They weren't, but the island has been attacked since Turn Coat.. It didn't have a full time Warden at that time to fully deploy the defenses.  I got the impression in Peace Talks and Battle Ground that the island's defenses were fully employed, if they weren't and there was a way in via a Way, you'd think that Justine/HeWhoWalksBeside aka Nemesis would use it instead of trying to trick Harry into letting them in.

Walking on the Island isn't the same as going down into the cells.  You'd need Warden permission to do that (or convince Alfred that you're trying to save his Warden), so Harry would have been required for a Nemesis plot along those lines.

We also know that the Island's defenses aren't fully up all the time.  For example, the circle in CD is only triggered at a certain level of threat.  I think that an open and monitored Way to the dock would be fine for normal levels of threat.

Harry made the escape potion in SF that was half speed, half teleportation. He didn't seem concerned about it being illegal. Or at least not that I recall.

I won't speculate on danger or difficulty, because Bob is beyond average wisdom and would negate a lot of concern there. But I'll point out that the phrasing Harry uses, "Is this the super speed one, or the teleportation one?", seems to imply that he's done both before.

I agree that most proposed methods of teleportation seem to skirt a law being broken. But only for sticklers like Morgan looking for an excuse.

Personally I like the idea of folding reality between two points to move between them. Like Harry describes Drakul as disappearing like behind a telephone pole. Just warping reality so that two non-congruent points are touching via magic, but without a visible doorway or portal.

I don't think that's what Drakul did, unless River's counter managed to unwarp reality. And Marcone's technique seemed to involve the hand pointing at the destination, which is more like movement than warping. Like he's physically representing his intention to "stop there".

For River Shoulders, I could see his aura wave grounding out whatever theoretical reality warping Drakul was attempting.  That's kinda the sasquatch thing anyway.

Ooooh, Marcone couldn't have been using the NN, Ferro was locking all the entrances in Chicago..

Ah, nice catch.  It's good evidence that Marcone was truly teleporting. 

As far as other alternatives, we don't get any updates on Ferro's condition during BG.  I would imagine he was struggling as much as any of the other big players.  If so, towards the end he might have been tired enough to let Marcone-sized critters slip through.

The Island's full defenses aren't up continuously.  It could be that the Way near the dock is outside of the day-to-day wards.  No doubt that Harry probably could block that avenue off, but it might still be an option for getting there in general, especially for people that behave.

True.  Good point with GS.  It didn't register with me since ghosts play by different rules, usually.

I suppose true teleportation should be defined as traveling between two distinct points without traversing a path between.  A discontinuity in location to put it in calculus terms.  We've seen slow-motion Nightcrawler-style transportation via the NN, and ghost/motion potion seem like high speed dissolution and movement before reconstituting.

Perhaps Marcone was Nightcrawler-style, just faster, but it isn't clear.

Battle Ground introduces a new concept to the Dresden Files, namely actual teleportation.  Before BG, there had been quick travel via Ways in the NN, but with that method practitioners still moved normally as they tunneled through the NN to emerge in a different place on Earth.  The closest we have seen to teleportation before BG is perhaps Lea/Odin's lightning gate in Changes, but even then it seemed more like a compressing of the NN's nebulous nature than true teleportation.

So, how exactly does it work, and why is this the first time we've seen something so seemingly useful?  With Namshiel and Drakul as the only ones seen to have done so, perhaps it takes too much skill to be widely available.  Even so, it seems like it would be useful for some of the big players to keep in their back pocket as an option.  Namshiel doing it through Marcone seems to point to it not taking a mountain of energy to power. 

If skill really was the main issue, would the Archive be able to do it?  That might have come in handy in the Shedd fight.  It doesn't seem right that it would be beyond the Archive if Marcone can do it, but perhaps the hellfire circle is strong enough to block things.  Or maybe it's too dangerous to try without line of sight?

Does anyone have any insights in this area?


I include some of the more relevant passages from BG.

He watched the opening exchange with the interest of a general observing children at chess, lips pursed thoughtfully. Then he took a step to the left and . . .
. . . and just freaking vanished. I don’t mean that he went behind a veil, or teleported, or opened a portal to the Nevernever. I can do those things, if I have to. This guy took a step and just up and up went away, as if stepping behind a telephone pole and never appearing on the other side. Gone. Just gone.

Except that in this case, “gone” turned out to be six inches behind me.

My ears suddenly twinged hard, like when the pressure shifts in an airplane, and the empty space behind me wasn’t empty anymore. I whirled, drawing my revolver, raising it—

—too late. Drakul caught the weapon’s barrel in the pale fingers of one hand and simply crushed it shut.

Marcone began muttering in a language I didn’t recognize and pointed a finger at the ground twenty yards away and to his left. He indicated another position to his right with his other hand, at a point equidistant from the first, said something, and there was a crackling sound in the air, like . . . broken wind chimes, maybe.

Ethniu came out of the water with the Eye already bursting forth in a tidal roar of red energy, lashing out unstoppably at Marcone.

Marcone simply stepped to his left and vanished into a chorus of broken wind chimes—reappearing at the point he’d pointed to with his left hand, clear of the beam.

Ethniu shrieked in rage, slewing the gaze of the Eye around wantonly, though the motion was slower than it should have been and seemed to take physical effort from her straining neck muscles as she swept her gaze around, searching for Marcone. She spotted him with another scream, but he simply took a second step, vanishing from the first point of the triangle he’d indicated, and appeared in the second in another shower of clinking-crystal sounds.

Holy crap. Direct point-to-point translocation was something that the White Council kept in a section called “Highly Theoretical and Dangerous Magic” in the wizard’s library at the complex in Edinburgh. I knew, because years ago when I’d asked about it, I’d been put on the no-access list for the entire section.

Which . . . well, to be fair, probably wasn’t entirely unwise.

My issue isn't so much with the fact that they lost; it's that we finally get to see Harry's war buddies fight, and they get wiped. They've got a reputation for being survivors, tough customers, veterans of a bloody and brutal protracted conflict (and then a second one, against the Fomor). I would've liked to have seen them win a fight or three before this encounter, to justify the reputation Harry gives them. It's not quite the Worf Effect, because you at least saw Worf kick plenty of keisters before he started getting his own kicked in return, but it left a similar taste in my mouth.

They get some nice time like that in one of the comics.  War Cry, I think?  The problem is that there are only so many pages you can fit in before the BAT.  Maybe a short story from Ramirez's perspective could be done.  It would be neat to have him dealing with losing them while doing flashbacks to some time they worked well together without Harry.

They knew they were about to go into battle one way or another when they came across Mavra, Drakul and company, if they are good warriors, and Wardens supposedly are, then they should have been ready.

Meh, dealing with blampires necessitates specialized prep more than most fights.  That crew was expecting wizard necromancers, not blampires.  Not even usual blampires like Harry fought on Thomas's birthday, elder blampires.

In the end, they do seem to have taken out two of them on their own.  Only Mavra, tentacle guy, and the twins are mentioned of the original Drakul + Mavra + four elder blampires. = 7 figures.
I don't think they had as bad a showing for their fight as people are saying.  Just a lot of it was off page.

But he also had Murphy at his back, the two of them have squared off against enemies with much tougher odds and still won.

Two on four where your mortal is in bad physical shape is not a good combination, even if you stipulate that they've lucked out of tougher odds before.  That wasn't a fight that Harry and Murphy could have won without extreme luck and severe injury to themselves or their friends.

Maybe not full rouge, but at the same time he could have held back just enough not to be of help against Harry.

Meh, Chandler strikes me as more aligned with WC ideals than Ramirez, and he was not going to side with Harry against the others or stay neutral.  I don't think Chandler dislikes Harry at all, but Harry is not going to be in the first few items on his priority list of loyalties.

Huh?  I don't remember Harry being "for" Drakul..  Harry fared better because when he sneezed huge iron anvils fell out of the sky..  Then again as Listens to Wind said, if you fight these kinds of creatures to a draw, it is a win..

Yep, it was around when they showed Bill's and Yoshimo's bodies.  Harry was intentionally spared, and Carlos was next on the chopping block. 

The other twin pointed at me. “Give it to my sister. She must restore herself.”

“His blood is not for the likes of you or me,” Mavra replied calmly. “Starborn are for the Master.”