As expected, finding the door that would lead them to Python and the Oracle did not make itself obvious. After Arion had left them they had set to searching almost right away. Hazel had taken the lead and the others had followed, their eyes searching the canyon walls for any sign of the door. They had encountered a flock of wild harpies that had made their homes in the canyon, but they had sent them crumbling away with relative ease. After that they had been more or less untouched by any monsters. When they had encountered the river that ran along the bottom of the canyon Percy had wondered if the door would be at the bottom of the river.

The rest of the group now stood waiting whilst Percy escorted Hazel along the bottom of the river. "Aren't you her brother?" Ryker asked Nico, crossing his arms and continually scanning the canyon for any sign of danger. On his wrists were two Celestial bronze bands that were tight against his wrist. If he flexed his fingers twice the metal bands would transform into claws that covered his hands. The only issue was that the bands of metal would no longer come off his wrists. He had tried, but they had not moved an inch. Closing his hand into a fist for more than three seconds returned the claws to their normal state.

Nico raised an eyebrow and nodded. "I am." He said with a slightly guarded expression. "Why?"

"It would be a whole lot faster if we had two people searching rather than just her." Ryker pointed out.

Nico shook his head. "Different godly parent… sort of." Nico explained. "Pluto is Hades' Roman aspect. She's like my sister… sort of removed but not really. Thalia and Jason are the same. Jason is the son of Jupiter and Thalia is the daughter of Zeus. The only difference is that their mother was the same woman."

"I see." Ryker said after processing this. "So you can't sense underground chambers or whatever this thing is?"

Nico shook his head. "I can summon the dead, shadow travel, and go in and out of the Underworld but that was a Pluto-only power. Hazel and I have some powers that we both have, but not all. She can't summon the dead."

"Pity." Ryker said, turning away from the young demigod. "That could have been useful."

"What about you Ryker?" Piper spoke up.

He raised an eyebrow in response, curious as to what she was speaking about. "What about me?" He asked warily.

"You mother is the goddess of wild animals, the forest, mountains, and caverns." Piper reminded him. "You might be able to look as well. Have you tried?"

"No point." Ryker said dismissively. "When my mother introduced herself to me she trapped me in an underground cave. I tried to use my power but it wasn't any use. I couldn't figure it out."

"Why not try to use it now?" Will encouraged. "It might help speed this up like you said."

Ryker was shaking his head before Will had even finished speaking. "We are about to face an unknown enemy." He reminded them firmly. "Forming that bond with Arion was strenuous enough. I don't know how to use that aspect of my mother's powers, moreover I don't know if there will be some cost to it."

"It makes sense." Annabeth, ever the strategist, nodded in agreement. "We are going to need everyone in their best shape when we go to take on Python. If he is as bad as the Amazons' records indicated, we are going to have a rough time."

Just then Percy and Hazel emerged from the River. Ryker was surprised to see that their clothes had somehow remained dry. "Find anything?" Will asked hopefully.

"Yeah." Hazel said with a satisfied nod. "I think so. There's a door on the bottom of the river a few hundred feet that way. I sensed a huge space beneath it."

"The water around the door felt weird too." Percy added, pulling off his pack and sitting down on the ground. He began to riffle through the contents of his bag until he found a sheet of silver fabric. He tossed the fabric into the air and it sprang up into a massive tent. Ryker blinked in shock and surprise, stepping back instinctively. The others however immediately disappeared inside the structure. The tent seemed to be partitioned into sections, with enough room for many more people than they had. Ryker warily stepped inside, examining the inside. "Not bad." Percy said, lounging on a bed.

"Dibs on this room." Will called from somewhere in the back.

"Dibs on the room next to his." Nico added, his voice coming from somewhere close to where Will's had.

Annabeth, Hazel, and Piper exchanged grins but they said nothing in response. "Come get a room Ryker." Piper told him, gesturing to the large space with one arm. "There's plenty of them."

"No thanks." Ryker stepped out of the tent and looked up into the sky. The sun had just finished its descent beneath the clouds and the sky had begun to darken. "I'm sleeping outside."

"Seriously?" Hazel asked. "With all the monsters out there?"

"Worried about me?" Ryker twisted his voice to take on a mocking undertone. But his words were deadly serious. He examined his wrists pointedly, drawing attention to the bronze bands around his wrists. "Don't think I can take care of myself?"

Hazel seemed hurt by the sharpness of his response. "No, that's not it." She insisted, looking very put-out. "Just didn't want you to feel left out."

"I'm fine." Ryker said, striding away from the tent. He walked as far from the tent as it took for him to just barely be able to hear their voices. Once he was content with his placement he set his bag on the ground and pulled out a bedroll from the depths of the pack. He had been unsure of the added luxury of a bedroll, especially after having slept in the woods without one for so long, but he had decided that he could afford to take it easy for once. He unfurled the roll and placed his bag under his head as he laid down. He crossed his arms over his chest and stared up at the sky, enjoying the simple beauty of the sky as it made the last transition from day to night. The stars seemed to slowly ease into the sky which made them all the more beautiful. Distant shouts and laughs echoed from the others' tent and Ryker rolled his eyes. The more time he spent with them the more tolerable he found them, but for the life of him he could not figure out why they insisted on being so accursedly loud. There was no rhyme or reason for it as far as he could see, they simply increased their volume in times of extreme emotion.

"I wish they would be quiet." He muttered, closing his eyes and placing one arm across them. "They'll attract monsters and I don't feel like dealing with them."

"You don't have to worry about that." A very confident voice came from above Ryker's head.

The demigod yowled like a cat and shot up into the air, summoning the claws before he had even hit the ground. He landed in a crouch, his claws ready to dismember and rip apart whatever or whoever it had been that snuck up on him. His eyes, vision perfect even at night, quickly spotted the figure. She was not wearing the same attire that he had first seen her in and her lion was nowhere to be seen, but Ryker had memorized his mother's face from the moment that he had seen her. "A little warning next time?" He asked heatedly, dismissing the claws and straightening from his stance. "Only prey get snuck up on at night."

"So what does that make you?" Cybele asked, one eyebrow raised and a half-smile playing at her lips. Ryker scowled and she laughed softly. "My apologies, I did not mean to startle you."

Ryker waved a hand dismissively, studying her. She was wearing long jeans that were streaked with dirt and a long sleeved shirt that seemed to be made of some sort of tough fabric. She looked for all the world like a mortal going for a hike. At least, in attire she did. Ryker had no trouble seeing her in the moonlight because of his night vision, but also because of the glow that she emitted. Almost as though she was a smaller version of the moon casting out smaller rays of light. Satisfied with hi examination he raised an eyebrow. "Can I help you with something?" He asked politely.

"No, I was just coming to check up on you to see how you were doing." Cybele smiled at him and then her expression grew sad. "I saw what happened to Silver. It was very unfortunate."

"If you saw that, why didn't you do something?" Ryker asked, his voice cold. "You could have saved her."

"I could have," Cybele nodded in agreement. "But doing so would have angered Zeus. That is not a wise course of action, for you or me. Prophecies must be completed by the ones that they are made for. If I had interfered who knows what disaster the Fates would have wrought?"

"So you let Silver be taken and left me for dead?" Ryker summarized. He wasn't particularly upset. He understood the necessity of things like this. In the forest only the strong survived. The weak were prey for the strong that was the one absolute rule of the wild.

To his surprise, his mother shook her head at once. "I would never abandon you." She told him. The sincerity of her tone actually gave Ryker momentary pause. "I would risk the wrath of Zeus himself before I let you die when I could prevent it. I did not interfere because that child of Hades was already on his way."

"With the others, right." Ryker nodded. "I knew that."

His mother tilted her head to one side as she studied him. "I was watching everything that night, but the only ones who were in those woods were you, Silver, Nico, and the giant. No one else." She paused and then studied her son. "Why would you think otherwise?"

Ryker glanced back at the tent, his eyes narrowed into a glare. "Because that little child of Hades invoked the code of the wild." He said stiffly. "Up until you just told me, I was under the impression that I owed all of them my life."

Cybele gazed back at the tent, her expression at odds with her son's. Where Ryker was seething in the face of what he saw as a betrayal of the small amount of trust he had placed in them, Cybele was looking at them rather fondly. "They are a good group of children." She told him, almost as though she was trying to convince him of the fact. "You have good friends."

"Not my friends." Ryker said automatically. When his mother looked at him curiously he suddenly felt obligated to explain himself, though he couldn't fathom why. "We have a mutual interest. Once I help them get back the Oracle I'm leaving."

There was a long pause as mother and son stared into each other's eyes. After the pause his mother's smile turned sad again. "I knew that letting you grow up in the wild would somewhat ostracize you from others," She admitted, "But I never imagined that the solitude would be self-imposed. I thought that you would have been thrilled with the chance to spend time with others who are like you rather than the birds and beasts of the forest."

Unsure of what to say, Ryker simply shrugged. His mother laughed softly and then sighed. "Do you know why I brought you to the wild after your father died?"

"You said before that it was so I would be a different type of fighter than the others." Ryker recalled. "You succeeded. The others… I think that I scare them."

"Humans fear that which they do not understand." Cybele agreed. "But that was not the only reason that I did so. My other reason was far more selfish. I loved your father, more than I have ever loved another human. It is not easy to attract the interest of a god you know."

"I can imagine." Ryker said warily, uncertain where this story was going.

"When he died, I was devastated. His death reminded me of just how frail your mortal lives truly are." Her eyes were distant and sad as she recalled the memory. "When he died, I never wanted to feel that again. So I did the only thing I could think to do at the time. I brought you to the wild and left you there. You were always a strong-willed child, even as a babe. I knew that you would survive. The forest would mold you into a man strong enough that I would never have to endure that pain of loss ever again. And yet, for all my planning I had forgotten that time will not be halted even for a goddess. You grew up. It was not until I sent the Hunters of Artemis to search for you had I seen the error of my ways. I never wanted to feel that pain again, and yet I had only served to waste so much of the precious little amount of time I have with you."

"Precious little?" Ryker repeated. His mother seemed annoyed at herself that she had said that. "What does that mean?"

"Nothing important." She assured him, but Ryker was certain he saw unease in her eyes. "At any rate, once the Hunters had captured you I knew that I could no longer allow myself to watch you grow up from so far away."

Ryker processed his mother's words and then nodded. "What does this have to do with them?" He inclined his head towards the tent housing the other demigods.

"Try to become closer with them." His mother encouraged him. "I can see you keeping them at a distance, and I understand why. A hunter who lets down his guard often finds himself becoming hunted. They can be trusted, Ryker, I promise you that."

"Evidently not if they lied to me about saving my life." He countered. His mother's expression grew annoyed for the first time since she had appeared.

"They said what they had to in order to bring you along for this quest." She told him firmly. "They baited a trap and you walked into it."

"Doesn't mean that they can be trusted." Ryker repeated, crossing his arms.

They engaged in another staring contest and his mother, surprisingly, was the one to look away. "There will come a time, during this quest, when you have no choice but to trust in those around you." She told him. It wasn't a threat, she was merely stating a fact. "When that time comes, you will have to make a choice that will determine your own fate. Choose wisely, my son." Without another word his mother's form shined brightly and she vanished, leaving her son alone on the canyon floor.