Now he really knew how it felt to fall to your death.

Sherlock plummeted, away from the shark-colored overcast, away from the helicopter that dwindled before his eyes. Breath came in sporadic surges that his lungs couldn't handle. The air reviled at his unaerodynamic form, and he began to pitch and twirl, so that the line between sky and sea did cartwheels in his vision. He took one last despairing breath. Why? He was certainly going to die, so why was he taking a deep breath? It wasn't like he would need oxygen where he was going.

Cold. Pain. But his eyes snapped open, and he felt himself sink and float in place. Duh, sea. He must've miscalculated his relative position-he always had struggled with the cardinal directions.

Bubbles whirred before his face, obscuring his vision in their mad flight to the surface. Sherlock was approximately four meters underwater, if the discouraging distance of the surface was anything to judge by. Forever in every direction there was nothing but blue. Not even water; that would imply that there was anything familiar in this nihilistic dimension. Humans have nothing to do with nothing. This was endlessness, pure endlessness, and Sherlock Holmes was in the middle of it.

"Deep water, Sherlock." Euros's voice came unbidden and unhindered. "Deep. Water."

Fear. Fear began burrowing up from his stomach before he knew he'd seen anything. All it was was a shadow, a trick of light, because nothing could be that large and still be so far away. Nothing. But the great nothing came closer, its shape darker, its form more distinct. Now it had to be real, because the shadow was splitting into several shadows of different tones, and that gave it a real shape. A limb, reaching out and forward, not a fin? Another limb with a strange appendage, no, a neck and head. Crevices of shade, on the head, making a face. A sheet of darkness swooping down from the nothing, down past all hope of vision and dimensional comprehension, giving a whole new sense of depth to the horrified mind of Sherlock Holmes.

The head-if it was a head-seemed to open, but nothing came out. The creature became distorted slightly, and the distortion grew and seemed to be getting closer, along with a tense humming in the water itself. Only when the soundwave reached Sherlock was the great nothing's voice heard. The fact that the noise was muffled did nothing for the sheer volume that ravaged every molecule as it passed. The ringing echo vibrated throughout Sherlock's mass, even after the wave had carried away into the rest of existence.

Stunned, he watched the shadow turn and melt back into eternity.

Sherlock exploded through the surface. He was going so fast he half lifted himself out of the water. His lungs burst into flame, having forgotten about air until then. Every muscle ached but it was the ache of fear, the tension that denies thought and kills all else. Frantically treading water, he whirled to check behind him, then forgot where his front had been, which directions he hadn't checked. He whipped about in a panic, the wind waves lapping against his face and his bare eyes. What was out there? Where could it be hiding? In that blue, in this blue, the other blue, blue, green, more blue-

Green?

He faced the right direction just in time to see the last of it sink below the waves. But yes, it had been green, a vivid, shiny green. It was unmistakable next to the murk. Had it really been there? What on earth would something that color be doing in the middle of the ocean?

As he watched the exact spot, he became aware of its ripples coming toward him.

They weren't ripples. They didn't fade as they came closer, they grew stronger. He immediately relapsed to panic. He turned and proceeded to full acceleration, legs and arms flailing through the water, but the ripples chased him. He dared a glance backwards. It was upon him. Sherlock screamed.

He screamed as he felt something under him, he screamed as he was flung into the air, and he screamed long after he had safely landed.

Upon opening his eyes, Sherlock was able to confirm the questionable message from the nerves in his rump that he was no longer in water. He was, in fact, sitting on something, but it wasn't dry land. It was green, and a little bumpy, and this was because it was covered in a thousand green scales that all interlocked as they spread over the sides of the belly and up the neck and all over the head.

Sherlock looked up. Slowly.

Whatever he was sitting on, it appeared to be a bona fide life form. It had ears, a nose, a mouth, all the latest features. It even had horns and small wart on its snout. But the eyes were the most spectacular: pure greengage, the size of cantaloupes, with hard black pupils that scoured Sherlock like steel wool. The mouth opened. White teeth glittered, red tongue curled. Sherlock froze in preemptive rigor mortis, anticipating the wrathful death the deep water had reserved for him….

"Your face is dumb."

"...pardon?" Sherlock managed to reply. Talking helped-it gave his brain an excuse to transfer authority from the amygdala back to the frontal lobe, which promptly got to work on activating the parasympathetic nervous system.

The dragon snarled, which made Sherlock jump. "Sorry. My human is a little rusty; the last one I met was decades ago, you know. What I meant to say was: your smell is odd."

"Odd?" repeated Sherlock.

"Yes, odd. Are you hearing correctly?" demanded the dragon. "It's bad enough I can hardly speak the tongue, now I'm talking to a deaf one?"

"No, it's just, um…." Sherlock soon realized that any attempt to excuse his slowness would fail catastrophically, and so decided to move on. "...what exactly is odd about it?"

"Don't know. Haven't got there yet," the dragon mused. It brought its head down to Sherlock and took a sudden sniff, which made him jump again. Now that its eyes were closer Sherlock observed that they weren't just bright: they were glowing, like massive green headlights. Sherlock found himself squinting at their proximity. He also felt a little nauseous.

"Have I met you before?" asked the dragon, reining his head in just a little. Just as the eyes were brighter, the dragon's voice felt louder, but this time Sherlock only flinched. Sherlock thought about the question. He blinked.

"I think I would remember." Sherlock speculated.

"I know, that's why I'm asking," the dragon explained, lifting his head back to its original height. For that Sherlock was grateful-he made a mental note not to look it in the eyes. "I've got thousands of years to keep track of, I can't be expected to remember every little insignificant person I've talked to." The dragon adjusted himself on the gently rocking ocean, causing Sherlock to stumble a bit.

"My name is Ruthless, a Seadragonus Giganticus Maximus, Dragon-Baron of the North Seas," introduced the dragon. "What is your name, little human?"

"I am Sherlock Holmes." he replied. If it had been an ordinary stranger he wouldn't have been so forthright with his identity, but he accurately deduced that dragons didn't care for things like stalking or identity theft. Sherlock watched Ruthless's face, carefully avoiding the hypnotic gaze, clearing his mind of all human assumptions. He saw the face draw back, as if the delicate facial scales were trying to sink back through the skin and into the skull. From the side of his vision he felt the eyes dim, like they were blinding prematurely. And try as he might, Ruthless could not conceal his sigh, for Sherlock felt his lungs through his soaking feet.

"You've remembered, haven't you?" murmured Sherlock.

"Holmes," said Ruthless. His bestial accent gave the name a weight, a power, but it was an ancient one, too old for Sherlock to understand. "Now that's a name I remember. It was quite recent for me, of course. You're lucky."

"But if it wasn't me, which Holmes did you meet?" thought Sherlock out loud. Finally he let his mind race off, hot on the trail of mystery. "You said my smell was familiar, but it wasn't enough for you to know immediately who I was, so it must be someone related to me but not easily confused with me. Mycroft? My father?"

"No, not your father," dismissed the dragon with a head-shake. "He'd be about your age, now. And I remember...I remember he looked like my old Hiccup."

"Hiccup? What's that?" queried Sherlock.

"Who's that," Ruthless corrected. "Hiccup Horrendous Haddock III. He was my boy. Although I suppose he was older than me at the time, so really I was his dragon. A skinny thing, not the hero type at all, completely ordinary, all the way from his red, freckled head to his cold little toes."

"Red hair?" breathed Sherlock. His heart plunged into the ocean where the great nothing cackled at its smallness.

"That's right," confirmed Ruthless. "it was the hair. He had red hair, that's what reminded me of Hiccup."

"Who?" demanded Sherlock, his voice spiked with emotion. Ruthless, the mighty Seadragonus Giganticus Maximus, just looked at him.

"Why, Redbeard the Pirate."