How had things got to this point?

The waves of the ocean crashed over you, icy and relentless in their pursuit to drag you under. Spitting you back into the howling wind as you continued to keep scrambling back up to the surface.

You felt as if you'd been at it for hours. Your arms burned, legs thrashing and kicking below you, growing ever more sluggish and heavy as exhaustion begins to set in. The cold of the night long since having seeped into your bones, numbing you from the inside out. Your breaths coming in ragged gasps, each one harder to draw than the last as the biting-cold air stabbed at your lungs.

The wreckage of your boat bobbed in the distance. Broken planks and chewed up pieces scattered across the water, with the heavier pieces already having sunk into the abyss below; swallowed by the heaving black sea.

There was no land in sight. No light as far as your eyes could see. Only the endless sea stretching in every direction.

The sky above was a blur of shifting grey, stars hidden behind the thickening storm clouds, flashes of lighting illuminating the sky. And, you realised with a distant kind of acceptance, that this was the end.

Another monster wave rose and forced you down further then any of the others. Water rushing into your ears and muting the sound of thunder above. The ocean wrapped around you, pulling you ever deeper down as you feebly reached for the surface. But, it was too far, too distant.

As your vision blurred, the sea swallowing you whole, you could have sworn you saw a dark figure swimming from the depths and towards you. Something strong dragging you back towards the surface, but not before you lost consciousness

You wake with a start, jolting to the side as you cough up seawater, body shivering near-violently from the cold. Blinking, you take in the cavern around you; walls smooth and glistening, their surfaces worn by the patient hands of time and tide. Stalactites hung from the ceiling as if the cavern was a mouth and they were its jagged teeth; weeping slow drips that echoed in the eerie silence. A small exit to your far right showing the light of day and what you thought might be a beach just beyond the large crack in the wall.

It would have made much more sense to wake up on the beach, leading you to question how you came to be in the cave...

Around you are... odd pieces of what you could only describe as junk. Some stuff looking much older then others. It's only when you notice what you swear to be some of the stuff that had sunk along with your boat did you realise it was things from shipwrecks. Some furniture, trinkets, odds and ends. It looked like a hoard of some sort.

"Dinnae think ye'd wake up," a voice calls out, making you jump as your gaze snapped towards the water pool which took up a quarter of the cavern. "Thrilled ya have though, you'll make ah bonnie addition teh mah collection. Ah'll look after yeh, ah promise. Ah look after all the things ah scavenge from the boats."

Was that a man? A shark? No, he was a combination of both. A hybrid...

You'd heard about hybrids on tv, seen them in zoos. Beings, half-and-half, half animal and half human. But you never thought you'd encounter one out and in the wild. Especially under such circumstances.

You scrambled backwards in your startled state, until your back hit the wall of the cave.

The shark hybrid swam to the edge of the pool, resting his arms on the rock before resting his head on his arms. His expression one of confusion and concern.

"Dinnae be scared now. Ah saved yeh, didn't ah?" He tried to reassure you, head tilting to the side as he offered you a toothy smile.