This was the most interesting part of the short for me. Especially 'Taken by figures in dark robes, male and female,' . It absolutely screamed Cowl and Kumori. Cowl has already set himself up to be a true nemesis to Harry, so why not give him a 'Dark Mouse' to boot.

That certainly seems like the implication.

While the narrative structure of nobody else understanding what Mouse is picking up because he can't communicate complex ideas to Hary or Maggie is cute for short story purposes, it kind of falls apart when we remember that Molly CAN understand him just fine. Dark, probably N-fected foo dogs working for probably Cowl and Kumori is something really freaking important to pass along, and ignoring that a suitable translator is around every week for family dinners at the Carpenter house would be a bit of a wtf? issue going forward if Harry stays unaware of it.

Or, hell, even Lea next time they cross paths - she'd be well motivated to continue checking names off her revenge list, if there's a lead on who gave her the athame.

I don't know how anyone does that without mangling their thumbs. If you wear a ring made of something not too soft you can use that once you get the hang of it though.

The order of ST Giles was supposed to be for the Demi's humans, but most members were the Demi rcv. After the end of the red court, the order is said to have also collapsed. It would be funny if Grey helped to restablish it, by finding willing scions.

Eh, I wouldn't take the fact that he did a mercenary job for a dollar as evidence he's THAT altruistic.

She was the Blouncil Cut out in FM if you remember the oddity that GK put in was the college kids learning magic to be wolves, she did that... and yes, she knows LTW prolly not a coincidence.

Rashid was also suspicious of Harry at that point. Not everything he finds weird is definitely a cutout for the Circle - things are getting weird all over because those in the know recognize it's 'five minutes to midnight' and they're trying to get ready for the BAT.

I wonder what life was like for the IVY when it came to monsters only kids could see....imagine a oblivion story based on destroying or altering this book that the carpenters wrote,  it could be the reason that ivy actually chose to be the arbitrator for the dual in death mask. remember that Molly was 13 or 14 at the end of her child hood but still a child.

What, like a child-eating phobophage actually trying to attack Ivy? It would probably be dead before it even realized it had made a huge mistake, unless she valued leaving it alive to warn its peers not to mess with her. There's a pretty big gulf in how directly powerful the antagonists for a children's or YA series can be vs. what it would take to threaten someone insulated by the full power of the Archive.

The targets in the Oblivion War that are anchored to reality by human knowledge are the really big fish of the Dresdenverse. As far as Ivy is concerned, if childhood phobophages merit her consideration at all, they're probably more on the scale where she's content to see knowledge of how to fight them spread around. If working to get mortals to forget the nasties was the best course of action for everything, Lara would hardly have personally engineered the Stokerlypse. Frankly, if the things that target kids were so powerful as to be targets of the Oblivion war, the post-industrialization population boom probably wouldn't have happened on account of them eating the extra humans.

Besides, even if Ivy did want the Carpenter kids' book gone, destroying it would do little when there are still young kids around the house aware of its contents and able to recreate it. Even if Ivy were to personally take a role in destroying written records - and everything we know about the Archive's compulsive caution says working through Venator cutouts makes more sense than exposing herself to unnecessary risk by acting personally - the time to get that book would be after the last child has grown up.

But yes, the forum activity has slowed.  Hopefully it'll pick up again.  And after we (finally) migrate, we can look into other things to bring people around.

Did any alternative forum end up clearly winning out, anyway? I signed up for the google one, but I'm hardly ever on circles to see updates.

Even on the generous assumption that none of his body swaps were after Fistful of Warlocks, that leaves a century and a quarter for wizard healing to do its work getting rid of scars. I don't see it as plausible.