« La Rue Macabre »
Arabel paused by a large bronze shield bearing the symbol of Sparta. "So Dan, is this the standard tour? And do I need to pay admission?"
Dan laughed and adjusted a spear on the wall. "Well, standard admission is twenty dollars, but once you add in the friends and family discount… It comes out to about 40 dollars."
"Well, that's hardly a discount."
"You're my friend. You should be the most supportive."
"Supportive of what? Glorified highway robbery?" Arabel laughed. "Now I'm hoping there's a statute of limitations on friendship."
"Alas, thy cruel barbs cut to mine heart."
Arabel rolled her eyes. "If you're not gonna tell me about your collection, at least tell me about this place. It's not the weirdest town I've found myself in, but I can't see how you fit in."
"Clearly, I'm a premier purveyor of magical and mundane antiquities."
"Uhuh. Like everyone else on the block?"
"You don't have to be condescending about it, Lady Dracula." Dan teased. "Beyond running a museum, when somebody wanders into La Rue with an item a little too dangerous, the powers that be usually store it here."
"Because the building full of magical artifacts is the safest place?"
"Well, the only time people try to break in here is the Mehkan…" Dan trailed off.
Arabel whirled around. "You didn't! After everything. My warnings, Pollux's, Karrimore's, fucking everyone's, you went back and raised the fucking Colossus of goddamn Rhodes??"
Dan knocked on the wall to his left. "It's deactivated. And I'm not gonna court death trying to turn the damn thing on."
"Really? Because you let two Mehkanites go on that stupid tour."
Dan paused. "Don't you mean three?"
The front wall of Stele Dan's House of Wonders bulged briefly before exploding outwards, carrying two people across the street in a hailstorm of rubble. Out of the wreck came a gargantuan bronze fist, which slid on the cobblestones before finding its grip and pushing upward. As it rose to its true height, it showered the surrounding buildings with chunks of the House of Wonder's roof.
"You idiot! Why didn't you take it apart? Or hide it?" shouted Arabel as she climbed to her feet.
"It. Seemed. Unnecessary. At. The TIME!." Dan threw a chunk of stone off of his chest.
The Colossus's eyes whirled open and a toxic green light washed over the duo.
"Arabel of the Northern Reach. Damocles of Macedonia. You have been exiled from the city of Rhodes."
"We're not in Rhodes, you tinny fuck!" shouted Dan
At a table across the street, Cotton Eyed Joe flicked his cigarette into the street. "Y'all gon take care this here?"
"It's an eleven-story tall war machine, Joe. Nowhere is ideal!" yelled back Dan.