyes from a scratch on her forehead, flicking it aside as she glared at him. Amidst the tentacle propelled rock wave, Nemo had somehow stolen Troy's blade back from her.

"Majesty…" Hector panted weakly.

"I'm fine, General," she told him. She rubbed her eyes as if something were clouding her vision. Zoro recognized that look. The poison was starting to take hold of her. Chopper said she had thirty minutes, right? How much time had passed? It didn't seem like much, but then, the glow was so much more powerful than before. A lot of the doctor's calculations seemed to be off today.

When her eyes again gained their focus, Nemo had already stepped over the altar.

"You dare come to this side of the temple again?" Helena asked. "You're nothing in the light, Quin."

"We shall see," he replied casually, not ceasing his slow walk forward. Hector's branches cast veins of light on the black stone of cave floor, but there were still some pockets of shadow. Nemo stuck to these little puddles of darkness, carefully picking his way across the floor to maintain the shell around him.

During this slow procession, Helena chanced a glance back at Hector. Her dagger was in reach.

"Don't even think about it," Nemo growled.

"Yeah? Try and stop me."

Helena's hand darted out and closed over the hilt of the dagger, but Nemo again threw one of his blades. Helena was forced to withdraw her hand before she could get a good grip as she moved to deflect the gladius with Peleus.

By the time she had recovered enough to reach out toward Hector again, Nemo had disappeared into one of the puddles of darkness and reappeared close enough to lash out at Helena. He had both swords again.

Zoro finally understood how Nemo could confidently throw his swords. The black steel of Troy's blades had been tempered to reduce sheen. Nemo could retrieve them from practically anywhere in the room.

As the battle picked up speed, Nemo didn't hesitate to put his projectile swords to use. Dodging in and out of the dark splotches on the floor, he fought Helena both up close and at a distance. It took every ounce of concentration she had just to keep up. Normally Zoro wouldn't be worried, but he'd seen that moment of weakness caused by the poison. How much longer could she last?

On top of that, she couldn't seem to land any real hits. She couldn't keep playing the defensive or she would run out of time!

"Is it getting brighter in here?" Luffy asked, just as Helena blocked a particularly powerful blow.

Zoro blinked at him. He'd been so absorbed in the fight he hadn't noticed, but Luffy was right. Where was the light coming from, though?

Scanning the room, he realized its source was the same as it had always been; Hector. Only the tree-man had started to glow on the outside of his bark now. Squinting, Zoro realized that it wasn't the bark itself that was glowing; there were mushrooms sprouting all over him.

An earthy scent hit Zoro's nostrils. "It smells like dry rot," he observed. "That can't be good…"

After all it made sense. In his tree form the mushrooms would naturally spread more quickly. Though he'd injected himself after Helena, he was already on the brink of consciousness; perhaps the brink of death.

Zoro's attention returned sharply to the battle when Helena let out a pained cry. Nemo hadn't landed a hit with his swords, but he had knocked her back with another one of those rock tentacles. This time she smacked right into Hector's trunk.

She didn't waste time wiping away blood or goading Nemo this time round. Hardly watching what she did, she grabbed her dagger and yanked it free.

"Majesty, NO!" Hector cried, his voice nothing more than a rasp. But the deed had already been done. Without the sea prism to freeze him in his powers, Hector could no longer maintain a hold on his tree form. His branches and roots shrank back into him. The poison overpowered him and he collapsed into a glowing heap on the floor of the temple.

Helena stumbled as the roots disappeared from beneath her. "Hector…?" she called quietly, falling to one knee as the poison sapped her strength. Through a feverish gaze, she tried to process what she was seeing. It took her a while to compute. "HECTOR!" she shrieked in a panic as it finally settled in.

Darkness flooded the room once more, to the hair-raising rumble of Nemo's magnified laughter. "It would seem the scales have tipped back in my favor," he simpered, his voice reverberating all about the room. "Not that you ever stood a chance to begin with, Helena du Cygnus."

"DAMN YOU!" Helena screeched, whirling to her feet in a tornado of flashing blades. "DAMN YOU TO HADES!"

"Crying over that worthless peon in your army, Queen Helena?" Nemo goaded as her blades met nothing. He had disappeared into the darkness again. "Really, your Majesty. He couldn't even save your father. He can't even save you."

"Hector is worth a thousand of me!" Helena shouted at him.

"Oh no, you have that reversed," Nemo replied in a menacing tone, appearing beside her to check her flailing swords against his own. "At least according to your father, you are worth a thousand of Hector."

Zoro didn't like where this was going.

"Helena," he called out to her, his baritone cutting sharply through the darkness. "Don't lose your focus."

"Did you know what kind of man your father was?" Nemo asked, circling Helena now. He stood just at the edge of her light, his swords hanging at his sides.

"Be silent," Hector rasped, coughing as he tried to push himself to his feet. "Quintilian, don't you dare say another word."

"Oh, but it's a tale of a father's love," Nemo simpered as Hector again collapsed. "A touching story of how a man valued the life of his wife and daughter more than the lives of a thousand men."

"What are you talking about?" Helena murmured, her swords lowering slightly from their hither-to defensive stance.

"I'm talking about the day your mother died," he replied as though it were the most obvious thing in the world. "—The day your father proved just how worthless his citizens were to him. Did you honestly believe your father did nothing when Leda went out to fight the Navy, pregnant as she was? Did you honestly believe the lies he told you about his weakened state? How do you think Ilium won that battle after Leda's death? Surely you have studied how the God Powers work, Helena."

"Father used a God Power…?"

"Oh yes. The most powerful God power there is," Nemo told her with glee as he continued to prowl around her. "Why do you think they call you the Daughter of Zeus?"

"He wore the Mask of Zeus," Helena breathed. "Oh gods…"

"Yes, the mask that destroys the body of any mortal who dares to wield it. And you were too blind to see it before now."

"And the cost…?" she asked gingerly. "Don't tell me it was…"

"That's right: a thousand lives."

"Father, how could you?" Helena murmured.

"Helena, it was to save your entire nation," Zoro attempted. The look of betrayal on her face was enough convince him that her focus was completely gone now. She was wide open for an attack. She needed to keep her cool and think logically or Nemo would completely unhinge her. Already the poison and Hector's collapse had burned her out. – perhaps the hours of torture in the darkness were also taking their toll.

"You knew?" Helena demanded, throwing a glare in his direction. Not that she could see him anymore without Hector's light.

"It was to save your mother. It was to save you, not us." Nemo said, swinging his blades at her. She barely managed to block him in time. "And why do you think?" he lashed out at her again, delighted at the pain he was causing her. "Why do you think the gods would make the royals immortal rather than let their line die? Why would they lend them their power? It is because you and all your line are more important than the rest of us plebes, Helena. "

The fight had brought them away from Hector's facedown form and closer again to the altar. She fought him with her four-sword style, but Zoro winced as Nemo too-easily disarmed her in three blows, first of the sea prism dagger, and then of the foot swords. Overpowering her in another wave of darkness-infused rocks, he lifted her into the air and slammed her down onto the altar.

She struggled to maintain her grip on her mother's sword as Nemo pinned her there, his knees digging into her thighs as he gripped her arms, hyper-extending them over the sides of the altar.

"Drop your sword and surrender," he growled. "Surrender and let me become one of you."

She whimpered a bit as he forced her arms further back than even her flexible joints could handle. His fingernails dug into her wrist, forcing her at last to drop the blade.

"You will never become one of us," Helena snarled. "My father may have killed his thousand, Nemo, but you have killed your thousands. I will never let you hurt my people again."

"I'm afraid you have no choice, Majesty. You have been defeated." He leaned in amorously, making to kiss her on top of the Altar of Dido. "You are weaponless."

Helena smirked. "Think again."

With a sharp flick of her head, she rammed her crown into his shadowed face. The sea prism porcelain drew real, red blood as it shattered into him. He tumbled away from her screaming before he collapsed on the other side of the altar.

Luffy and Zoro came free of their shadowed bonds, dropping to the foot of Hera's statue as Helena lay panting on the altar. The pirates ran to her, Zoro retrieving Peleus and handing it to her as Luffy took her by the hand and helped her sit upright.

"It's not over yet," she heaved. "Please step back."

Luffy let her slip out of his grip as she swung her legs over the side of the altar. Using Peleus as a crutch, she got to her feet.

"Quintilian du Aeschylus," she started but then fell silent. Luffy and Zoro exchanged glances, both worried she might collapse. Stepping beside her, they too saw what she'd seen first as her light fell across Nemo's unmasked features.

The light gleamed off of black, coiffed hair, which cascaded fashionably over a pale, youthful, face. With blood dribbling down his cheeks and forehead, he glared up at her though shocked, mismatched eyes. – The man Helena had been fighting wasn't Quintilian du Aeschylus, it was…

"Troy…?" Helena rasped, finding her voice at last. "Troy du Noir…?"

A grimacing smile twisted his handsome lips as the shock finally faded from his features. "You caught me," he sneered, pulling a shard of porcelain from his unapologetic face. "Congratulations. You've ruined everything."