I'm new to this forum, i apologize if I break any rules or standards of this site and community or if I upset or distress any fellow Dresden Files lovers in any way, shape, or form. Please correct me or take this down immediately if I violate any of the above.
Else, I would really love to talk about future predictions for what everyone thinks might be coming in the next book!!! I just reread the series and something that has always stuck out in my mind is the ever engaging soul-gaze that only ever happens once a book at most, and I love how unoften and special it is when it does come up. Of course we always get to see Harry's perspective during the soul gazes but are always left wondering what the other person saw in Harry when they gazed back into him. We know the first soul gaze that ever happened was in the first book, Storm Front, between Harry and Marcone, making them rivals from the outset and both of them having a measure of each other, a mutual respect, and a glorious/hilarious disdain for one another for the rest of the series.
And during this first soul gaze we learn that one of the rules of soul gazes is that you can not soul gaze the same person twice, which is why Harry is always able to stare down and keep eye contact with Marcone any time they bump into each other throughout the series, unlike with anyone else, which allows for so many great moments where they either death glare for way too long at each other or one of them looks away first in some sort of pseudo-emasculating fashion that is hilariously described in Harry's own personal concoction of Nonchalance mixed with his stubborn pride, his borederline toxic male ego, and his commitment to what he thinks and believes a wizard ought to look and behave like outwardly to the rest of the world at all times. I can totally see how some people might hate this about him, but for me its the most endearing and ridiculous quality about him and I personally love it so much.
Back to soul gazes!!! You're only supposed to get one per person!!!
*spoiler alert*
Marcone has picked up one of the coins of the Blackened Denarius, and is now possessed/partnered with Thorned Namshiel.
I am predicting/guessing that Harry will have a soul gaze with Marcone again by looking into the extra demon eyes of Thorned Namshiel, and Harry will see and gaze upon Thorned Namshiel's soul while Thorned Namshiel will gaze back at him and Marcone will see and experience all that Thorned Namshiel experiences and see an updated version of Harry's soul since the first time he soul gazed him and we will have some sort of noticeable reaction from Marcone in some way, like it might be the first time we see him stagger or have to take a knee while catching his breath or something or shake him in a way that we have never seen from this incredibly stone faced mobster godfather of chicago.
We know the last two times that Harry soul gazed in the first 52 pages of the most current book, "Battleground," that he frightened the crud out of a friggin kraken and had Officer Bradley tell him to, "stay away from him." We also know that since the first book, Harry has used his Sight from time to time and that anything seen with the Sight cannot and will not be forgotten and will always be remembered in perfect detail and permanently burned into your memory for all of time. My man Harry Dresden has several times been on record throughout the series claiming to have excessive and recurring nightmares that only seem to exacerbate and grow worse throughout the entire series and he quietly and interpersonally shoves all that down and locks it away in his his cool wizard mind vault/dope wizard ability to focus and separate things in his mind to either ignore or hold together multiple things during the casting of a spell. Over the course of 17 books he has been beaten and scarred a million times over and he always recovers(as wizards do) but he always suffers mentally and takes it out harder on himself to try to learn from his mistakes which he does do to varying degrees, but more and more the main friendly core characters around him notice throughout the books that he is slowly going off the rails and they tell him so little by little and then more and more right up until he accepts the Winter Knight Mantle and comes back to life in the book Cold Days at which point they all start outright questioning and accusing Harry of whether or not he's still himself and on the side of good and not evil which he himself is constantly contemplating and worried to death about even though as readers we all know that Harry Blackstone Copperfield Dresden is the most stubborn and unyielding motherf***er to ever walk the streets of fictional Chicago and that he bows to no one voluntarily, unless he mouths off and is slammed against the side of an elevator and falls prone due to his boss, the queen of winter, being irritated with his understandable yet whiny bullshit at the start of the book Skin Game. (Cold Days might be my favorite book, with Changes and Skin Game being close runner-ups)
Ultimately what I'm saying is that I am predicting(just for the fun of it) that Harry Dresden will have a second soul gaze with John Marcone, the first person we ever saw him have a soul gaze with, through the lens of him soul gazing with Thorned Namshiel when his extra set of demonic eyes appear above Marcone's and Dresden will naturally forget that a soul gaze is even possible in that moment because he has already soul gazed Marcone and he'll be stubbornly be staring down/up at Thorned Namshiel's eyes and will worriedly realize at the last moment that he's entering a soul gaze and go into the classic Jim Butcher monologue explaining the basic concept of a soul gaze for the dozenth time but this time will be Harry's second time soul gazing one of the Fallen Ones and he will add it very seriously to the list of things he so desperately wishes won't start appearing in his ongoing nightmares, but as the Winter Knight and with all that he's gone through he'll barely register it all and that will trigger him to have a mid-range internal monologue about how jaded he feels he has become and how he doesnt even f--king care that it doesnt bother him anymore and that Mab can go f*ck herself if she asks anything else of him, which she invariably will in a very weirdly polite way because his starborn background is about to take center stage and we are all about to learn the truth about what "the stars and stones" really means and Mab will be infuriatingly bitchy yet nice to Harry Dresden because the impossible task she is asking of him will require her to bow and surrender all of her power unto him when the time is right and Harry Dresden will either be utterly speechless for the first time in ever, or he'll find one or two annoying but cool and ridiculous things to say, or he'll think of stupid things he wish he could say while having to formally and ritually spew forth an ancient language he has no knowledge of that is intensely and painfully being channeled through him until the end of the ritual, and something will go wrong in the classic Dresden way and he'll probably meet either Merlin or actual God for a brief moment, which would be sick. Oh, and then most likely his daughter Maggie becomes some sort of Anti-Christ and Harry has to choose whether or not to kill her in the same fashion he did her mother Susan, and he makes the same choice again and he is more broken than we have ever seen him and its straight up hard to read and its utterly heartbreaking and personally devastating to even glimpse at what Harry's going through in the final pages....
