Cainus was clearly too terrified to notice his mistress’s fury. His eyes bulged at the wobbling Void and he yelped in dismay. He scampered in a tight circle, paws scrabbling on the heaving floor. An arcing blob of sponge-stone seemed to reach for him, but he rolled aside.

“Get me out of here, someone!” he screamed in a high-pitched bark. “I order you. I’m far too handsome to become a hieroglyph. Get me out!”

He scurried frantically around the room. He did backflips. He scratched at the painted people. He stood upside-down on his pointy ears and whirled about like a spinning top. “I must avoid the Void!”

“Blergh,” groaned Prong, hovering above the sloshing surface, “his spinning makes me dizzy.”

Cainus spun so fast the facebrick flew from his tail. It landed face-down, giving the Unpharaoh a nice close-up of the wobbly floor. The brick shook as she shot waterballs from her nostrils, managing to flip it on its side.

The Unpharaoh’s face now pointed towards Bab. From her nose, the enraged queen shot dozens of tiny waterballs out of the brick and into the Void. Bab could hardly feel them against his stone body, but the oily missiles ricocheted off him, stinging Prong and Scaler and Cainus instead.

“Ouchy bubba!” yelped the jackal. He stopped spinning, rubbed his scalded body and blinked.

“I’m still here,” he said. “I can’t believe it. I’m still here, woo-hoooo!”

He seized the facebrick in his tail and slathered his mistress’s face with delighted licks.

“Stow that despicable tongue!” his mistress snapped. “Of course you are still here, you scissor-eared oaf. The Void absorbs life force. You and the Animal Mummies have none of that, as you are trapped between life and death. Now, find the Beard! It must be lying about here somewh–”

BRO-LLURG-GUURG!

The frustrated floor groaned with hunger. A towering wave of spongy stone erupted in the middle of the room, moving eerily slowly. Picking up speed, the wave slapped down over Bab and swallowed him before rising again.

The swollen blob cast ripples outwards, flinging Scaler into a corner.

Seeing the sheer height of the stone wave, Cainus seized his chance. He scampered to the very top of it and leaped up through the ceiling hatch.

With his claws dug into the sloping pot corridor above, Cainus took one last look down at the chamber. “Look, Your Superbness!” he crowed with glee. “The unfashionable Bab has been absorbed – look!”

He twisted his tail so the Unpharaoh could see from her brick. It was unmistakable. There, painted among the trapped souls on the warping walls, was an astonished-looking Bab Sharkey.

And beside him, his father.

“YESSSS!” hissed the sorceress. “The Void has absorbed him, Cainus, I can see for myself. Better still, the entire place is collapsing. See how warped he and his foolish father appear as the walls tear themselves asunder. That selfish beard thief shall be utterly wiped from existence!”

BLUTT!

The stone ripples flung Scaler again, and this time she splatted onto the picture of Bab.

“Ooochh,” the Unpharaoh spat. “There it is, on the reeking fish!”

The Unpharaoh’s red eyes began to steam as they finally spotted the Pharaoh’s Beard dangling from Scaler’s chin.

“The Beard,” she hissed. “Why is it on that flop-finned sack of fishbones? It must be mine!”

“One thing we learned from Bab being in a brick,” Scaler shouted at her, “is that beards can’t come with you. Bad luck, brick-lady.”

With a grinding heave, a stony blob lashed up at Cainus and knocked the facebrick from his tail.

“GWA-HAAGGH!” squawked the Unpharaoh as the facebrick spun across the chamber and struck a corner, where it smashed into a hundred fragments.

Cainus dared not delay another moment. He hauled himself up and out of the Spongy Void, leaving Bab and his friends to their fate.

“I never even got to meet the talking giraffe,” he moaned as he left.