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Jacen and Jaina moved forward at the same time. “Food?” Jacen asked. His sister nodded.

Outside of the strange slumped cave they saw cables running through lichen-clogged eye bolts mounted at various points. Along the walls and ceilings, metal bands like long fingerbones dangled in a decoration, linked together by sagging segments of chain.

“In here,” Jaina said, taking the lead. Dimness folded over them, leading them toward the enticing lights.

Near her head a scratching, scuttling sound came from the shadows. The girl looked to see an elongated spider-roach nearly the size of her head. Bumping against her, Jacen leaned forward to get a better look at the creature. The spider-roach clambered up the lumpy wall and hesitated, turning three glassy amber eyes at them.

Suddenly, with a ratcheting clatter, a fistful of metal flanges from the ceiling swung loose like a prehensile mechanical hand dangling on chains. Dozens of steel fingers slammed against the wall to trap the spider-roach, clamping it into a makeshift metallic cage. The creature thrashed and flailed, clacking its mandibles. Sparks flew as chitinous forelimbs scrabbled against the impenetrable bars.

In panic Jacen and Jaina hurried down the tunnel toward the flickering orange lights. But the twins stopped, simultaneously sensing a thrill of danger. They looked up just in time to see a much larger cage, all prongs and sharp metal edges, collapse down around them. Mechanical metal claws surrounded them like dozens of fists chained together.

“Trap!” Jaina said.

Shuffling footsteps came toward them—a thud, then a scrape as a large hulking creature emerged from the depths of the lair. The silhouette appeared first, a massive tufted head with enormous arms dragging almost to the ground. One thickly muscled thigh looked the size of a tree trunk, but the other leg was much shorter, twisted and withered.

Jacen and Jaina rattled the sharp metal edges of the cage, but the mechanical claws drew tighter together like scissors. “Help!” Jacen said.

Then their captor came into full view, lit from the side by reflected smoky lights. The creature was covered with a pelt of shaggy hair, showing no distinction between its enormous head and the rest of its torso, as if both pieces had been smashed together into one barrel-shaped mass.

The thing’s mouth hung in a long crooked slash, twisted sideways and straightened back only partway. Its left eye was overgrown with a mass of tumors and rotting flesh; the other eye, nearly as large as the twins’ fists, shone a sickly yellow, streaked with red lines.

Jacen and Jaina were too afraid to say anything. Their ogrelike captor shambled past, ignoring them for the moment as he rocked back and forth on his stubby withered leg. He picked up the small trap to inspect the frantic spider-roach.

The children could smell the stink from the monster as he next bent toward the bars of their cage, thrusting his giant yellow eye close, but Jacen and Jaina scrambled to the other side of the cage.

The ogre disconnected long chains from the wall, draped them over his shoulder, and dragged the twins’ cage clattering down the corridor into his firelit den. The cage rolled and crashed against unseen obstacles, and the twins had to scramble to keep themselves upright.

Inside, gnawed bones from large and small creatures cluttered the monster’s lair, some piled in baskets, others cracked and strewn over the broken floor. Smoky red flames came from smoldering pots filled with a rancid-smelling fat.

Chained in a cleared area of the pit sat a tusked ratlike creature covered with bristling fur. Its black rubbery lips stretched back in a perpetual snarl. Gobbets of drool flew from its mouth as it snarled and threw itself to the end of its chain.

A set of broken manacles from a detention area hung on the spike-encrusted walls of the chamber. As the ogre moved about in the brighter light, tatters of an old prison uniform could be seen among his greasy curls of body hair.

The ogre pried open the metal fingers of the small spider-roach trap.