Recorded Neutral Territory - A Dresden Files Podcast

Brian (00:00)
So Adam, we know that killing Aurora puts Dresden on the map.

in the supernatural community in a way that not even starting the Red Court War did.

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (00:11)
Yeah, I have to imagine that at that point everybody's paying attention to this guy.

Brian (00:16)
Right. I mean, once you kill a fairy queen, your name's got across Odin's desk. I mean, some Valkyrie has to like put in the call to HQ and be like, yeah, boss, yeah, the the summer lady's dead. who killed him? this kid named Dresden. Everything about him? What do you mean? Everything about him? Okay, yeah. So yeah,

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (00:36)
Yeah.

Brian (00:38)
okay, we'll get you that ASAP, no problem, Odin.

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (00:41)
Yeah, but you have to imagine that's playing out over every major heavy hitter, right? Nicodemus is also looking at his intelligence report going, Really? Dresden, We

Brian (00:49)
Right, yes.

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (00:51)
that literally is going to pay off in the very next book where they come try to recruit him, right? So Sparta

Brian (00:54)
Yeah, the Svart Alves, everybody, sure, yeah.

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (00:56)
Elves are doing everybody's doing it. I just want the short story that has like the spies and intelligence gathering apparatus of all of these heavy hitters all fighting over the best apartment across the street to watch Harry from.

No, no, I want to be. It's got a working air conditioner.

Brian (01:14)
Right. Sigrin guard throws

a white court vampire through the floorboards because you've gotta watch

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (01:18)
Harry's just completely oblivious across the street while

Brian (01:22)
from downstairs. Yeah, exactly.

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (01:34)
Welcome one, welcome all, welcome to another exciting episode of Recorded Neutral Territory where the spoilers go all the way through twelve months. I'm Adam Ruzzo and joining me as always, it's the color commentator for this particular contest. It's Brian O'Reilly.

Brian (01:49)
On the one hand, Jim, summer has the edge here. The trade to get the winner night was really an inspired move. On the other hand, winners got a deep bench. But if they pull from that bench too early, reality itself will be destroyed. So I'd say it's a toss up. Back to you in the studio.

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (02:06)
but who should I bet all my money on?

Brian (02:08)
This year it's gonna be the Chicago Bears. They're going all the way.

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (02:12)
All right.

Brian, today we are looking at five chapters. I think this is probably the only time we've ever done five chapters in a single episode, but that's partly because these are all very short chapters, just a couple of pages each. It starts with Harry emerging up into the clouds to find Mab, and then culminates with the epilogue to the book. So let's start with that, where Harry

Is still climbing up the last of the steps get to the battle in the clouds. And Jim sets up this joke for like three or four paragraphs talking about how people will complain about things that seem commonplace but are actually amazing triumphs. And he then says, Yeah, sure. I'm walking up stairs made out of pure light to a

Battle in the clouds between fairy kingdoms but couldn't they have made an escalator?

Brian (03:09)
It's a pretty good line. And part of the reason why this chapter goes so fast and all these chapters do, is because they're really good alterations between quippy, funny things like this and sheer terror. And that seesaw makes for excellent reading. When you read it, you read it quickly. It's it's really

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (03:33)
Mm-hmm.

Brian (03:34)
engrossing trying to get you to lead lean into the book and

And just not put it down and just keep turning the pages. But it means that when you're rereading, when you're analyzing what happens in these chapters, honestly, most of the interesting things that happen are the things that are directly described to you. There's relatively little analysis per thing that occurs because the most important part isn't the subtext, it's the text.

There's a war going on.

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (04:06)
Yeah, and there's not a lot of time for subterfuge or red herrings because we already know the answer to the mystery. We're here to do the final confrontation with the villain. Speaking

of that, Harry first meets up with Mab in order to give her the information about who the villain is, and we get this line quote Mab's empty eyes flicked to the stars above, and I thought I saw a hint of worry in them. They move swiftly this night, wizard.

She paused and then breathed out almost to herself Time himself runs against thee. Unquote. Brian, what is she talking about there? We we know we've heard something similar in cold days where time runs against Harry, and it takes Odin as Kringle, if I'm remembering correctly, to sort of peel off the time dilation that's happening against them. Do you think there's something similar happening here?

Brian (05:01)
Yeah, I think there's one of two things going on. Either one, we're just right. And when you climb these stairs, you're now in the never never, which means time can move as an at an alternate rate. So even though it took them, you know, an hour to climb the stairs or thirty minutes to climb the stairs, actually they're you know, fifteen minutes to midnight because time's simply passing more quickly

in this realm that they're in now. Or alternatively, it's not that this particular part of fairy they're in has time moving more quickly, but instead that, just like in cold days, someone is using time magic to actually speed time up. The interesting question is who?

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (05:49)
Yeah, that's a really interesting question because we know at midnight, winter takes control of the table. So on the one hand, Mab has an interest in speeding time up because the sooner that happens, the sooner that the there won't be an issue with the summer night being reallocated back to summer on the table. On the other hand, Aurora also wants that outcome. Maybe they're both pushing for it. So even if Titania's trying to

counter it, maybe Aurora's making the difference.

Brian (06:20)
I I think that honestly could be exactly what's going on. That Mab would naturally be pushing for time to speed up because she wants it to get to midnight faster, so her army has the upper hand. Titania would be trying to slow down time, so they have more time before midnight when they're at their strongest. But Aurora is putting her thumb on the scale to help winter. Or maybe importantly, is simply just not putting her thumb on the scale to help summer. And therefore

Mab and Mave, or just the winter side in general, is winning, which means that what Mab's doing here when she's pausing and figuring this out and stating it, is realizing, crap, I've got to stop speeding time up because this is gonna end badly if I don't.

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (07:08)
Yeah, in fact, she acknowledges that summer gains ground despite all. She says, quote, our knight has not taken the field with us. He has been seduced, I presume, unquote. That's where Harry reveals that Aurora is the one behind everything. So until that moment where Harry comes up here, she might have had good reason to say, push time to make sure that Winter gets control of the table as fast as possible because they're weaker than they should be. And so she wants to counter that as fast as possible.

Brian (07:37)
and as we speculated, because it might be sort of okay if Summer loses this battle in the immediate term, but pretty bad if Winter's forces, you know, manning the gates are depleted, Mab might be thinking it's actually very important for her to win. Hence why she's, you know, in this moment, as there's this unexpected reversal, trying to push.

time forward, that would make sense. Because Mab has a lot to do here. We know this because we've seen it before. In her leadership role in this battle, she's got a full plate of activities.

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (08:17)
Yeah, and while she's talking to Harry here, she is like countering Titania's magic all over the place. She's like holding up her hand and casting something off into the distance to counter some other beam of light coming from Titania. And of course they are perfectly evenly matched. So we see her doing this, but it did remind me a little bit of Mab as

The battle master in battleground itself. We have to assume that Mab is doing something very similar to her people that she was doing in Battleground. She's also doing that here. But of course, Titania is countering her in this example. There is no counter to what Mab does in Battleground, as far as we

can tell.

Brian (09:00)
The operative line in Battleground is right when Mab says to Harry, The only number that matters is one Mab to none, and

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (09:10)
Yes.

Brian (09:10)
then proceeds to demonstrate extreme with extreme prejudice why that is true. In this case, it's one mab to one, because Titania is a perfect equal of her. And maybe Mab is

you know, a better strategist or something, or maybe, you know, she has some edge. But Slate's defection is enough to, you know, tilt things in Titania's favor.

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (09:37)
Yeah, Mab is at the ebb of her power right now.

Brian (09:40)
So it's not a very big advantage over Titania if there was one to begin with.

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (09:45)
Exactly. Okay, so that brings us to a moment where Harry is having this conversation with Mab, and she notices that he has a piece of the stone table that he's been using to navigate, and she immediately realizes that Rashid has been helping Harry, and she says, Rashid, what is his interest in this matter? Brian, is this

Subterfuge to hide her relationship with the gatekeeper, because we speculated earlier that they must be working together through all this, especially due to the shenanigans and timing of what happens at the council meeting.

Brian (10:19)
Yeah, I don't think it can be subterfuge, because Mab admits like a couple sentences later that she knows the smell of his fairies seeing Ungwint. So there's no way she's not very familiar with him. That's not what she's concealing. This is either straight up early book weirdness that Mab and the gatekeeper are not besties who defend the outer gates together in Jim's head yet, or

This is Mab very cajally asking Harry, do you know what Rashid's interest is in this matter? And when Dresden says something, you know, s super dumb afterwards, Mab looks at him like he's an idiot because that's not what I was even try that's not even the thing

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (11:04)
Yeah.

Brian (11:04)
I was trying to suss out you more.

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (11:06)
Right. The fact that you didn't understand the question answers my question.

Brian (11:10)
Yes, exactly.

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (11:11)
Cause he says, he's not interfering by representing the council or anything in this trial. It's it's still my trial. She's Yeah, I know that idiot. Never mind. So that is sort of brings us towards the end of this chapter where basically she says, Take the river, that's the only place that we're currently stronger at the and that can lead you to where the table is in the center of the battle.

And we get this line, we passed through hundreds more troops, most of them units evidently recovering from the first shock of battle, unquote. And there are many other descriptions of these troops basically coming back from the front lines wounded or missing limbs or whatever. And we know that in battleground, MAB is going to have very few troops to fight Ethniu, and it seems like an unusually small amount.

For Mab to take the field with. Now it turns out to be just barely enough, but do you think the losses from this battle could contribute to that at all?

Brian (12:10)
definitely. I think these losses definitely contribute to the weakness of winter troops in battleground.

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (12:17)
Even though it's what,

twelve, fourteen, fifteen years later?

Brian (12:20)
Yeah, and we know for a fact that Molly has to go recruit a bunch of kids who were born just about this time to fight in that battle. Presumably this is some of who th the people they're replacing. At the same time, this might not be the main contributing factor, because one other thing we know is simply that Maeve has been down on her recruitment duties for a while.

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (12:43)
Yeah, I think h hundred and fifty-ish years is the speculation that I remember reading about. The other thing though is that we know that in Proven Guilty, Arctus Tor is attacked and its normal defenders, a cadre of elite trolls and presumably other defenders besides that, are just obliterated in that fight. So that

probably has something to do with it in addition to this battle is winter's been weakened and like you said, presumably any recruits they are getting have to go to the gate to defend reality. If they're not getting enough to fight with Summer, that means they won't have a lot to fight with Ethneu.

Brian (13:23)
Yeah, at some point we should sit down and speculate how many troops Winter has, but it's definitely a number where it doesn't take a lot of losses. Like a thousand losses actually means something to Mab. And even fewer, like with those elite trolls, where it's sort of special forces that she, you know, really needs for specific tasks. When those go down, it actually means something.

And it's smart of Jim to set it up that way, because if this was, you know, the armies of the Napoleonic Wars where you could send a corps into a, you know, meat grinder and you know, basically you come out the other side and yeah, you feel the losses, but you're just gonna recruit more men, you know, or if it's World War Two or World War One and it's millions of them. Well, okay, that doesn't feel as impactful every time there's a loss. So we assume it's enough to where what we see in this battle

is actually meaningful. That's why Jim shows it to us.

And we get to see a lot of this battle step by step, because we start off with Harry snapping off a Fuego, quote, a lance of crimson energy white at the cora, leapt out from the tip of my blasting rod and scythed across the giant bee's path. The kind of fire spell that, you know, we'd read a whole paragraph about how tired he is three books ago after he does it. He just

Opens the battle with that.

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (14:50)
The reaction from Fix and Merrill here actually had me think of Randy's reaction in Battleground because we get to see them say, quote, I looked around me and found Fix and Merrill staring at me with wide eyes. Fix swallowed and I saw his mouth form the word wow, unquote. Yeah, this is the first time they really saw a wizard cut loose with a fireball.

They've just been around Dresden and he's either been getting knocked down by them personally or thrown in a dumpster by Merrill and he's just been kind of a joke. But now they can see, he's re we should not have been pissing him off, actually.

Brian (15:32)
Yeah, this Gandalf riding out from Minas Tirith to like body all of the Nazgul simultaneously, where he just comes back and you're like, okay, that's what you mean by wizard. Yes, that's what they

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (15:45)
Yes, exactly.

Brian (15:46)
mean by wizard, exactly. So we actually encounter Aurora's party. We're still most of three chapters from the end of this book, but we encounter Aurora's party right here in what is fundamentally the first party.

So why don't we have the confrontation there?

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (16:06)
Yeah, it's sort of a mini-boss fight where Harry, Meryl, and Fix have to fight up against Slate and Talos, while the Alphas basically deal with the rest of the she that jump over the river here. It's all a delaying tactic, right? Aurora just needs to get the unraveling and Lily to the table and

Do her thing, and if as long as Dresden's not there for that ten minute period, she's good. Her plan succeeds. And so sacrificing a few of the pawns to him, that seems like it's perfectly reasonable.

So this battle here is important because it does let Harry basically split the enemy in two. If he had to take on Aurora at the same time that he was taking on Slate and Talos, then even with all of the other allies he has, it wouldn't be enough.

Brian (16:50)
Yeah, and we're

gonna see an echo of this in the next couple chapters because in the final confrontation, Harry is also gonna need help when Aurora gets the rest of her cadre involved. However, in this scene, we do get a s a solution to an earlier mystery that we noticed Adam. How does Talos maintain that glamour when he's stabbed with the nail? When

Harry gets him with iron? Well, it's because he's not maintaining the glamour. Talos, in his spell repelling mail, which is what has enabled him to impersonate an ogre, shook colors from his blade and focused on Harry with deadly feline intensity.

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (17:33)
Yeah, we we spent a good t amount of time in episode four wondering, you know, how is it that he's able to keep the glamour up? And it appears to be the answer that we speculated on was maybe it's an enchanted item, and Harry just goes and gives us the answer here. We've just forgotten it.

Brian (17:46)
And

specifically, the spell repelling male, probably some of its, you know, anti magic properties is why he's able to shrug off the iron better than another fairy might be able to.

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (17:59)
exactly. So then here they're all squaring off against each other, right? Harry, the Alphas, Meryl and Fix are all standing face to face with Talos, the She Warriors, and Slate and Harry k and everybody's yelling their battle cries, and Harry says The noise was deafening and no one could have heard me anyway, as I let out my own battle cry, which I figured was worth a shot. What the hell? I don't believe

In fairies, unquote. So obviously referencing Peter Pan there, where if you say you don't believe in fairies, one of them dies. So that would be, you know, if it was that easy, this battle could be over pretty quick. You just get all of the alphas to switch back into their human form and cre say it as fast as possible. But this is a perfect example, Brian, of something called bathos, which in writing is when you have a serious moment undercut by a joke.

And this is something that you see that's often sort of described as sort of the Whedon style of writing, because it is very common in Joss Whedon shows. And we do remember that Butcher was a huge fan of Buffy the Vampire Slayer while he was writing these. But there's a quote from Joss Whedon that I like to pull out here, quote, make it dark, make it grim, make it tough. But then, for the love of God, tell a joke, unquote.

Brian (19:17)
Yeah, it's really important to see stuff like that in scenes like this, not just because that's a writing trend that's in vogue to a certain extent now, and even more so when Jim's writing this book, but because it's true to life. You know, some of the people with the blackest comedy you'll ever meet are actual veterans of war, because the absurdity of battle.

leads to moments that can only be described in ways that are absurd and humorous. And if you don't have that comedy, that that sense of humans making light of horrors, it's not going to feel real. Though obviously, as has been a a criticism that's been levied against Whedon himself on a few occasions, overdoing that also feels very fake.

Here I think this is the perfect moment for levity because we're gonna get a lot of heavy stuff for a while here, and we only have a couple spaces to make jokes from now until we get to the final confrontation.

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (20:26)
Yeah, and what's more, the lack of Bathos in future books or in specific moments, even in the books that we've seen so far, is something that really calls out the tone shift, right? The scene in grave peril where Harry gets caught by the monsters,

There's no bathos undercutting the tension of that moment. Butcher's just allowing you to wallow in it. The other one that came to mind that we're going to see in the very next book is when Nicodemus captures Harry. He seems to try to make jokes. It's his defense mechanism, but they fall flat.

in that scene. So it's a very clever way that the writer can can provide this bathos to undercut the tension and make the the story feel like an adventure story, something that's exciting and not too scary, not too the stakes aren't that high. The hero's not really gonna die. Of course he's gonna save the day, because then in those moments where you really do want to up the tension,

You withhold the bathos from those moments and it really feels like a different book

Brian (21:33)
Yeah, I mean I think

the clearest example of this is actually with the Nagloshi in turncoat, because

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (21:39)
Ooh yeah.

Brian (21:40)
the Nagloshi is the one who makes jokes, and that makes it so much more sinister that

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (21:47)
Exactly.

Brian (21:48)
the comedy is on the other side. In this scene, after that battle cry, we get

that's the last line of the chapter, and we jump to the actual battle at the river.

Where Harry pulls out some neat tricks to kind of make it through here.

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (22:06)
he starts by f forming his shield into basically a low wall that's gonna trip all of the horses in the in the cavalry charge from the She, and that's what allows him to cause enough chaos to have sort of a one-on-one fight with Talos and Slate and have Merrill step up to help and then Merrill gets stabbed and you get Fix coming up with his monkey wrench and he's helping. Eventually, boy, Fix goes to town on

slate for a while with his monkey wrench, but all of this stuff happens, right? You get Talos advancing on Harry. Harry shoots him with a 357 Magnum. The shot doesn't penetrate, but it stuns Talos enough for Harry to bludgeon him with the steel barrel of the gun until he's down. Slate is his arm is damaged from Harry using the lightning bolt that he pulls out of the cloud to hit

Slate with a lightning bolt, which calls back to the very first book. We don't get that too often. All of this stuff is happening, and eventually Harry's team comes out mostly victorious here. It's just crazy how much Butcher packs into three pages, half a chapter basically, of this book is just very concise and still extremely well told and exciting.

Brian (23:19)
Yeah, I absolutely love Harry using the lightning spell on Slate here. First of all, because he's about to kill that mortar with magic because he's so furious that he stabbed Meryl, and

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (23:33)
Mm-hmm.

Brian (23:34)
it does a great job of showing how angry Harry is. But second, because he's so damn smart. Why do we never see Harry throw that spell around? Well

Presumably, it's because it's really hard to cast a lightning spell when you're on the ground. But thousands of feet in the air, when you can literally stick your staff into the clouds

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (23:58)
Mm-hmm.

Brian (23:59)
before you deliver the strike, much, much easier. So great situational awareness there. And then the banger when Talos has him on his back and pulls an and so it ends. And Harry does a

I might be out of spells, but I'm not out of shells. Nails

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (24:15)
Ha ha ha.

Brian (24:17)
him with the three fifty-seven Magnum is truly maybe the closest we get to Dresden as dirty Harry in the entire series.

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (24:26)
Yeah, in comparison to some of the other set pieces that we've seen in the previous books, I think this one is very well told. Obviously, this isn't the complete climax. We still have the final fight with Aurora and and the reveal of Toot Toot, but for this half of it, I think it's very well done. There's a lot of back and forth. We see Merrill and Fix get their moment in the scene. Harry G.

does get his super badass moment with the lightning bolt, which again, as you point out, i Jim can't give him that tool very often, 'cause it's just so damn strong. But if you give it to him at times where it makes sense, he gets to look like a badass and you get to cheer for your hero. So I'm glad that all those beats were really well done here. Maybe Merrill deserved a little bit more time. We're gonna talk about that when we get to her death later, but she does get a little bit of a shot here where she saves Harry

from Talos because Harry just does can't hold a candle to Talos even with his th three fifty seven Magnum.

Brian (25:26)
Yeah, do you watch the the Jack Reacher TV series, Adam? Yeah, so

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (25:30)
Yes. Yeah.

Brian (25:31)
it Merrill headbutting Talos to me is Alan Richardson, you know, headbutting people all the time as Reacher. Just like, yeah, I'm a troll bitch. Like, take this. Exactly,

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (25:42)
You think my head's not hard?

Brian (25:44)
exactly. Really, really good. This is probably, in my opinion, and we'll just say this for the scene as a whole, which does cross all these chapters.

The best action writing Jim has done to this point in the series. I don't think it's particularly close. We made a lot in Full Moon about how many of the scenes, including the climax, but also earlier in the book, have slightly weird logic in terms of who's running where and why and for what

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (26:13)
Mm-hmm.

Brian (26:14)
reason. And then in Grave Peril, Jim solves this

by repeating a trick that he does use in Full Moon, but much more artfully by having Harry unconscious at a couple transition moments or otherwise exhausted and unable to

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (26:28)
Mm-hmm.

Brian (26:29)
take action. In this scene, he doesn't need to do that. He's able to keep Harry operating basically at peak from the beginning to the end by showing him overcoming obstacles in a fashion that is inherently temporary. They don't

Kill Talos. They don't ever take these people out of the fight until the very end. They just get by them. So the fact that we get to see that ebb and flow, that push and pull again and again and again as the scene continues makes it feel okay that Harry is getting these victories, but still has the obstacles.

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (27:11)
Yeah, and so this scene sort of ends with Slate having been hit by that lightning bolt. He's try he he actually gets Harry's gun away and he's about to hit Harry, but Fix comes to the rescue, and then the She Warriors are getting ready for another charge, and Mave saves the Mave saves the day. Brian, is this right?

Brian (27:30)
Yeah, that's exactly you you might just do a complete double take at the book when you see the pale rider took off her helmet and flash me a brilliant girlish smile. It was Maeve the winter lady. What? Come

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (27:43)
Ha ha ha.

Brian (27:44)
on, Maeve. But look, this is gonna be the part of her job that Maeve actually really likes.

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (27:53)
yeah, and and she gets to act very mave when she's I'd have acted sooner, but it would have been a fair fight and I avoid those. I could see her just with her whole coterie just in the river, wait just wait for it. Wait for it. Okay, most of them are dead. Let's hit from behind now. yeah, yeah, yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. Harry's almost dying multiple

Brian (28:09)
Yes, except way more eager than that. Absolutely. Sitting there just licking her lips, waiting for the chance.

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (28:17)
times. So, like, should we should we help him now? No, the odds aren't aren't good enough yet.

Brian (28:19)
Not yet. Not wait

for it. Wait for it. Yeah, exactly. So

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (28:22)
Wait for it.

Brian (28:25)
if Maeve is good at this part of her job, maybe. If she handled everything else the way she handles actual battle, she might be a great winner lady. We do see, however, somebody else who's gonna ride to Harry's rescue, though we don't know that yet actually.

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (28:40)
Yeah, there's two moments here that are worth talking about. The first quote is, One horse lay on the ground screaming, the others had scattered, and only one warrior was still mounted, another slender she in green armor and a masked helm. Unquote.

That is Elaine, who we will find out very shortly in the very next chapter, when that last one is like la raising their lance to skewer Harry and then throws it in the ground instead and says, Stay still, Harry, I'll take care of this, and she comes and helps him. But the other line is, quote, I recovered my staff and my blasting rod was nowhere to be seen. The black doctor bag lay nearby, and I recovered it, taking time to check its contents before closing it again. All right, people, let's go. Unquote. He

Butcher is seeding both of these items in your mind, foreshadowing them so that later when Elaine reveals herself or when Toot is revealed, you don't feel like, well, where the hell did that Dayzex Machina come from?

Brian (29:35)
Yes.

so Harry's recover the bag and starts moving down the stream towards the stone table. And actually gets close enough not only to see Aurora, but as the araveling begins to come apart, take it away from her with a clutch ventas servitas.

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (30:01)
good old good old-fashioned aromancer Harry Dresden. And of course he yells, meep meep, and then runs away. But that shouldn't work, Brian. The the summer lady is not gonna let you get away with meep meeping at her and then running away. And of course it doesn't. She just immediately gets him in a binding spell where his like arms are pinned to his side. She takes it right back, puts up a wall of thorns like 20 feet thick or something.

And then just goes back to her business because he's not even worth finishing off. He's that far beneath her in power.

Brian (30:39)
Well, I think it's that end that Aurora is so focused on what she's trying to do and is kind of mad. I mean, she's really losing it. She's she's crazy. That's driving her to sort of make decisions entirely based off those emotions.

She's become myopic and fixated on exactly what's in front of her face. And the reason that this is important is because it explains why she doesn't just kill Harry at a couple moments where she has the chance to. And maybe why she's not able to notice that

Her coterie has sort of broken apart. It seems that Aurora has kind of lost track of Elaine, which is why she's even in position to help Harry eventually.

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (31:37)
Yeah, but I think this also possible that Aurora still has Elaine's warning in her head about his death curse. So

she might be like, listen, I'm just gonna put up this wall that he can't get through and 'cause I'm so close. I just need to go do this right now. It's gonna take me thirty seconds. There's no way he gets through this wall in time. I'm good. So that makes sense to me that she's just like s like you said, super focused on what she's trying to finish.

Because she's so close. She doesn't need to think about it too much. She just needs to buy herself a little bit of time. Turns out it's not quite enough, thanks to both Elaine and Meryl.

Brian (32:16)
so

chapter 33 opens with the spear drove into the earth beside my neck. And the writer hissed in an impatient female voice, hoed still. And Elaine is here yet again, getting Harry out of this bind that Aurora's put her in.

And he even at this point says, I'd say it was glad to see you, but I'm not sure. That's because you always were a little dense, Harry, she said,

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (32:39)
Yeah.

Brian (32:40)
her voice tart. Because Elaine's like, How are you not getting this? I'm on your side, dummy. And she proceeds to help Harry and then say, Okay, let's get out of here.

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (32:51)
Mm-hmm. She's still

thinking the the best move is to run.

Brian (32:54)
Right. And Harry says, No, we've got to do this. We've got to stop her. I'm going back in there. And he tells Elaine that she's going to have to hold the thorns off of him so he can make it in. And Elaine says, even though she just made this whole remark about how, you know, I'm on your side effectively.

And Harry says

Quote, I want to believe that what we had really meant something even now, that I can trust you with my life the way you can trust me with yours. End quote. Elaine's response, after a bitter little laugh, is You don't know what I am anymore, Harry. Adam

What does she mean by that?

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (33:41)
I think this is clear confirmation of what we've been saying for a while that Elaine is obviously carrying a blackenarius.

Brian (33:52)
Yeah, it's pretty clear that she is under Lachiel's thrall and that's why, you know, when she gives up the coin. No, this is pretty fair evidence that Elaine might be dabbling in necromancy and you know that kind of thing.

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (34:06)
Yeah,

wh why does she say what I am anymore, right? You don't know who I am anymore is a common phrase, right?

Brian (34:11)
Common. Right.

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (34:12)
Because th they've been apart for ten some odd years, but you don't know what I am? That implies that she might not be human anymore, or at least has

changed significantly.

Brian (34:22)
or that she's not the kind of wizard that he knew her as. That's why

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (34:27)
Right.

Brian (34:27)
the necromancer thing makes sense. You don't know what I am. It's you don't know the things I've done. So

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (34:34)
Right.

Brian (34:35)
we'll get to that in the assessment episode in a little bit of more detail. But Harry gets inside the wall just in time to save Lily by slugging Aurora in the

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (34:51)
Yeah, speak speaking of tunnel vision, Brian, she doesn't hear him coming up behind her and smashing her with this big thick piece of oak.

Brian (35:00)
Yeah, that's exactly what I mean. Harry

is not known for his quiet stealth movements. He's

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (35:05)
No.

Brian (35:05)
a big heavy guy charging up the hill, probably yelling he doesn't even realize it to himself.

So Aurora not paying any attention gets whacked here, but then she lets out a wild laugh because Talos is back and Aurora gets to say, Kill him, Lord Marshall. And that's where we get the scene that pays off.

Merrill being stabbed near gutted by Slate in the previous chapter.

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (35:37)
Yeah, and as I was rereading this, Brian, I got to that moment where they sort of carried her along with them when she was wounded by Slate, and she says, it's not so bad. Most of the blood isn't mine, but Harry can tell she's lying at that point. He can tell that she's in a lot of pain and he sort of lets her down on the ground, he says, Stay here, you've done enough And she looks at him and says one thing more. And I got little chills there, Brian. That line

carries a lot more weight to a rereader than it does to an initial reader.

Brian (36:12)
Yeah, because the line we get is, quote, and it was Meryl. She'd chosen. And you gotta imagine, Adam, for some changelings, it's a pretty straight choice. Do you want to be a fairy princess or not? And

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (36:29)
Ha ha.

Brian (36:30)
some of them say no, of course, because you know they they like their mortal life and they don't want to get caught up in the politics and all of that. But you gotta feel like for Trump.

Troll changelings. The question's a little bit deeper. Because I don't know if a troll actually always retains the intellectual capacity to even remain terribly similar to the person they were before the choosing. So Meryl doesn't make it through the end of this book, but in a way, in choosing, she has already died.

To a certain extent, she's already made the sacrifice. That's why Jim's bolded that statement for us.

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (37:16)
Yeah, if you recall back in chapter twenty two they're on Billy's balcony and Harry's having that conversation with Merrill and she says, Sometimes I think it would be easier to just choose the she half, to stop being human, stop hurting, if it wasn't for the others needing me. And then Harry says, It would turn you into a monster.

To which she replies, but a happy monster. She knows that it would be the easier path, that she would be happy, like that ignorance is bliss thing, like she would lose intelligence as a troll, and she would be happy to be violent and have fun crushing things. But she knows she has people that need her. And that is something that Harry can deeply empathize with. That is what drives him as well to go back on his word with the Lenanche.

People need me. I can't be done yet, right? This is exactly what drives her and it's what causes her to give up her life in this moment. Maybe she knew she was gonna die, but she chooses to become a troll to help save Harry from Talos in this critical moment, and not only saves Harry, but also saves everybody else who would have been destroyed by what Aurora's plan was going to do.

Brian (38:32)
Yeah, and most importantly to her, probably saves Lily, because

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (38:36)
Mm-hmm.

Brian (38:37)
that is what Meryl's been about this entire book. And Jim gives her the payoff by making her the difference between Lily living and dying. So Merrill gets Talos out of the way, and Harry is able to beat Aurora to the knife after she's grabbed Lily again. And Aurora says, fool.

I will tear out her throat with my bare hands. No, you won't. And then Aurora, and and you gotta, you know, evil overlord list, like do it. Or like when you make the threat. Yeah. Yeah.

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (39:12)
Yeah, don't just say I will just do it. Why are you stopping?

Brian (39:17)
And and then she again, and

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (39:19)
She gives him a straight never give Harry a straight line.

Brian (39:21)
Yeah. And why not? I undid the clasp of the valise.

Because I know something you do not. I am not left handed either.

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (39:32)
No, no, you're getting your your

you're getting your stories mixed. That is what the dread pirate Robert said to Enigo Montoya during their fight. This is a different a different answer. She says, What could you possibly know that matters now? And Harry says, the phone number to Pizza Spress, which I think is a pretty awesome thing. But then when he says, get her toot, that feels like it's

Really corny. Like the first one, badass one liner. Like, I'm about to reveal the secret plan that the readers have been not allowed to know, but then get her toot I don't know, it un the corniness of it undercuts the badassery in my mind.

Brian (40:12)
Yeah, I feel like Jim tried to come up with a version of this line that was like that a pixie can open a box cutter or or something like that, you know, but there is just like not enough buildup in the story to deliver a version of that that's, you know, concise enough to work. So he has to do this in direct reference to the pixies before he shows them to her. And then also a different thing, which is the order for the pixies to go get her. So

It it is a little corny and it's fine that Harry's a little corny here. Harry's a little corny, and this is him before

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (40:47)
Yes.

Brian (40:47)
he's got his sort of world-saving mojo at peak. But I think also Jim might have done this a little differently if he'd had, you know, six more books of experience under his belt.

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (41:01)
Sure,

sure. But I still like what could you possibly know that matters now? The phone number to PizzaSpress because that is like crystallizing the plan in your mind at that moment. That's when you have like the the big brain meme

Brian (41:17)
Yeah, this is a very galaxy brand line, for sure. Yes. And

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (41:19)
Galaxy brain was the one I was looking for, yes.

Brian (41:21)
I think that it I I like the moment, but I'm saying this because I think it undercuts something that we're gonna talk about in a minute. But before we get to that, okay, so tune in the pixies, get a bunch of box cutters, and Jesus, like Jim doesn't go into details, but this is this is like a horror film. This is really gruesome. my god.

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (41:40)
Yeah. Talk about your death by a thousand cuts. Listen, a paper

cut is pretty

excruciating sometimes. Imagine being hit dozens of times a second with box cutter cuts. god.

Brian (41:53)
I mean,

they painted a Jackson Pollock in her blood on the ground here. Like it's

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (41:57)
Yeah.

Brian (41:59)
horrifying. So but Aurora dies. Adam, early installment weirdness? I mean, you know, when Harry is told to kill Maeve, it has to be on Halloween because she's immortal and you can't kill her.

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (42:15)
Yeah, but I think this has something to do with the existence of the table. I think that it's gotta be, right? Remember we were speculating about on an earlier episode, specifically that the table was used to maybe start the courts by sacrificing some of the gods that didn't want to play along with the white god's new rules. And if that's the case, the table would probably need to be able to kill immortals, and its presence could

de immortalify well, could mortalize them, I guess. Instead of immortalizing them, it was mortalizing them. So that to me does track. I think that's ex that's got to be what's happening here.

Brian (42:55)
Yeah, what's the antonym for apotheosis? Yeah, exactly. But I completely agree. I that's definitely what's happening. And this is probably the best piece of evidence that that's the purpose of the table. Because if the only thing done to power up the fairy courts is that Hecate gave up her mantle, she could just do that on Halloween. She's doing it willingly. She could just die then. Why would you need the table to let you kill immortals?

All the time, because sometimes you're just holding one of them down and you gotta make them no more, you know, at an inconvenient time of year. So Aurora is the architect of her own demise here, because the item that she's using to end the war is basically the only thing that can get her killed in this moment. We don't know that yet, but on reread, the irony is palpable.

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (43:50)
Yeah, and why doesn't Harry use the table to kill Maeve in cold days? Because Maeve isn't going anywhere near that table voluntarily. You're not gonna get her to go there. Even if you could get Mab to summon it in order to get her to go there on some night other than Halloween, she knows the deal with that table. Remember l the Lenanche's warning to Harry, never let her take you here. They know what the table does.

Brian (44:17)
yeah. I mean, I think when Mab tells Harry to kill Maeve, she's hoping he's going to do it in a way that she doesn't see it coming and, you know, just kind of gangster right.

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (44:29)
And that Nab doesn't to be involved, right? She's

sh as according to the Mother Winter, she's soft, right?

Brian (44:35)
Right.

So that's what Mab is hoping is gonna happen. It's not what happens at all, but she wants Harry, presumably to take her by surprise, to kind of outrace the she coterie back to Chicago, find Maeve and take her out. And Harry doesn't do that and doesn't even try to do that because he's successfully convinced that, you know, maybe Mab is the one who is infected. But here, Aurora is.

Has done the complete opposite. Maeve, in those circumstances, knows exactly what she's doing and is trying to avoid getting killed because she's got a big ritual to pull off and she needs to be alive to do it. Aurora's big l ritual involves exposing herself to death in this way by being near the table. And I don't necessarily think from Nemesis's view, this is a problem with this plan.

In a way it's a little bit of a failsafe because okay, worst case scenario, I take out the summer lady.

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (45:40)
And we even see the summer lady tries to die on the table to actually still fulfill her plan, and instead of giving the summer knight's mantle, she was gonna give the wi the summer lady's mantle to winter, which would have disrupted the balance of the courts just as badly, if not more so. So Harry manages to prevent that, basically forces her to die on the ground next to it instead of on the table. But

I wanna ask you, Brian, about Harry's plan here that gets revealed in this scene where Toot Toot comes out of the doctor's bag. It reminds me of an old George Carlin joke, right? The very existence of a flamethrower proves that sometime someone said to themselves, you know, I wanna set that person over there on fire, but I'm not quite close enough to get the job done. Well, the very existence of Harry

showing up here with a bunch of pixies with box cutters proves that he came here with premeditation to commit this murder.

Brian (46:40)
Yeah. Harry brought that bag to assassinate Aurora. That's the purpose of it. And we know this. This is not arguable. We know this. Because he doesn't break it out when he's almost stopped by Talos or when the Alphas engaged by Korick. He's saving it for her. It's his secret weapon. It's what he's going to use against Aurora. And because we don't know it's coming.

It seems like Harry is just improvising. He's just doing whatever will get the job done. But there's no other reason why you bring a couple dozen pixies with box cutters if you're not planning on using iron against the summer lady. And there's no point in just giving her a couple flesh wounds. And this is cold as hell. Dresden shows up.

Being like, remember that pretty nice girl I met in that hotel a couple nights ago? I'm going to murder her by repeatedly having little fairies stab her with razor blades. That is

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (47:47)
Yeah.

Brian (47:49)
extremely ruthless. It's the kind of cold, rational, this is what needs to happen decision making that I'd argue we haven't.

actually seen to this degree at any other point in the series.

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (48:08)
Yeah, and you have to imagine that that moment is when Mab goes, That's my future winter night, right? He can make the hard he he obviously doesn't want to commit a lot of violence, so he'll be able to withstand the mantle and not do stupid shit like giving into it when he shouldn't. But when push comes to shove, he has the cojones, he has the ability to make those hard decisions and be ruthless when it matters. And

There's no point earlier in this book series that it has mattered more, right? If this goes wrong, if Aurora does what she wants to do, billions die in climate crises over the next 50 years, right? Harry knows what's at stake and he's come prepared. But I will point out, Brian, what's the first thing he does when he catches up with Aurora? It's not unleash a toot. It's grab the unraveling, say meep meep, and try to run away. Now,

You could argue that he's being a little naive in that moment because she very quickly s smashes him down and takes it back. But he did try to avoid the murder outcome here. He knew it was a possibility. He'd planned for it. It was his ace in the hole. But it's not what he wanted to do.

Brian (49:24)
Yeah. Just building off of what you said, Adam, I think you're right that this is the moment where Mab makes that decision. And I think there's two reasons why I believe that This changes who Dresden is in Mab's eyes. You're right to say that he doesn't

Go to it immediately. He doesn't try this the first time he sees Aurora. Now, maybe because in that moment there were too many people around, he didn't think it would work, or maybe because he knows this is kind of a horrible thing to do, and he doesn't want to do it if he can avoid it. But if you'll notice, in the beginning of this book, when Mab makes a bargain with Harry, it's just for the three tasks.

And it's not until after this that she offers him the night's mantle. Now listen, it's it's totally possible that Margaret, before Harry was even born, told the fairy courts, Yes, y I need Leia as his godmother. You're gonna make him into the winter night when the time comes. It's possible that she suggested all of that. But even if she did, Mab hasn't followed through with any of it yet.

Because she doesn't know if this guy is actually the horse she has to back. She might be taking keeping an eye on him, she's having Leia keep an eye on him at least, but she hasn't put all her money on black yet. And by the end of this battle, she's willing to do that. And it's not because he can do wizard stuff. Like the fact that he throws a Fuego or a Forzari around isn't something that changes her mind.

The fact that he even succeeds in this task may or may not mean that he's fit to be the winter knight. He's done impressive things before. But this is the first thing he does that's extremely winter coded. And that's

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (51:22)
Yeah.

Brian (51:23)
why I think we see the request here at the end of this battle. But I've got a question for you, Adam. We've been saying that this is a pretty hardcore decision.

Is this consistent with the Dresden we know?

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (51:36)
Yeah, and I think this comes back to the stakes of what's happening here. I think a later version of Dresden would have entered this scene and instead of grabbing the unraveling from her and trying to run away at first, a later version, the winter night version, you know, at post changes, he would come up and say, I'm giving you one last chance, Aurora.

Brian (52:00)
Yeah.

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (52:01)
End this before.

before we do something that can't be undone. And then she would, of course, monologue or say, no, you can't stop me, blah, blah, blah. And then he unleashes toot, right? This is a more naive version that tries to avoid that fate. Of a later version would know that there's only one way this is gonna end. And he's gonna plan for that and give her the one chance to to to give up. But an earlier version of Dresden is probably.

The same situation here, the stakes are what's different. That's what I was calling out before. In the other situations that Harry has sort of shrinked away from violence, as you pointed out, he did not want the solution for McFinn to be kill McFinn to stop the Lugaroo. He does not want that solution. That's the one he winds up having to do in the very end. But he spends the whole book trying to find a different solution. And yet the Lugaro.

maybe kills a couple people a month. This is talking about billions. He's willing to make the hard choices when the stakes are higher. And I think that's very consistent with the Dresden of the earlier books. In fact,

he's willing to start a war over the f over one soul as of the previous book. So I think he's already proven he can be pretty hardcore.

Brian (53:16)
Yeah, and the key differentiation between this moment and that moment is that this is premeditated. He's not

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (53:23)
Yes.

Brian (53:24)
deciding on the basis of his instincts and emotions in the moment. He packs the pixies with the box knives into the valise before he leaves, right? It's what he does when he's getting dressed in the morning. It's a pretty cold choice. But I agree with you that what it shows me is not that Harry's become different.

But just that he's somebody who, yeah, I do like as much as I think I do. Because obviously something that I don't know if this is true of you, I always get frustrated by when a hero does it is the, kinda like the thing he doesn't full moon with Roger. Like this guy's been trying to kill me, he's not gonna stop trying to kill me, but I'm gonna let him go because,

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (54:05)
Yeah.

Brian (54:05)
you know, it's a little bit naive when so much is on the line to

Be that precious about keeping your hands clean.

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (54:15)
Mm-hmm.

Brian (54:15)
And the fact that Dresden isn't that precious about keeping his hand his hands clean is something that to me makes him not necessarily a nicer person, but one that I like or respect even more for having that capability.

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (54:33)
Exactly. Okay,

so that takes us into chapter thirty-four, the epilogue, where Harry basically now collapses from exhaustion.

His work is done. He doesn't have adrenaline pumping through his veins anymore. And we get this line, quote, I lay there with Aurora's empty body too tired to move. The Queens found me maybe an hour later. I was only dimly aware of them, of radiant light of gold and blue meeting over me. Gold light gathered over the body for a moment and then flowed away, taking the dead flesh with it. I was left cold and tired on the ground, unquote. This is where Mab comes and has this offer for Harry, right? But

I think it's very interesting to imagine Mab and Titania arriving here at the table, having called some truce once Aurora dies and not saying anything to each other. Cause we know they haven't spoken since Hastings, but here Harry places them in the same place at the same time. They just look at each other. then Titania takes Aurora's bar body and leaves.

Brian (55:33)
Well, I think honestly, that is Titania showing the underlying, if distant and decayed, affection for her twin that does exist. Because I think the only things that Titania could say in this moment would be very unkind.

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (55:54)
I think it's also based on how she reacts to Harry in cold days that we referenced a couple of times, where the wisdom of her heart says she wants to murder him, it's probably taking all her restraint to not do that in this moment.

Brian (56:09)
Yes.

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (56:09)
And just like Mab being unable to speak without the rage doing damage to people's ears In small

favor.

Titania probably has the same problem. Literally can't speak she's so filled with rage. It would like kill Harry if she spoke at this moment.

Brian (56:26)
Well, she could do that, right? It's just that she won't, because she's keeping that control on herself effectively to be nice. So that's the nicest thing she could do in this situation. Titania's not, I think, a person who's necessarily any worse than Mab. It's just that the mantle that she wears makes her even more alien to us in in certain ways.

I think what's really interesting here though is that Jim starts this chapter with I'd saved the girl, stopped the thief, proved Mab's innocence, and won her support. Adam, does that sound like anything to you?

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (57:04)
Yeah. I used

a knife, saved a girl, won a war, God forgive me. It's it's a little bit similar to the cadence there. but there he's saying it with sort of a melancholy of like, What have I done? And here

He's actually being more sarcastic, like huzzah, I won the day, but at what cost? I had to murder Aurora to do it.

Brian (57:29)
W that's what I'm saying. I think it's the same

emotion because in both cases he's in horror

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (57:37)
Yeah. He's just more devastated

because of the person he has to kill in changes.

Brian (57:41)
Of course, of course. But it's the same thing in that he's in

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (57:44)
Yeah.

Brian (57:44)
horror at what he's had to do to stop this war that's going on. And I really think that Jim's ability not just to sort of make sure everything works in terms of the lore from book to book, but also just to do little things like that. Stuff that you'd see in an epic poem where a line, a cadence, a rhythm is a call back to something that

You know, the witches said in act one of Macbeth

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (58:13)
Mm-hmm.

Brian (58:14)
is a really, really good trait for an author who's writing a series that's this long. But Adam, when we get back to the conversation that Harry does have with Mab, she says something that's a little strange here: that he capital C called the Pixies himself.

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (58:32)
Yeah, the line is quote, it is unusual for a mortal to be able to call any of fairy, even the lowest into service. But it has been done before, unquote. And as you point out, the word call there is a capital C, and that is very similar to the capital C that Toot uses when he first meets up with Harry in this book in the alley

Where Toot says, quote, you can't make us. We haven't been called. And until we are, we belong to ourselves, unquote. And there he uses a capital C as well. And so that is very interesting. It implies that something more is happening here than just, hey, I'll give you pizza if you do this for me.

Brian (59:16)
Yeah, absolutely. I think that it's implying what we speculated about in episode five, that Harry giving the pizza isn't just a transactional relationship that the Faye are repaying. It's created a bond of vassalage that allows that him to call them like his bannermen. And this is the point where Harry has established that relationship, which might

Be another reason that Mab says that's my next winter night.

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (59:48)
Right, because there's no way Slate is forging those relationships. He's just too caustic a personality.

Brian (59:54)
I mean, Mab's even going to tell us in Battleground that a knight manifesting a banner of their will is something that's rare. And Harry isn't doing the exact same thing here, but he's forging a similar bond with people serving under him, which has got to be important when you know that there's a war coming from Mab's perspective. Now, we get Ebenezer and the

Gatekeeper making an appearance to bring Harry back home. Mab makes good on her author of safe passage through Unsealy territory. and that is going to continue even after the Reds are defeated and changes. This seems to be a durable thing that's essentially now part of the Uncelia courts. And when we finally get back to Harry's apartment, we have an entire rotating cast show up for the epilogue. And

Jim has at least become very efficient at this now. We've got a reason why everyone's gonna kinda show up at one place one after another just a couple days after, and we're gonna get done with this nice and

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (1:00:59)
Yeah, we talked about at the end of, I think, both Full Moon and Stormfront, where Jim's epilogue is him narrating what happened after the fact, right? This happened and then that happened, and it turned out Marcone got away with it, and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Here, he actually turns those into scenes where Billy is letting him know, here's what happened after you fell asleep, and here's what Meryl said before she died, and what happened to the alphas, etc., etc. But there is

One moment that I wanted to first call out here, right?

Billy says, Ebenezer said to tell you you'd made a lot of people see red, but that you shouldn't worry about them for a while. Unquote. Brian, who's he talking about? Who did Ebenezer referring to when he says you made a lot of people see red?

Brian (1:01:47)
Yeah, that's a weird way to put it. So he's made a lot of people really angry by doing what? Stopping the war between the courts, saving the world, succeeding at his trial?

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (1:02:02)
securing them passage through the unsealy territory, which is gonna be crucial for their survival in the near future.

Brian (1:02:09)
Right. Now the obvious answer to this would be that Ebenezer is talking about Titania and the summer court. But and he might just be able to figure that out. I mean he's a smart guy, he's been in the game a long time. But it seems like he's talking about, the people he'd know about wizards.

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (1:02:25)
Yeah, we we did have that whole speculation about the fact that Merlin and Morgan and LaFortier and maybe Ancient Mai really wanted him to fail this trial. And Morgan actually kind of went out of his way to avoid doing his job to help make sure that Harry failed it.

So I think that's probably who Ebenezer is referring to, saying, You don't need to worry about them for a while. I'll take care of it on my side. But you've basically won your trial, so you're good in our books.

Brian (1:02:56)
And that is you know, retrospectively, a confirmation that we don't necessarily need, but that we're getting anyway. That kind of all of those people Ebenezer is talking about in the council know what a starborn is, and presumably also know what a destroyer is. They've got Morgan's perspective on things. That's the only reason you'd be seeing red from the fact that he survived and got you what you wanted.

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (1:03:23)
Yeah, exactly. Now, when Fix and Lily arrive to thank Harry, this is where the brownies show up for the first time, and Harry's apartment finally looks clean and

The ice box is stocked with fresh ice and coke, and of course everything's clean and his car's all fixed because Fix helped get it all running again. And we get this moment where Harry sort of asks her, you know, what what what are you gonna do?

And she says, I'm not sure. It's a lot to think about. And it's the first time this kind of power has fallen on a mortal. Unquote. But Brian, we know that Mab said, I was mortal once. So clearly this power has fallen on a mortal before. Is Lily just wrong?

Brian (1:04:07)
Yeah, there's one of two things that are happening here. One, I guess one of three things. One possibility is again that Jim is incorrect here because he hasn't figured it all out yet. But I don't think that's it. The other possibility is that Lily does know what she's talking about, and she's making a very fine distinction, which I could buy that everyone else who's become

One of the queens has been a wizard beforehand.

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (1:04:38)
Or had some kind of power, yeah. Because we know that even just regular She have the ability to do some kind of magic, right? They they can usually do glamour magic. We saw Talos using his warding to block Harry's spells and stuff. So even just a member of the Fei courts has some kind of power. Or as you point out, Mab could have been.

a wizard that had some power before she became Winter Lady. And this is the first time that a mortal without power has become Winter Lady. A vanilla mortal as opposed to a chocolate one, I guess.

Brian (1:05:15)
Well,

I think the the point to be made here is that as far as we know, the only people who can become queens are mortals.

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (1:05:25)
Yeah.

Brian (1:05:26)
It doesn't seem like a member of the She Court can ascend to being the lady.

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (1:05:33)
Well, this is one of those times when

absence of evidence is not necessarily evidence of absence because just because we haven't seen a member of the She nobility or the eldest gruff become, you know, a queen or what have you, assuming the eldest gruff could be a woman, whatever. just because we haven't seen that doesn't mean it's not possible because the queens have not shifted that many times and

Even then we only know of a few of them that happen to have been mortals.

We just so happen to not have a lot of examples, so we can't necessarily draw conclusions from those data points.

Brian (1:06:10)
And the reason why I'm making that assumption, and I'll admit that it's an assumption, that the lady's mantle has to go to a mortal is because when Mave shoots Lily in cold days, it doesn't go to any other members of the She coteries that are there, right? Lily has her people,

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (1:06:31)
that's a good point.

Brian (1:06:33)
Maeve has her people, maybe just none of them are female, so whatever. But

They don't say that on page.

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (1:06:39)
adding

more to that, Mave seems to know it's gonna go to Sarissa when she shoots Lily, which

Brian (1:06:44)
Yes, she definitely does. Yes.

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (1:06:46)
I think adds to your point that she knows it won't go to one of the the women she that are with them, 'cause they have a dozen each, I think.

Brian (1:06:54)
Yes, and we don't know that any of them are women necessarily. They could just be a dozen male bodyguards or whatever. But it seems pretty likely, because Maeve is banking on giving it to Sarissa, that it's got to go to somebody who is mortal, or in Sarissa's case, you know, a little bit more than mortal. She's a changeling, just as Lily is.

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (1:07:15)
Exactly.

Brian (1:07:15)
So the other possibility, because Sarissa is in exactly the same boat Lily is when she gets

The lady's mantle, she's just older. One possibility is just that Lily doesn't know what she's talking about. And I think that that isn't necessarily a ridiculous, belief that it's not Jim making a mistake, it's it's Lily being wrong in character. Because the thing that I could see her misunderstanding is that.

Every other transfer of these queen mantles has, it seems, been a selection. That's

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (1:07:52)
Hm.

Brian (1:07:53)
how Mab and Titania's daughters end up with the ladies' mantles. They didn't, they weren't born into them. They picked them as the people to move the mantles to. Molly was trained by Leia as a fail-safe for exactly this kind of thing. So it suggests.

That Lily is perhaps the first kind of random mortal woman to receive the mantle of the Summer Lady, and she might be kind of misunderstanding what Titania's getting across to her.

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (1:08:26)
Yeah, that makes sense to me too. Now let's move on because after Lily and Fix leave, Elaine shows up and she sort of tries to explain what's going on with her. She says she's maybe gonna go to school for a while. We know that eventually she winds up working as a PI, just like Harry. But during this conversation, they have what appears to be a very difficult moment where she has to accept that Harry's in love with Susan.

Brian (1:08:54)
Yeah, and it seems like, and you put this in our outline, Adam, that this is what convinces Harry to let go of his constant, all-consuming pursuit of the cure for Susan. So I think it's worth talking about these lines in detail back and forth. So Elaine speaks first and says, quote, she took a deep breath and then said.

Harry, I'm sorry things went like that. I was afraid to tell you about Aurora. I guess I should have known better. I'm glad you came through it all right. Really glad.

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (1:09:29)
I had a lot of answers to that, but the one I picked was she thought she was doing something good. I guess I can see how you'd look, it's done.

Brian (1:09:38)
She nodded. Then she said I saw the pictures on your mantle of Susan, those letters and that engagement ring.

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (1:09:46)
I glanced back at the mantle and felt bad in all kinds of ways. Yeah.

Brian (1:09:52)
You love her, Elaine said.

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (1:09:54)
I nodded.

Brian (1:09:56)
She let out a breath and looked down, so that the bill of her hat hit her eyes. Then can I give you some advice?

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (1:10:02)
Why not?

Brian (1:10:03)
She looked up and said, Stop feeling sorry for yourself, Harry.

Now that seems to suggest to me pretty clearly that what Elaine's doing here is letting go of something she wanted, which is to be with Harry at the conclusion of this story, maybe not understanding exactly what the situation with Susan is. And it's only because.

Harry can, whether consciously or unconsciously, feel that Elaine is letting him go emotionally and blessing him to have the feelings he does for Susan, that Harry can take her advice and think in the moment that, yeah, don't need to beat myself up over that anymore.

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (1:10:56)
And I think the clincher here is when Elaine says, Stop thinking about how bad you feel. Because if she cares about you at all, it would tear her up to see you like I saw you a few days ago. Unquote. And Brian, how does she know that it would tear up Susan? Because it probably tore her up to see him like that a few days ago. There's a lot of parallels between them here. And I think the fact that

She is in the same boat as Susan is why the message finally gets through to him when she says it, even though when Billy has been saying it a bunch, Harry just ignores that message completely.

Brian (1:11:37)
Right. It's not that Harry doesn't think Billy cares for him or that he thinks Billy's an idiot and he only respects Elaine. It's that Elaine, as somebody who right now is suffering from an unrequited love for Harry, is telling him, Hey, you need to stop feeling bad about what you did to this person who loved you. That he's saying, Okay.

If Elaine, who I thought I killed and who apparently still loves me, can say that earnestly, that's exactly evidence of what Susan would say.

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (1:12:15)
Right, he's feeling guilty about both of them. The Susan situation is much more raw, but the actual guilt over what happened has got to be very similar.

Brian (1:12:25)
And because of that, she can be a proxy for Susan in a way that literally no one else can. And therefore, this blessing from her, sort of, you know, go and be at peace with yourself is something that whether he actually makes a decision or it just kind of happens, can kind of crack that calcified shell he's built around his feelings.

And leads to him kind of rejoining society in a sense.

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (1:12:56)
Yeah, he finally starts processing what he's been ignoring for a long time. And I think that's super important. I think it did maybe start with what Aurora did to him as a distraction. That may have gotten the ball rolling, but I think without Elaine here to give him that final push, it would have taken him a lot longer to dig himself out of this self pity.

Brian (1:13:17)
Yeah. And I think he knows that what she just did for him is more than just her generally trying to do the right thing or be a good person. And it's why it's right after that goodbye that he says an illegal mind fog or not. I never mentioned her to the council. I mean, she broke at least one of the laws. And

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (1:13:42)
Mm-hmm.

Brian (1:13:42)
As much as Harry is not exactly like the poster boy for following all the rules, he does take the laws of magic pretty seriously in terms of how it can lead you to black magic. And somebody who could say what Elaine says to him here, he's not worried that she's, you know, really gone over to being bad. She loves him. I think that's really important because it's

Probably the strongest arrow in something we're going to talk about more in the assessment. But part of the Elaine Kumori theory is that the only person who would do so much to go out of their way not to get Harry killed and deadbeat is somebody who loved him.

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (1:14:30)
Yeah, absolutely. All right, now it does end on a happier note with Harry demonstrating that he's taken this advice to heart and finally showing up to game night at Billy's place and demanding

big

bulging thos and not wanting to have to think too much so they give him a barbarian character sheet. And that to me suggests, Brian, that he's trying to avoid the busman's holiday, which is a trope in stories where somebody who does X for a living goes on their vacation or they take some some leisure time and then winds up having to do X as part of their leisure. He doesn't want to go and memorize a a spell book and

As a wizard in this D analog, he wants to just have big bulging throughs and not think too much and smash things. And that just gonna s that's gonna make him that much more happy.

Brian (1:15:24)
Yeah, I think the best example of a busman's holiday that I've ever heard is a person who I know in real life. So I grew up a couple houses down from a boat yard in Long Island, a place where boats were repaired and fixed. And the guy who ran the boat yard owned a sailboat, a pretty nice sailboat, and he named the sailboat Busman's Holiday. Because that's you

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (1:15:49)
Ha ha ha.

Brian (1:15:53)
know, when he's not

Working on boats. What's he doing? Sailing boats. So

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (1:15:56)
Yes, exactly.

So anyway, Harry's trying to avoid that, and we get the very end of this chapter, Brian, which it's just a

Perfect closing to the first book that Butcher has really committed to telling the stories about the Sealy and Unsealy courts and Queen Mab and Titania. And Billy says, all those fairies and duels and mad queens and so on, and nobody quoted old Billy Shakespeare, not even once. Unquote.

I could actually see Butcher getting to the end of this story and realizing, shit, I never had Harry do any Shakespeare quotes. I gotta p I gotta use it as a button at the end. Lord what fools these mortals be.

Brian (1:16:38)
And it's really wonderful because of course he's getting the character of Titania from A Midsummer Night's Dream. So it's the

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (1:16:46)
Mm-hmm.

Brian (1:16:46)
perfect play to quote. He could have thrown in, you know, any of the by the pricking of my thumb something wicked this way comes or bubble bubble boil in trouble or whatever, you know, but he he avoids all of that just to save it for the end. I mean, that's that's pretty class.

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (1:17:03)
Yeah, absolutely. So Brian, that takes us to the end of summer night. I'm so excited we've actually made it through four books and it's only taken us, let me check, boy, about eighteen months. Yeah. Yeah.

Brian (1:17:15)
Twenty months. Twenty eighteen, twenty months, yeah, something like that.

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (1:17:18)
We're we're we're doing okay, but I think it's gonna take a while for us to catch up. The good news is that after Mirror Mirror, Butcher is switching back over to Cinder Spire, so we'll have a couple of years to catch up with him then.

Brian (1:17:30)
Yeah, it does seem like we can maybe do four books for every one that Jim does. So there can't be god, there's how many books of the series? So we'll it'll be a while.

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (1:17:41)
Yeah, but the good news is he's got seven ish books left, which gives us about twenty-four books in that time. So we'll I think we can make it. We could we could probably be doing the final book right as it's being released. let's see how easily that works out.

Brian (1:17:55)
I I'm just hoping that we catch up to the big apocalyptic trilogy before the first book in the big apocalyptic trilogy comes out because otherwise, man, that's gonna be stressful.

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (1:18:06)
Yeah, not

only that, all of the questions that we would have asked in the Peace Talks and Battlegrounds episodes are like, Well, do you think that being starborn mean well, actually we know the answer. so these aren't very interesting discussions anymore. So that's why

Brian (1:18:22)
Right.

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (1:18:22)
we're trying to have them now and and looking forward to those moments, because bef when Mirror Mirror comes out, we're gonna get a lot of answers that are gonna make those discussions during those book reviews a lot less interesting. Or more interesting.

Brian (1:18:34)
yeah,

in in another way they're gonna add another level that we can engage with the questions on, because once we get the curtain pulled back on more of what's Jim Jim's doing, we can talk about it less from a what's going to happen perspective and more from a what techniques and writing structures and callbacks is Jim making by invoking these ideas? So

It's gonna shift the analysis we do as we get deeper into the series and Jim gets deeper into the series, but hopefully in a way that is, you know, naturally interesting to listen to. So we can keep prattling on here, but next week we're doing the assessment episode. Are we gonna have a question for Bob Adam?

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (1:19:14)
No question for Bob during the assessment, but we will have one probably for the first chapter of Death Masks, which is going to be in mid-October. After the assessment, we're taking one week off for our own personal time because October is a month that has five Fridays in it, and we're gonna stick to our normal schedule of three regular episodes.

And one Patreon episode.

Brian (1:19:36)
Yeah, so hopefully you guys will enjoy what we get to do in the second half of October. Death Masks is a spooky book for spooky season, but before we get to that, we'll see you when we put away summer night next week on October 2nd.