The water was cold, refreshing to Blanc's body as it first made contact, plunging him deep into the water.
His lungs were full of air, and as he stopped descending, he opened his eyes.
He was three feet underwater, the sun rising in the east, its rays penetrating the water. Below, the river was deep, and… surprisingly calm. No currents, no rapids, just a slight push that took him slowly toward the waterfall.
There were fish that swam around Blanc, and thirty feet deep, at the bottom of the river, between algae, he could see an eel hiding. There were no caimans or turtles near where he stood.
So he dove deeper, close to the bottom, searching for any sign of turtles or an underwater tunnel that might lead beneath the Gardens, just as he and Celine had theorized. But aside from sediment, rocks, and drifting algae, nothing he found supported either possibility.
And so, he pushed upward, rising back towards the surface.
Once the surface tension broke, Blanc gasped a mouthful of air.
"Nothing here," he said as he opened his eyes, but in front of him, nobody was waiting.
He looked left, then right, and saw that the rest were a hundred feet away, looking into the water.
"Hey!" he yelled, grabbing their attention.
And when they saw him, they began running in his direction.
"How did you get there?" Celine yelled back as they were getting closer.
"I haven't swum that much; the river must have taken me further away," Blanc replied. "There are no strong currents or any rapids; it's weird."
"Any signs of underwater tunnels?" Celine asked.
"Nothing, rocks, fish, and sand," Blanc shook his head, "But I want to go near the waterfall, see what's happening there."
"We can always give up, my love," said Celine.
"Yeah, no need to put yourself in danger," Miyanna added.
"Nonsense," replied Blanc, shaking his head, "I'm already inside. And if there is something, I won't go in."
"Promise?" asked Kael.
"I promise," Blanc nodded, a warm smile on his face, before grabbing another mouthful of air and submerging himself back into the water.
He allowed himself to be moved forward by the river as he focused completely on the bottom of the river.
The pressure underwater made it impossible to attempt to hear anything out of the ordinary, so he placed all his focus on his sight.
A school of fish passed his sight, light-blue in color, pretty little things. He shook his head, letting go of the distracting fish, and began searching the bottom again, and again, with nothing that seemed out of the ordinary.
However, the place he was curious about from the moment he laid eyes on the river slowly approached.
The river kept its width, even twenty feet near the waterfall. But that's how it looked on the surface. Below the water, the story looked different.
The bottom of the river rose suddenly as if a wall had been built to increase the speed of the water, rising Blanc to less than fifteen feet below the surface.
The wall stood straight from one shore to the other, only to stop suddenly before reaching it completely, not breaking the surface tension.
Blanc slowly went over the wall to the new bottom of the river, only to feel a frighteningly strong current pulling him towards the waterfall. Luckily, he grabbed onto the roots of the growing algae, stopping himself from being pulled as he kept watching, trying to figure out what he was seeing.
The river, when looking up, looked the same, but below the river, the shore on both sides formed the shape of a triangle, falling deeper and deeper into an underground tunnel that pulled water in with a strength that Blanc doubted he could survive.
Blanc understood then that the water from the waterfall they used to wash with was only the remains that were not pulled hard enough by the current.
But then, as if the Vita was watching for that exact moment when Blanc understood everything, the Vita Herself sent him a gift.
A turtle swam from the underground tunnel at a speed that Blanc found shocking, breaking free from the current. The turtle was huge, at least four feet in diameter, with two-thirds of its body covered by a dark green shell.
Its eyes, as it approached Blanc, looked beyond ancient, but its body looked even more so.
The skin on the flippers it used to swim was wrinkled, but the strength and vigor with which a beast that was probably centuries old had to move to escape such a strong current was beyond scary.
However, Blanc focused on the present that the Vita offered him, not planning to let this one go as well.
He stopped himself, standing in the direction the turtle swam towards, knife in hand.
The turtle, seeing that it was not going to pass easily, opened its mouth wide. Only for Blanc to notice that, for all the vigor the turtle had, it clearly lacked intelligence. All he had to do as soon as it approached was to dodge its mouth and, in that same move, grab its neck with his free hand.
Though he wanted to take this ancient beast for himself, he had promised something to a certain brother a few days ago, and he planned on keeping that promise. And so, he moved backward, trying not to get caught by the current, only surfacing when he did not feel the strong pull of it anymore.
Luckily, this did not take much effort, as the turtle, in its attempt to escape Blanc's grasp, swam with all its might.
"I'm back," Blanc yelled with a large gasp, waiting for the others to catch up to him on the shore, while he still kept the turtle underwater.
"Did you find anything?" asked Celine.
"It's as you said," Blanc nodded, "An underwater tunnel. The current that pulls the water into it is too strong."
"Well, that's that, then," Miyanna shrugged her shoulders, "Not worth drowning inside a tunnel that we do not know where it leads."
"I would agree with you, my love," Blanc replied, swimming towards the shore, "If not for this."
As he said those last words, more of his body became visible to the rest, who, just then, laid eyes upon the enormous turtle as it tried to use its flippers to drag itself back into the water unsuccessfully.
"It's yours, Kael, as promised," Blanc said, throwing the turtle with ease onto the shore in front of his little brother's eyes.