The Prickly Battle

suit.
“Nice to meet you, regular Elephant Mummy,” the Animal Mummies replied in unison, helping him up.
Turning his back on the easily fooled Animal Mummies, Cainus plodded off alone through the winding Mumphis streets.
Not a single Animal Mummy thought to question him. They were too busy arguing.
“I thought I’d cause a sensation,” Cainus mumbled, dejected. “Perhaps they’re all jealous of how handsome I am. Ow! These blasted pinching stones!”
Soon he reached the wonky Pyramid. He was getting used to his elephant disguise now, so he only tripped over his trunk seventeen times on the way.
He tried to glance about to make sure no one was watching, but his heavy elephant head sagged to one side, causing him to pull a neck muscle. Wincing, he limped through the black entrance beneath the Pyramid and down into the icy darkness below.
To the tomb of the Unpharaoh.
“You’re safe down here, Cainus,” he told himself as he wandered in. “Quite safe. It’s only a vast, shadowy chamber of death, after all, and – Ow!”
He tripped on a broken chunk of sandstone. Rubble was strewn all over the room – the place had partly collapsed during Bab’s first battle against the Unpharaoh.
And there she lay.
Cainus’s breath caught in his patchy throat.
“My glorious queen,” he whispered, approaching the sandstone slab. Her mummy was sprawled on top, utterly lifeless. Its twisted arms and legs were splayed at bizarre angles. A papery grey tongue lolled out of its fanged mouth.
Cainus tore off his floppy disguise as quickly as he could (which wasn’t very quickly, given his pulled neck muscle) and pounced onto the slab. Drooling, he covered the mummy’s rough, bandaged face with adoring licks.
“I wish I could kiss you back to life, my darling!” he told the dead thing. “Instead, I shall attempt the method you suggested. Hmm. Forgive me, Your Majesty.”
Cainus snipped his long, sharp ears like scissors . . .
KRRRRIPP. KRRRRIPP.
. . . and sliced deep into the mummy’s belly.
He peeled the ancient bandages away, revealing the inside of the dead sorceress. A dreadful smell oozed from her body, a sour reek of rage and meanness.
“No, no,” Cainus moaned as he peered into the cavity. “Don’t tell me she’s empty!”
He stuck his pointy nose all the way in and sniffed about. His sensitive snout wrinkled as it explored the dry ridges of the Unpharaoh’s lower spine.
With a sudden jerk, Cainus snapped his head back out again.
“Baaaaa-ga-CHOOO!” he sneezed. “Yow, I pulled another neck muscle!”
Coming to his senses, he grabbed frantically at the air. “I felt it,” he yabbered. “It went straight up my nose as I sniffed about in there. Where is it? I sneezed it out! Where did it go?!”
Then he stopped and went cross-eyed. With wondrous slowness, something drifted slowly down between his eyes and came to rest on his pointy snout.
It was a single black hair.
“Got you,” Cainus whispered.

Clutching the silver box in an ostrich talon, Scaler weaved her way through the sandy streets of Mumphis. Prong flapped close at her heels.
“What’s that floppy-looking Elephant Mummy up to?” Prong asked, pointing down a side street.
Scaler peered at the odd creature. “The embalmer did a great job on him,” she said. “Must have ordered size twenty-eight bandages for a size three elephant.”
Had Scaler and Prong stopped to investigate, the disasters ahead might have been averted. But as fate would have it — or perhaps because a hieroglyph of Seth, the god of chaos, was painted on a wall nearby – they ignored Cainus and continued on their way.
At every twist in the stony laneways, Scaler and Prong had to dodge bellowing Animal Mummies.
None of them could remember how to run their lives now that Bab was gone.
At the bowling alley, Elephant Mummies hurled sandstone balls at each other with their trunks.
BUNK!
“Ow!” one trumpeted, rubbing her bruised head. “Is this really how we’re meant to bowl?”
“Only Pharaoh Bab knew the rules,” another replied, “so what does it matter?”
Over in the doorway of Salon Nile, a furious Gazelle Mummy flailed her legs. “I’m telling you, Celeste, you overcharged me for this pedicure. By six whole ankhs!”
Celeste, the pink Cat Mummy, meowed back. “It’s not my fault my adding system is different from yours.”
“Pharaoh Bab would’ve sorted this. He knew maths. He could even count past four!”
“Well he’s not here, Jezmeena,” snapped Celeste. “One Pharaoh minus one Pharaoh equals zero.”
“Zero is what you should be paid. Your so-called pedicure made my stunning hooves look like human toenails. Disgusting!”
Next, Scaler and Prong passed some Crocodile Mummy builders. They were trying to fix the front of the Mummy College, which had begun to sag. A cranky old Ibis Mummy professor honked at them: “You’re meant to repair the walls with stone!”
“Bab told us to fix buildings with bones,” replied a confused croc. He was up a ladder, jamming several of his ribcage bones between the college bricks.
“Did he?” said another croc. This one was pouring a barrel of brown liquid over the bricks. “I’m not using bones, I’m using date juice foam. Bab said to use foam.”
The ibis professor scratched her curved beak. “I think you’re right, Otsek, Bab did recommend foam. Jolly good job!”
A gust of wind wafted by. SHKLUMP!
Cracked apart by bones and softened by date juice, the entire front wall of the college collapsed around the crocs. Scaler yanked Prong aside just in time.
The ibis and the crocs began pummelling each other in a flurry of rotting paws.
All across the city, it was the same story. The Animal Mummies were lost and angry without their Pharaoh.
“Let’s hoof it, Prong,” Scaler said, “and pray we can bring Bab back. For all our sakes.”
The two friends burst into their wonky yellow house. Brown vines and branches twisted every which way, completely filling the living room. The mummies had to squeeze and duck to get inside.
“Just imagine,” Scaler said, slipping between the plants, “if one of your experiments had some use besides filling our house with spikes and