Have to disagree with you there Grautry.

Meciel is FUCKING PISSED. Like shit down your neck pissed. Subtlety or silver tongues are not warranted here, when the goal is not temptation or trickery, but breaking off a piece of some Winter Court ass.

And in reality, Meciel always dealt with Michael and Dumbledore with Harry as an intermediary. Now that's not the case. Amanda's personality has been at the very least suppressed and Meciel is in the driver's seat. And she's not in the mood to make nice, she's in the mood to have a Maeve salad with some Amaris dressing.

There's also the fact that Michael is at the very least hesitant to act against Meciel given that his daughter is in the crossfire. What I find ironic is that now Michael is in the same situation Harry was in, his daughter is being used against him and he can't cut loose and fight against his percieved enemy, in this case Meciel, a Denarian.

Looking forward to the bloodbath.

 

Michael might be able to cut lose but Sanya sure is although it would be far from easy for Sanya to do the deed.

Dumbledore however is probably the only one of the three that Meciel has any real fear of. Dumbledore admits that he doesnt really know if he could beat Harry and Meciel but Amanda and Meciel is a far different opponent than Harry.

 

Excellent update as usual.

Since Meciel is the one in control, I wonder if she wouldn't be more dangerous than Harry. Whenever Meciel had control of Harry's body, she had far more control over his powers.

She could possibly perform more complex transfiguration and maybe use Words easier.

 

Yes, but when Harry was in control and he was severely injured, Meciel could focus almost all her attention into healing him, thus granting him "godlike" healing powers (see fight with Vesper).

Hm..I wonder if that's one of the reasons why those Fallen who cooperate with their hosts (Anduriel, Meciel and Imariel) make the strongest Denarians of all their bunch.

Heh, I guess the old saying that "two minds are better than one" is true after all :-/

 

As I said - it could be explained away.

But as enraged as she is, she knows that Maeve is just incredibly powerful. Additionally, she's surrounded by guards etc. in her winter fortress. She knows that this could very well be a suicide mission.

Meciel also happens to be inhumanly intelligent, which is why I thought she'd try playing nice with people who could potentially help her rescue Harry.

Although the more I think of it, the more I realise just how much blackmail material does Meciel have. She's in the body of Michael's daughter and knows of Harry's importance to Dumbledore. She's in a good position to not ask for help but order for them to help her.

So yeah, I guess her behaviour can make sense.

Butcher said that Denarians where the host are in control are more powerful. This is due to the whole free-will deal. If the Fallen is in the driver's seat then they have the restrictions mentioned in Death Masks - they can't impose on free will of mortals.

However that only applies to humans. When storming the winter fortress I fully expect for Meciel/Amanda to tear everything apart.

 

I find myself agreeing with some of the earlier posters. Meciel here was a bit harsh and blunt. She risked alienating her potential allies with her behaviour. Not to mention that it seems a bit odds with some of her earlier views. I mean here Amanda risked everything to help save Harry and Meciel essentially hurt her for it. While in DR, when Michael&Family saved Harry, Meciel insisted that they now owed a debt for that and had to protect them. Then there is the fact that I think Harry does care about Amanda atleast a little. I would have expected Meciel to take that into account. Not to mention that by doing this she risks alienating Amanda and losing her as Harry's "minion". In many ways her actions here were rather foolish.

Now I am not actually saying that Meciels actions were poorly written. It does make sense that Meciel would act this way simply because she is so very angry and cannot control herself. If she has come to view Harry as a sort of surrogate family/child for the one she lost, then losing him would essentially be history repeating itself for her and that would certainly explain her rage.

However I wonder if this is something that should be emphasized a bit more to explain things. The comment from Dumbledore about her insane anger was a start but I wonder if maybe it would further help to have a POV from Dumbledore musing on Meciels very un-manipulative and illogical behaviour here and what it suggests about her feelings for Harry.

I did like some of the touches that made it clear that Meciel was in the drivers seat. The way she kept calling hundred-plus year old Dumbledore a "boy" was somewhat amusing for example. I wonder if Meciel will release Amanda now? If not, how will the other members of the order react to her rather abrupt change in behaviour. None but Sirius would realize what had happened afterall.

We don't know what Shezzas view on this is. It could be that the host has more control over his magic than the fallen does, allowing for more effective/powerfull spellcasting when the host does it willingly.

In Dresdenverse canon however, humans have more free will than angels do (whatever that means) and as such fallen who work together instead of dominating their hosts can take advantage of this somehow. This was confirmed by Butcher on his forums a while back. I don't think this is necessarily something thats true in Shezzaverse though. I mean in Dresdenverse, the kind of involuntary possession that Meciel did here is not actually possible.

 

Except that the possession was not involuntary - at least, if we trust Meciel's words.

 

It seems hard to believe that Amanda would willingly allow Meciel to take complete control of her body and threaten her father if she could prevent it. She only touched the coin to learn about Harry, nothing more.

In many ways the situation here was similar to the one between Lasciel and Dresden. In both cases the host touched the coin to protect/save another person. Needless to say, in DV canon, Lasciel was not able to forcibly control Dresden. Infact it was explicitly said in Small Favor that only mentally/spiritually damaged people or those under the influence of drugs or such can be forcibly possessed by the fallen. Obviously Shezza has departed from this part on DV and thats fine.

 

Yeah Shezza's always held that the Fallen in the coin can choose to crush the mind of their host and take control.

 

An interesting thought, will Meciel feel indebted to Amanda after this? I mean, her coin would have been carted away by the Knights if Amanda hadn't picked it up. Plus, she has gambled her 'soul' here. Isn't her soul forsaken too, for picking up the coin? I'd say Meciel owes her quite a bit.

 

What?

Okay, so while this snippet doesn't explain why Harry was attacked, it gives very sound explaination as to how.

I partially agree that Meciel was too hostile. On the other hand, it's understandable if she really cared for Harry.

Actually, if you bothered to read comments made by Harry's enemies throughout the series you'd see that almost all of them were surprised that he was more than a mere body. Besides, Vesper doesn't fit your theory.

We know that she completely volountarily picked the coin, solely in the intention of communicating with the Fallen residing within it. We know that she had full access to her body. And to top it all, we already know Amanda would go insane lengths to help Harry and she knows that in their current situation an untrained schoolgirl isn't as useful as immortal Fallen Angel almost as old as time.

Besides, in DV canon some of Fallen subjugate their hosts, I don't see the difference.

I don't think so. If anyone has debt to Amanda, it's Harry.

One question, would the Knights be able to strike at Amanda? As far as I remember from DF canon they could only use their swords in defense (obviously, it didn't work that way for Harry), so as long as Meciel did not attack they should be powerless against her.

 

"One question, would the Knights be able to strike at Amanda? As far as I remember from DF canon they could only use their swords in defense (obviously, it didn't work that way for Harry), so as long as Meciel did not attack they should be powerless against her."


In Dresdenverse canon, the Knights were there to redeem / offer redemption to the Denarius--to the people who'd picked up the Fallen's coin. So it's not so much about "only acting defensively" as "acting to free to the humans from the Fallen's control/influence/corruption."

In short, DV-canon says they'd be well within their right to oppose Meciel; she wouldn't be able to just waltz out while saying "I'm not attacking you and I'm defenseless, see? Hah!". The human, however, COULD do that; if he gives up the coin.
Yeah, if the host gave up the coin and said "I give up, will seek redemption, blah blah, you know the drill. Here's the coin." and walked away while fully intending to get the coin back when he's ready... they'd have to let them go. (It's basically what happened in DV-canon at one point.)


Anyway, as people have pointed out, this is Shezza-verse... not Dresden Files-verse. The above was more to answer/clarify KrzaQ's question. tldr: in DV-canon, the Knights' hands are tied only in regards to assaulting the human after he gives up the coin.


You guys have pretty much said what I would have, regarding Meciel's "biting the hand that feeds you" anger... But what gets me, is that Meciel's plan was POSSESS SOMEBODY, ANYBODY, AND GET WORD TO HARRY'S ALLIES ASAP.

Harry's 'allies' WERE the people on the scene. Meciel was collected enough to plan to *persuade* or force the next random schmuck to pick up her coin to get Harry backup, but when it turns out that the cavalry shows up on its own, she... throws a temper tantrum?

She had 20 hours, or however much that may translate to in her coin, to calm down and plan things out. Since her plan was to call for help she must have come up with some way to persuade the cavalry, once they came, to render aid in case they wouldn't grant it out of good will. And in her original plan, she would not have been arguing from a position of strength.
But, now that she does have an advantage, she could get a lot more accomplished by playing nice first. The Knights and Dumbledore wouldn't harm Amanda. Meciel knows this. Meciel should realize that the 'good guys' are well aware of Meciel's bargaining advantage and thus there is no need to use threats to get the point across; both sides are well aware of it. So just be forthright (rather than brutally blunt) and reasonable.

Meciel's behavior may be explained away later, but right now it's... well, puzzling..

 

Naah, I think if you give up the coin your soul is just fine as a result. Sanya for instance was a denarian once, then he gave up his coin and was promptly given a sword by an archangel.

Yeh, but this should be clarified. I mean Meciel essentially made enemies completely unnecessarily. Consider Harry's relationship with the knights(and they dont know he is no longer one of their own), the number of times he has saved Michaels children, the fact that he wiped out all the denarians, the fact that Harry and Dumbledore have a mentor/protege thing going on and the fact that Dumbledore needs Harry for Voldemort.

It seems pretty clear that no coercion or blackmail would be required to get them to help Harry. Given the situation, everyone should jump at the rescue bandwagon willingly. The onlything Meciel accomplished here by making Amanda scream in agony in front of everyone and then threatening her soul, was to waste most of the goodwill Harry has gathered. I mean Michael should not just let this go. Meciel had a peace with the knights and a friendly relationship with Dumbledore, and she has ruined it with her crazy behaviour.

Well, arguably it was Harry who owed the Carpenters originally and Meciel still felt a debt, even if only through Harry.

As for the knights being powerless, I don't know, this is something that Shezza would have to decide. As has been said earlier, in DV canon anyone who was a fullblown denarian would have agreed to it willingly(even the subjugated ones) and as such would be fair game for the knights.

Here though Meciel is essentially possessing Amanda against her will, a situation more akin to the one in the 3rd Dresden book, and she picked the coin only to try and save a friend so arguably no evil there. There is no DV canon that says what should happen so its totally up to Shezza.

I would say that for internal consistency, they should be able to strike at her though. If all it took was for a fallen to possess some girl to render the knights powerless, then they would be more or less useless.


EDIT:

You know, thats a really good point that I totally missed. It has been nearly a day. Why is Meciel still this angry? She should have calmed down a bit, atleast enough to act rationally. Instead she was totally crazed and just plain stupid. Why? Is she just so pissed off that her anger has remained that intense for all those hours.

 

As far as we know, the pain is just a side effect of picking up Meciel's coin. It didn't happen that way in DF canon, but that's pretty much what happened to Harry in TDR.

Besides, no amount of logic will help you if you're not thinking clearly. Though, I doubt one, as you call it, temper-tantrum could destroy their alliance, especially at this time.

Garlak: yeah, I guess I was wrong.

I recall that she could barely contain her rage at the Order after thousand of years, what is 20 hours compared to that.

 

Just to add my two cents.

Doesn't she spend the time without host in the Void ? Combined with the loss of her "beloved host", that would justify the tantrum she throws.

Though I expected her to give off a "cold fury" feeling, rather than having a hissy fit. Maybe taunt Michael about owning Amanda's soul, but with the usual silver tongue.

 

I had forgotten. I was thinking of DresdenVerse where touching a coin is painless. I figured that it was Meciel or her anger that somehow caused Amanda the pain. Apparently this is another thing that Shezza changed.

Maybe not on Dumbledores side, but Michael is more than a knight, he is also a father. He might not be so understanding, especially since Meciel did not even try to smooth things out and be diplomatic.

 

If there is one word that describes Michael Carpenter it's: saint. I would agree if you said that about anyone else, but not being understanding really doesn't fit his character.

 

Well, she also spend twenty hours in the Void again, which is really a sore subject for Merciel here.

Also WE may know that Albus & Co want to help, but Merciel isn't really trusting, if you consider her past with betrayal and lost of loved ones (I will just consider Harry one of them for the sake of this argument and for lack of proof against it), it really isn't a wonder why she is pissed off, unstable and distrusting (holding Amanda as hostage is maybe her way of ensuring the help from Michael, Sanya and Dumbledore).

Did you read Mean Street?

 

Or the scene in "The Warrior" where Dresden has to stop Michael from bludgeoning an unarmed and unconscious opponent to death with a bat, because he threatened his daughter.

He may be a saint in all things, EXCEPT when it comes to threats to his family. And those were just potential threats where nothing really came out of it. Here he has just seen his daughter scream in agony, and now Meciel is forcibly controlling her and threatening her very soul. I think it would be out-of-character for Michael to just let this go without some major apology from Meciel/Harry.