AN: So a bit of (a long) warning to help head off some possible complaints from readers about my portrayals of the TV-verse.
I started the Dresden Files with the books, then hunted down the TV show (it's free on tubi) while waiting for Peace Talks and Battle Ground to come out. I like the TV show. It is a good show.
It is not a good representation of the books.
The show mostly used the books as a grab bin of concepts to use in their own way. It makes parts of the show very familiar to those reading the books, and also makes the differences stand out and rub the wrong way for being a representation of the books.
This fic is going to respect the differences between the books and show as it's part of what the fic is based around. The Book-verse and TV-verse are parallel worlds, to a certain degree, but they have some very obvious differences in monsters, magic, and operational procedures.
I get that a lot of fic writers for the show pad the lacking lore and history of only one season with the books, but personally I find attaching the books' history to the show to often be untrue to the TV show's portrayal of Harry Dresden and his world.
The two Harry's are very different guys, which is best illustrated by their personal histories (otherwise known as the long comparison).
Book!Harry's mother (Margaret Dresden/LeFay) died in childbirth and he was orphaned at 6, then abused through the foster/orphanage system for a few years. At 10 he was adopted by a warlock (who also abused him, but he felt was great at the time because at least Justin DuMorne gave him some positive attention), and got about 6 years of formal training out of that, if deliberately slanted training. At age 16 he killed his mentor in a duel, after said mentor tried to magically enthrall Harry and his fellow apprentice, and was persecuted by the White Council for it from pretty much the moment he found out about them. Harry struck out on his own at age 18-19 after spending the interim time straightening his head out on a farm. He settled in Chicago at age 20, got his PI license at around 23, and at age 25 (or possibly 27, Jim's said 25, but the numbers lean towards 27) started having a yearly hell week(end), which the books cover. All the hell has forged Book!Harry into a very scary combat wizard.
TV!Harry's mother (Margaret Morningway) died when he was 3. He was orphaned at 11 and taken in by his rich (warlock) uncle, Justin Morningway, immediately afterwards. Justin seems to have foisted most of Harry's education onto Hrothbert of Bainbridge, who did his best to be a good mentor (and Ghost Dad) to Harry. Harry seems to have stuck around his uncle's mansion for most of his life after being orphaned. At age 30-31, Harry came back from a world tour of indeterminate length (probably at least a few months, maybe a year or two) to be introduced/inducted into the High Council, some of the members of which he had already previously met. It doesn't happen because Harry puts together that Justin killed his dad and then accidentally kills Justin while interrogating him. He is persecuted by the High Council for this and forgoes his uncle's wealth to strike out on his own. 5 years later is the TV show, during an episode of which he gets his PI license, or at least takes a class for it. TV!Harry is not a very scary combat wizard. He just hasn't lived through the abuse that Book!Harry has.
Or the short comparison: TV!Harry is 35-ish for the show and goes through a very watered down (as in he didn't seriously need a hospital by the end of it) version of the books' Storm Front in the episode of the same name. When Book!Harry was 35-ish, he was dealing with the events of either Small Favor or Turn Coat, depending on whether you peg him as 25 or 27 for Storm Front.
Get the idea here?
I am, of course, willing to field questions about the differences that will come into play between the Book- and TV-verses. I spent a while with my beta reader hammering them out, so I should hopefully have answers already.
And a quick note on the POV. It's all first-person, but I jump characters with the chapters. Characters will introduce themselves in their first chapter, and who's POV will be marked after the chapter title for subsequent appearances.
Updates will be weekly until I run out of pre-written chapters or (hopefully) finish writing. Don't worry if I lose interest/motivation, though. I do have a plot/outline, so if all else fails, I can always throw that up so you'll at least know how it ends.
Now on with the fic!
Ch1: Stop, thief!
My name is Harry Dresden, and I'm the Wizard of Chicago. It's not a job I can put on my tax returns, but neither is Winter Knight, and I've got that gig too. Personally, I like being the Wizard of Chicago a lot better.
As Chicago's resident wizard, I help people out when the things that go bump in the night come out to prey on innocent folk. I fight nightmares and monsters in a generally thankless job because it is a good and worthwhile thing to do. Sometimes I even get paid to do it. That's become more important now that I have my daughters to look out for.
As the Winter Knight… I fight monsters on behalf of another monster, or whoever she's lent me out to this time. It's also a generally thankless job that I do, mostly because Mab knows how to get me over a barrel, otherwise I might just decide to make her kill me instead. It's a necessary job, don't get me wrong, what with making sure the Outsiders and other troublemakers don't get to stick a knife in the back of the Unseelie Court, or hamstring their defense of the Outer Gates, but the grief it's given me… it's just tough.
I suppose you could say I have a third job with the Paranet, the online community of Minor Practitioners and Scions, basically the have-nots of the mortal magical community, as one of its Emergency Wizards. Personally, I consider it a part of the whole Wizard of Chicago thing. For this job, I go where I'm needed and lend a Wizard's, excuse me, wizard's (I'm not supposed to use the capital 'W' now that I've been kicked off the White Council of Wizardry) expertise to problems that have become too big for the local Paranetters to handle, even working together. I mostly cover the issues of the American Midwest, though I'll take cases most anywhere in the Eastern United States if they need me. Elaine, my ex-girlfriend and foster-sister, covers the West Coast along with Warden Carlos Ramirez. Though according to my friends, who do the actual Paranet monitoring, seeing as I can't actually use a computer for more than like, five minutes before it dies, they've been making fewer and fewer requests to the few wardens trusted to assist the Paranet.
I guess it started when I was mostly-dead with how much the Council ignored their pleas for help against the Fomor. I don't think booting one of the Paranet's founders, and the guy who made the final blow against the Fomor's boss and then got reparations for all the people hurt by the accompanying army from the Accorded Nations, really helped the Council's image in their eyes.
All of that to say that I was on my way home to Chicago through a Winter Way from a Paranet case, so I wasn't expecting much trouble.
Normally, I'd go the normal way and drive out to a case, or catch a train if it was too far to try driving. But this one was an urgent need with a time constraint, so the Ways it was.
The Ways are paths through the Nevernever, a realm of spirits and magic that abuts against our mortal world, that can seriously cut down on travel time seeing as the Nevernever doesn't map directly to our world.
You see, places in the Nevernever are connected to mortal places through concepts, their atmosphere. Open a way in a field of daisies and you'll find somewhere just as pleasant on the other side. Pick a catacomb and you'll get somewhere just as spooky. Then comes the indirect mapping. Going with the field of daises, maybe you take ten steps to the left in the Nevernever meadow, then open a second Way, you might just exit in a tulip field on the other side of the country. That's a lot faster than taking a train or even an airplane. Well, most of the time anyways. That's the other thing about the Nevernever, time also doesn't always directly map between here and there, so if you hit a patch of time dilation you can get Rip van Winkle'd, though I've never heard of losing 100 years like that for real. The worst I've ever lost is 24 hours. And on occasion, you'll gain time because the Nevernever is running faster instead of slower than the mortal world.
As the Winter Knight, I'm… not exactly welcome so much as not forbidden from using the Ways that pass through Winter territory. They're not perfectly safe for me, no Way is really, but I can't be attacked for simply being in Winter since I'm technically a part of the Unseelie Court. The Winter fae will attack me though if I look weak enough. It's just part of their predatory nature. The good news on that front is that I've survived challenging enough big things that should have killed me, and won on most of those occasions, to not be casually challenged myself.
I still didn't waste time smelling the roses when taking a Way, Winter or not. You just don't tempt fate like that if you've got any brains.
I was halfway through the second leg of my journey, a ten minute hike in a Winter wood, when the demonic little creature shoulder-checked me and snagged my bag. It had black leathery skin, sharp horns accenting its triangular head, boney spines all over its body that reminded me of Thorned Namshiel's battle form, and six long, emaciated limbs. A whipcord tail waved behind it as it shot off the path and into the snow-covered wood on all six feet, my bag hanging from its jaws.
I threw a quick force spell at Thorny Jr.'s legs, hoping to break at least one of them so I could take my bag back, but it juked to the side so that my spell instead threw up a large puff of snow. With a curse, I took off after it and prepared my next shot.
Normally, I wouldn't have cared much if something stole my bugout bag. It was filled with food, water, extra clothes, a small wad of cash, a first-aid kit, and a couple of easily replaced yet highly useful magical or near-magical odds and ends. Basically nothing I couldn't get back in a single shopping trip to a Wal-mart.
Today, however, it also contained my old friend and lab assistant, Bob the Skull, who wasn't anywhere near so replaceable.
Bob isn't really a skull, he's a spirit of air and intellect that lives inside a sanctum vessel made out of a human skull hundreds of years ago. He's almost literally the magical equivalent of a computer with all the knowledge he's collected over those centuries in the service of many a wizard, plus his own magical perception and whatever knowledge he was born with from his mortal and spirit parents. Not to mention he can get on the internet and everything nowadays too. Also like a computer, Bob is amoral, and will do whatever he is commanded to do. He doesn't understand concepts of Right and Wrong as anything more than some insanity people tend to go out and get killed for, or kill each other for. Though unlike a computer, Bob does have his own personality, which is a geeky little perv when he's in my care. This means that he can get obstreperous about orders if he wants to, and while I, or whoever holds his skull, can force him with commands, I generally pay him with risqué romance novels and passes to leave his skull for a night on the town.
Bob had been helping me out for around twenty years, so I was not going to let that thing kidnap my friend without a fight. The Winter Knight's mantle agreed that thievery and threat to me and mine was not to be stood.
Most days, the Winter mantle is a pain in my ass. It plays a constant beat of sex and violence in the most primal way. Given that I prefer for those to have a meaning beyond 'because I can,' I've had to find other ways to manage its manic need to go out and conquer. What I've landed on is an extreme exercise routine, kind of like how people with huskies have to take them running or they decimate the furniture to get the energy out of their system. So I tire the mantle out, make it keep my body running past what a reasonable person should be capable of, so that it doesn't have as much energy to spare for bothering me. Conversely, all that need for extreme exercise routines means I'm in the best physical shape I practically can be. Take that, plus the mantle's suppression of pain and the normal limiters in the human body, and I can really haul ass for extended periods of time. Running from the Winter Knight is a tough proposition.
Unfortunately for me and Bob, even all my Winter Knight-ness wasn't enough to physically run down Thorny Jr., though I was matching its pace well enough to keep it in sight. It must have had eyes in the back of its head or something too, as it was dodging every spell I slung at it in hopes of hobbling it.
We ducked and crashed through the woods for a while, snow churned into the air by our mad dashing and the kinetic blasts I was throwing.
Some corner of my mind that wasn't focused on running down my prey noticed a subtle shift in the woods around us. It wasn't something I could really describe, but if I had to, I'd say it was like when someone shifts your favorite comfy chair that you always sit in a few inches out of its usual alignment. That feeling where there's something off yet it's almost impossible to identify what is causing that dissonance.
The chase through that slightly altered wood continued until we came into a clearing with a large, snow-dusted boulder covered with symbols I didn't recognize sitting in the middle of it.
Thorny Jr. headed straight for the boulder. Just before it would have crashed into the frozen stone headfirst, it ripped open a Way.
I followed it through.
This probably wasn't the smartest thing to do seeing as I had no clue what would be on the other side, but I couldn't just let it take Bob. Besides, I'd done stupider things and survived.
The other side was a city, older buildings towering over the sidewalks. A quick glance over my shoulder showed an obelisk tucked into some forgotten square as a marker for the Way. Then it was back to hunting down the fucking thief.
We raced down the city streets, taking sharp turns and winding through side alleys. I'd switched out force for ice in my magical assault. I'd had a few too many lectures on property damage as of late to feel comfortable throwing kinetic force that was in a habit of missing right now. Besides, ice-slicked sidewalk is great at taking people's feet out from under them, while the Winter mantle meant I had nothing to fear from icy footing as long as it could hold my weight.
My misfortune continued though, as the creature either leapt the icy patches I willed into existence, or clawed its way across without slowing down. And while I couldn't always feel it, I knew that I was running low on energy for spell casting and running. I needed to think of a better plan of attack.
My well-honed sense of direction said we were heading in a fairly straight line, or possibly it was from all my experience following tracking spells that guide you as-the-crow-flies rather than the ground level route. Regardless, if we were going straight-ish, then all I needed to do was get ahead of this thing. An ambush would likely be a lot more successful than this chase.
The only question was if I could reliably out navigate the creature to get ahead of it.
I thought I had a chance, since the city felt strangely familiar. Which was really weird when the one city I've spent a lot of time running around is Chicago, which I was certain this wasn't, given the lack of battle scarring from Ethniu's invasion. Trust me, even in the parts of the city where the fighting never reached, you could still see the devastation.
Maybe it was one of the cities I'd passed through as a kid in the foster system, or after I struck out from Ebenezar's farm but before I settled in Chicago. I wasn't sure, but it was bothering the hell out of me as I chased the demon. A little warning bell in the back of my head that something was wrong.
I probably should have been paying more attention to the way the hunt was currently going than plans to change the game. If I had, I might have been ready for the little Asian warlock in the next alley we turned into. She was certainly ready for me.
The moment I turned the corner, I was slapped with the nauseating feeling of dark magic, and she was swinging a solid little fist into my gut and letting my momentum drive it deeper. While the mantle had automatically dulled the pain of the gut punch to a silvery tingle, it couldn't actually keep the air in my lungs, or stop me from folding over the blow. Nor did it do much against the sudden case of jelly legs I got from having my brain scrambled when the lady got a prickly grip on my neck that she used to slam my poor head into the brick wall as her follow up. Which honestly sucked, because it felt like I should be able to breathe, stand on my feet, and think straight, but my body just wasn't listening.
This was a good example of one of the other issues with the Winter Knight's mantle: I didn't really feel pain anymore, so I could run my body into the ground, broken and bleeding, and not even know it until my body failed to respond, which has happened before. It's why I always ask my doctor what the damage is when I get patched up anymore, otherwise I might have no clue how badly the machinery of my body is broken.
While I was lying on the ground, trying to will my body to get with the program and get up, I heard a familiar little click. The warlock had removed the safety on a handgun of some sort.
That was bad, right? I mean, usually warlocks don't have any problems with magic-ing your to death, so why use a gun?
"Say good night," she said.
Sleep sounded terrific, I thought. But didn't I need to read Maggie a bedtime story first?
Then there was a flash and a bang. Something hit me in the back between my shoulder blades.
I knew no more.