Soulgazes and Sights

[Griffyn612]

Soulgaze and Sight Collection
This is a collection of the soulgazes and third eye Sights from the series.  It has been broken into six segments.  Curators are free to edit and update.

1 Soulgaze Theory
2) Harry's Soulgazes - Part 1 - Part 2

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• John Marcone - SF - Ch. 3
• Susan Rodriguez - SF - Ch. 5 (mentioned)
• Monica Sells - SF - Ch. 20
• Parker - FM - Ch. 9
• Phillip Denton - FM - Ch. 31
• Ebeneezer McCoy - SK - Ch. 4 (mentioned)
• Ebeneezer McCoy - BR - Ch. 30 (mentioned)
• Elaine Mallory - SK - Ch. 8 (mentioned)
• Elaine Mallory - WN - Ch. 31 (mentioned)
• Rasmussen - DM - Ch. 6
• Thomas Raith - BR - Ch. 21
• Molly Carpenter - PG - Ch. 41
• Helen 'Demeter' Beckitt - WN - Ch. 29
• Evelyn Derek - TC- Ch. 22
• Martin - Ch - Ch. 48

3) Harry's Close Calls

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• Tera West - FM - Ch. 14 (absence failure)
• Karrin Murphy - GP - Ch. 19 (vacation failure)
• Dr. Simmons - GP - Ch. 22 (clinical failure)
• Mab - SK - Ch. 3 (absence failure)
• The Archive - DM - Ch. 30 (avoided)
• Justine - BR - Ch. 37 (avoided)
• Jared Kincaid - BR - Ch. 30 (avoided)
• Capiocorpus "Alicia" Corpsetaker - DB - Ch. 17 (avoided)
• Capiocorpus "Luccio" Corpsetaker - DB - Ch. 39 (avoided)
• Capiocorpus "Gray Ghost" Corpsetaker - GS - Ch. 45 (failed)
• Cassius - DB - Ch. 23 (avoided)
• Madrigal "Darby Cane" Raith - PG - Ch. 26 (avoided)
• Charity Carpenter - PG - Ch. 34 (avoided)
• Donar Vadderung - CD - Ch. 21 (avoided)
• Deirdre Archleone - SG - Ch. 38 (avoided)

4) Soulgazes Observed

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• Grevane and Waldo Butters - DB - Ch. 23
• Carlos Ramirez and Lara Raith - WN - Ch. 35
• Molly Carpenter and Thomas Raith - Ch - Ch. 27
• Molly Carpenter and Capiocorpus "Butters" Corpsetaker - GS - Ch. 48

5) Sight Theory
6) Harry's Sight Visions


1) Soulgaze Theory
     These are the basic soulgaze descriptions found in the series.  If you find a reference that adds something new, please PM me, and I will look to get it added.

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   Those who deal in magic learn to see the world in a
slightly different light than everyone else. You gain a
perspective you had never considered before, a way of
thinking that would just never have occurred to you
without exposure to the things a wizard sees and
hears.
   When you look into someone’s eyes, you see them
in that other light. And, for just a second, they see you
in the same way. Marcone and I looked at one
another.
...
   When I look into someone’s eyes, into their soul,
their innermost being, they can see mine in return—
the things I had done, the things I was willing to do,
the things I was capable of doing. Most people who
did that got really pale, at least. One woman had
passed out entirely. I didn’t know what they saw
when they looked in there—it wasn’t a place I poked
around much, myself.

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   But even if that gaze hadn’t trapped me, hadn’t gone
all the way over into hypnosis, it made something
occur to me: Susan’s memories of the soulgaze hadn’t
been removed. My godmother couldn’t have touched
those. I was such an idiot. When a mortal looks on
something with the Sight, really looks, as a wizard
may, the memories of what he sees are indelibly
imprinted on him. And when a wizard looks into a
person’s eyes, it’s just another way of using the Sight.
A two-way use of it, because the person you look at
gets to peer back at you, too.
   Susan and I had soulgazed more than two years
before. She’d tricked me into it. It was just after that
she began pursuing me for stories more closely.
   Lea couldn’t have taken memories around a
soulgaze. But she could have covered them up,
somehow, misted them over. No practical difference,
for the average person.
   But, hell, I’m a wizard. I ain’t average.

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“I’m me,” I said, looking back at her eyes. That
should be verification enough. If someone else had
come back behind the wheel of my car, so much
change to my insides and a look like that would
certainly trigger a soulgaze and reveal what had
happened. “For now, at least.”

[Griffyn612]

2) Harry's Soulgazes
     This is a collection of the soulgazes that Harry has either experienced or reminisced about during the series.  They have broken into the soulgazes themselves, and the subject's reaction, if unique or notable.  They have been listed in the order of occurance/mention in the series.

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   He was a soldier, a warrior, behind that relaxed
smile and fatherly manner. He was going to get what
he wanted and he was going to get it in the most
efficient way possible. He was a dedicated
man—dedicated to his goals, dedicated to his people.
He never let fear affect him. He made a living on
human misery and suffering, peddling in drugs and
flesh and stolen goods, but he took steps to minimize
that suffering because it was simply the most efficient
means of running his business. He was furious over
Tommy Tomm’s death—a cold and practical kind of
fury that his rightful dominion had been invaded and
challenged. He intended to find those responsible and
deal with them in his own way—and he didn’t want the
police interfering. He had killed before, and would
again, and it would all mean nothing more to him
than a business transaction, than paying for groceries
in the checkout line. It was a dry and cool place, inside
Gentleman Johnny Marcone. Except for one dim
corner. There, hidden away from his everyday
thoughts, there lurked a secret shame. I couldn’t quite
see what it was. But I knew that somewhere in the
past there was something that he would give anything
to undo, would spill blood to erase. It was from that
dark place that he drew his resolve, his strength.
   That was the way I saw him when I looked inside,
past all his pretenses and defenses. And I was, on
some instinctual level, certain that he had been aware
of what I would see if I looked—that he had
deliberately met my gaze, knowing what he would give
away. That was his purpose in getting me alone. He
wanted to take a peek at my soul. He wanted to see
what sort of man I was.

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   John Marcone wasn’t like the other people who had
seen my soul. He didn’t even blink an eye. He just
looked and assessed, and after the moment had
passed, he nodded at me as though he understood
something. I got the uncomfortable impression that
he had duped me. That he had found out more about
me than I had about him. The first thing I felt was
anger, anger at being manipulated, anger that he
should presume to soulgaze upon me.
   Just a second later, I felt scared to death of this
man. I had looked on his soul and it had been as solid
and barren as a stainless-steel refrigerator. It was
more than unsettling. He was strong, inside, savage
and merciless without being cruel. He had a tiger’s
soul.
...
     He watched me, his expression never changing, as I
got out of the car and shut the door. Hendricks pulled
out and drove away, after giving me one last dirty
look. I had soulgazed on several people before. It
wasn’t the sort of thing you forgot. I had never run
into someone like that, someone so cool and
controlled—even the other practitioners I had met
gazes with had not been that way. None of them had
simply assessed me like a column of numbers and
filed it away for reference in future equations.

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   She had also been hanging around my investigation
in Branson the previous week. She had been tracking
me ever since interviewing me for a feature story,
right after I’d opened up my business. I had to hand it
to her—she had instincts. And enough curiosity to get
her into ten kinds of trouble. She had tricked me into
meeting her eyes at the conclusion of our first
interview, an eager young reporter investigating an
angle on her interviewee. She was the one who had
fainted after we’d soulgazed.

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   Inside of her, though, I’d seen passion, like I’d
rarely known in people other than myself. The
motivation to go, to do, to act. It was what drove her
forward, digging up stories of the supernatural for a
half-comic rag like the Arcane. She had a gift for it, for
digging down into the muck that people tried to
ignore, and coming up with facts that weren’t always
easily explained. She made people think. It was
something personal for her—I knew that much, but
not why. Susan was determined to make people see
the truth.

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     I was shaking, too. A soulgaze is never something
pleasant or simple. God, sometimes I hated that I had
to live with that. I hadn’t wanted to know that she had
been abused as a child. That she’d married a man who
provided her with more of the same, as an adult. That
the only hope or light that she saw in her life was in
her two children. There hadn’t been time to see all of
her reasons, all of her logic. I still didn’t know why she
had drawn me into this entire business—but I knew
that it was, ultimately, because she loved her two kids.

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   I continued holding her wrist, but the driving
tension behind her arm had eased away to nothing.
She was staring at my face, her eyes wide with shock
from the meeting of our gazes. She started shaking
and dropped the useless stunner from limp fingers. It
clattered to the floor. I let go of her, and she just
stared at me.
...
   It took Monica Sells a moment to recover herself.
She did it with remarkable speed, as though she were
a woman used to drawing on a mask again after
having it knocked off. “I…I’m sorry, Mr. Dresden.”
She lifted her chin, and regarded me with a fragile,
wounded pride. “What do you want here?”

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Fury overwhelmed me, naked lust for meat, for the
hunt. I needed to run, to kill. I was invincible,
unstoppable. I could feel the power in my arms and
hands, feel the raw energy of the wild coursing
through me, sharpening my senses to animal
keenness.
   I felt his emotions like they were my own. Fury
beneath rigid control, the ocean beating at a tide wall.
The fury was directed at me, Dresden, at the man who
had invaded his territory, challenged his authority,
and driven his people out of control, endangering
them. I saw that he was the leader of the lycanthropes
called the Streetwolves, men and women with the
minds and souls of beasts, and that he was aging, was
not as strong as he once had been. Others, like the
woman earlier, were beginning to challenge his
authority. Today’s events might tear him from
leadership, and he would never live through it.
   If Parker was to live, I had to die. He had to kill me,
pure and simple, and he had to do it alone to prove his
strength to the pack. That was the only thing that kept
him from coming at my throat that very second.

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   And then the moment was past, the soulgaze over.
Parker’s face was stunned. He had seen me in much
the same way I had seen him. I don’t know what he
saw when he looked upon my soul. I didn’t want to
know what was down there.

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   There was a rushing sensation, as there usually
was, a feeling of movement forward and then down,
like being sucked into a whirlpool. I rode the
sensation into Denton’s head, a brief doubt crossing
my mind. Maybe getting shot would have been better
than wading heart deep into Denton’s soul.
   I can’t describe what I found there very well. Try to
imagine a place, a beautifully ordered structure, like
the Parthenon or Monticello. Imagine that everything
is balanced, everything is in proportion, everything is
smooth and secure. Stick in blue skies overhead,
green grass all around, puffy white clouds, flowers,
and children running and playing.
   Now, add a couple hundred years of wear and tear
to it. Dull the edges. Round the corners a little.
Imagine water stains, and worn spots where the wind
has gotten to it. Turn the skies dirty brown with smog.
Kill the grass, and replace it with tall, ugly ragweed.
Ditch the flowers, and leave in their places only dried
up, skeletal rose vines. Age the male children into
adult winos, faces haggard with despair and
self-loathing and flushed with drink, and the girls into
tired, jaded strumpets, faces hard, eyes cold and
calculating. Give the place of beauty an aura of rage
and feral abandon, where the people who walk about
watch the shadows like hungry cats, waiting to
pounce.
   And then, after all of that, after all the cares and
trials and difficulties of the world a cop inhabits have
been fairly represented, coat everything in a thick,
sticky black sludge that smells like swamps and things
that attract dun-colored flies. Paint it on, make it a
coating that emphasizes the filth, the decay, the
despair all around, that brings out that painful decline
to the utmost degree. The sludge makes things
stronger, and more bitter, more rotten, more putrid all
at the same time.
   That was Denton, inside. A good man, jaded by
years and poisoned by the power that had taken
control of him, until that good man had been buried
and only the filth and decay remained. Until the
existence of the man who had once been was only a
bitter reminder that made the man who was now seem
all the more downfallen by comparison.
   I understood Denton’s pain and his rage, and I
understood how the dark power he’d taken had
pushed him over the edge. There was an image of him
kneeling at someone’s feet as a wolf-fur belt was
passed into his hands, and then it was gone. Knowing
the man he had once been made clear to me the beast
he had become, all violence and hunger and craving.

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   Denton stared at me as the soulgaze broke and we
were released. He wasn’t reacting well to whatever it
was he had seen inside of me. His face had gone
white, and his hand was trembling, the barrel of the
gun wavering every which way. He lifted his other
hand to mop beads of cold sweat away from his face.
   “No,” Denton said, white showing all around the
grey irises of his eyes. “No, wizard.” He raised his gun.
“I don’t believe in hell. I won’t let you.” He screamed
then, at the top of his lungs. “I won’t let you!” I tensed
up, preparing for a futile attempt to throw myself out
of the way of a speeding bullet.

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   “Uh-huh. You know, you don’t look so good, Hoss.”
He looked up at me, his eyes steady, frowning. I didn’t
meet the look. We’d traded a soulgaze, years ago, so I
wasn’t afraid of it happening again. I just didn’t want
to look at the old man and see disappointment there.
“I hear you been getting into some trouble up here.”

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   I looked up and stared at the old man. He wouldn’t
meet my eyes. Not because he was afraid of a soulgaze
beginning, either. He’d insisted on it within an hour of
meeting me. I still remembered it as sharply as every
other time I’d looked on someone’s soul. I still
remembered the old man’s oak-tree strength, his
calm, his dedication to doing what he felt was right.
And more than simply looking like a decent person,
Ebenezar had lived an example for an angry and
confused young wizard.

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   “All right. Does anyone else know that you failed
your driver’s test five times in one week? Or that you
sprained your shoulder trying to impress me going out
for football our freshman year? That we soulgazed on
our first night together? I think I can still remember
our locker combination, if you like.”

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   I referred to the same base image I always had.
Elaine in our first soulgaze, an image of a woman of
power, grace, and oceans of cool nerve superimposed
over the blushing image of a schoolgirl, naked for the
first time with her first lover. I had known what she
would grow into, even then, that she would transform
the gawky limbs and awkward carriage and blushing
cheeks into confidence and poise and beauty and
wisdom. The wisdom, maybe, was still in process, as
evidenced by her choice of first lovers, but even as an
adult, I was hardly in a position to cast stones, as
evidenced by my choice of pretty much everything.

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   I felt a whirling, gyrating sensation and fell forward,
into the bear-thing’s eyes. The glowing sigil on its
forehead became a blaze of silver light the size of a
stadium scoreboard set against a roundish cliffside of
dark green and black marble. I expected to see
something hideous, but I guess you can’t judge a
monster by the slime on its scales. What I saw instead
was a man of lean middle years dressed in rags. His
hair was long and straight, wispy grey that fell down to
his chest. He stood in a posture of agony, his wiry
body stretched out in an arch, with his hands held up
and apart, his legs stretched out. I followed the lines
of his arms back and up and saw why he stood that
way.
   He’d been crucified.
   The man’s back rested against the cliff, the great
glowing sigil stretching out above him. His arms were
pulled back at an agonizing angle, and were sunk to
the elbow in the green-black marble of the cliff. His
knees were bent, his feet sunk into the stone as well.
He hung there, the pressure of all his weight on his
shoulders and legs. It must have been agonizing.
   The crucified man laughed at me, his eyes glowing
a shade of sickly green, and screamed, “As if it will
help you! Nothing! You’re nothing!”
   Pain laced his voice, making it shrill. Agony
contorted the lines of his body, veins standing out
sharply against straining muscle.
   “Stars and stones,” I whispered. Creatures like this
bear-thing did not have souls to gaze upon. That
meant that regardless of appearances to the contrary,
this thing was a mortal. It—no, he—was a human being.
“What the hell is this?”
   The man screamed again, this time all rage and
anguish, void of words. I lifted a hand and stepped
forward, my first instinct to help him.
   Before I got close, the ground began to shake. The
cliff face rumbled and slits of seething orange light
appeared, and then widened, until I faced the second
set of eyes, eyes the size of subway tunnels, opening
on the great marble cliff. I stumbled several steps
back, and that cliff face proved to be exactly that—a
face, cold and beautiful and harsh around that fiery
gaze.
   The quaking in the earth increased, and a voice
louder than a Metallica concert spoke, the raw sense
of the words, the vicious anger and hate behind them
hitting me far more heavily than mere volume.
   GET OUT.
   The sheer force of presence behind that voice
seized me and threw me violently back, away from the
tortured man at the cliffside and out of the soulgaze.
The mental connection snapped like dry spaghetti,
and the same force that had thrown my mind away
from the soulgaze sent my physical body flying back
through the air. I hit an old cardboard box filled with
empty bottles and heard glass shattering beneath me.
The heavy leather duster held, and no broken shards
buried themselves in my back.

[Griffyn612]

2) Harry's Soulgazes
 - Part 2

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   I met Thomas’s grey eyes with my own dark gaze
and the barriers between us fell.
   I found myself standing in a stark chamber that
looked like an abstract of Mount Olympus after its
gods died. Everything was made of cold, beautiful
marble, alternating between utter darkness and snowy
light. The floor was laid out like a chessboard.
Statuary stood here and there, all human figures
carved in stone that matched the decor. Particolored
marble pillars rose up into dimness overhead. There
wasn’t a ceiling. There weren’t any walls. The light was
silver and cold. Wind sighed mournfully through the
columns. Thunder rumbled somewhere far away, and
my nose filled with the sharp scent of ozone.
   At the center of the forlorn ruin stood a mirror the
size of a garage door. It was set in a silver frame that
seemed to grow from the floor. A young man stood in
front of it, one hand reaching out.
   I walked a little closer. My steps echoed among the
pillars. I drew closer to the young man and peered at
him. It was Thomas. Not Thomas as I had seen him
with my own eyes, but Thomas nonetheless. This
version of him was not deadly-beautiful. His face
seemed a little more plain. He looked like he might
have been a little nearsighted. His expression was
strained with pain, and his shoulders and back were
thick with tension.
   I looked past the young man into the mirror. There
I saw one of those things that I would want to forget.
But thanks to the Sight, I wouldn’t. Ever.
   The reflection room in the mirror looked like the
one I stood in at first glance. But looking closer
revealed that rather than black and white marble, the
place was made from dark, dried blood and
sun-bleached bone. A creature stood there at the
mirror, directly in front of Thomas. It was humanoid,
more or less Thomas’s size, and its hide shone with a
luminous silver glow. It crouched, hunched and
grotesque, though at the same time there was an eerie
beauty about the thing. Its shining white eyes burned
with silent flame. Its bestial face stared eagerly at
Thomas, burning with what seemed to be unsatiated
appetite.
   The creature’s arm also extended to the mirror, and
then with a shiver I realized that its limb was reaching
a good foot past the mirror’s surface. Its gleaming
claws were sunk into Thomas’s shaking forearm, and
drops of dark blood had run from the punctures.
Thomas’s arm, meanwhile, had sunk into the mirror,
and I saw his fingers digging in hard upon the flesh of
the creature’s forearm. Locked together, I sensed that
the two were straining against each other. Thomas
was trying to pull himself away from the thing. The
creature was trying to drag him into the mirror, there
among the dried blood and dead bones.

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   Then she drew her arm back into the mirror and the
soulgaze was over. I sat on the floor facing Thomas.
There were tears on his face. Both of us looked at each
other, and then up at my mother’s portrait.
   After a moment I offered Thomas his pentacle on its
chain. He took it and put it on.
   “Did you see her?” he asked. His voice was shaking.
   “Yeah,” I said. The aching, lonely old hurt was
overflowing me. But I suddenly found myself
laughing. I had seen my mother with my Sight. I had
seen her smile, heard her voice, and it was something
I could never lose. Something no one could ever take
away from me. It couldn’t wholly make up for a
lifetime of loneliness and silent grief, but it was more
than I ever thought I would have.
   Thomas met my eyes, and then he started laughing
too. The puppy wriggled his way from my duster’s
pocket and started bounding back and forth and in
circles in sheer, joyous excitement. The little nut had
no clue at all what we were happy about, but evidently
he didn’t feel he needed one to join in.

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   I met her eyes.
   For a second, I thought nothing had happened.
And then I realized that the soulgaze was already up
and running, and that it showed me Molly, standing
and facing me as nothing more than she seemed to be.
But I could see down the hall behind her, and the
church’s windows held half a dozen different
reflections.
   One was an emaciated version of Molly, as though
she’d been starved or strung out on hard drugs, her
eyes aglow with an unpleasant, fey light. One was her
smiling and laughing, older and comfortably heavier,
children surrounding her. A third faced me in a grey
Warden’s cloak, though a burn scar, almost a brand,
marred the roundness of her left cheek. Still another
reflection was Molly as she appeared now, though
more secure, laughter dancing in her eyes. Another
reflection showed her at a desk, working.
   But the last…
   The last reflection of Molly wasn’t the girl. Oh, it
looked like Molly, externally. But the eyes gave it
away. They were flat as a reptile’s, empty. She wore all
black, including a black collar, and her hair had been
dyed to match. Though she looked like Molly, like a
human being, she was neither. She had become
something else entirely, something very, very bad.
   Possibilities. I was looking at possibilities. There
was definitely a strong presence of darkness in the
girl, but it had not yet gained dominion over her. In all
the potential images, she was a person of
power—different kinds of power, certainly, but she
was strong in all of them. She was going to wind up
with power of her own to use or misuse, depending on
what choices she made.
   What she needed was a guide. Someone to show
her the ropes, to give her the tools she would need to
deal with her newfound power, and all the baggage
that came with it. Yes, that kernel of darkness still
burned coldly within her, but I could hardly throw
stones there. Yes, she had the potential to go astray on
an epic scale.
   Don’t we all.
   I thought of Charity and Michael, Molly’s parents,
her family. Her strength had been forged and founded
in theirs. They both regarded the use of magic as
something suspect at best, and if not inherently evil,
then inherently dangerous. Their opposition to the
power that Molly had manifested might turn the
strength they’d given their daughter against her. If she
believed or came to believe that her power was an evil,
it could push her faster down the left-hand path.
   I knew something of how much Michael and
Charity cared for their daughter.
   But they couldn’t help her.
   One thing was certain, though, and gave me a sense
of reassurance. Molly had not yet indelibly stained
herself. Her future had yet to be written.
   It was worth fighting for.
 

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   The gaze ended, and the various images in the
windows behind Molly vanished. The girl herself
trembled like a frightened doe, staring up at me with
her eyes wide and huge.
   “My God,” she whispered. “I never knew…”

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   All things considered, I shouldn’t have been
surprised that when Helen met my eyes, it got
uncomfortably intimate before a second had passed
and…
   …and I stood in Chicago, in one of the parks on
Lake Michigan. Calumet, maybe? I couldn’t see the
skyline from where I was standing, so it was hard to be
sure.
   What I could see was the Beckitt family. Husband,
wife, daughter, a little girl maybe ten or eleven years
old. She looked like her mother—a woman with smile
lines at the corners of her eyes and a white-toothed
smile who very little resembled the Helen Beckitt I
knew. But all the same, it was her.
   They’d been on a family picnic. The sun was setting
on a summer evening, golden sunset giving way to
twilight as they walked back to the family car. Mother
and father swung the little girl between them, each
holding one hand.
   I didn’t want to see what was about to happen. I
didn’t have a choice in the matter.
   A parking lot. The sounds of a car roaring up.
Muffled curses, tight with fear, and then a car swerved
up off the road and gunfire roared from its passenger
window. Screams. Some people threw themselves
down. Most, including the Beckitts, stared in shock.
More loud, hammering sounds, not ten feet away.
   I looked over my shoulder to see a very, very
young-looking Marcone.
   He wasn’t wearing a business suit. He had on jeans
and a black leather jacket. His hair was longish, a little
mussed, and he also sported a stubble of beard that
gave him the kind of rakish look that would attract
attention from the girls who fantasized about
indulging with a bad boy.
   His eyes were still green—but they were the green
of a summer hunter’s blind, bright and intelligent and
predatory, but touched with more…something.
Humor, maybe. More life. And he was skinnier. Not a
lot skinnier or anything, but it surprised me how
much younger it and the other minor changes made
him look.
   Marcone crouched next to another young man, a
now-dead thug I’d christened Spike years ago. Spike
had his pistol out, and was hammering away at the
moving car. The barrel of his 1911-model Colt tracked
the vehicle—and its course drew its muzzle into line
with the Beckitt family.
   Marcone snarled something and slapped the barrel
of the gun away from the family. Spike’s shot rang out
wild and splashed into the lake. There was a last rattle
of fire from the moving car, and it roared away.
Marcone and Spike piled into their own car and fled
the scene. Spike was driving.
   Marcone was staring back over his shoulder.
   They left the little girl’s broken body, limp and
spattered with scarlet, behind them.
   Helen saw it first, looking down to the hand that
gripped her daughter’s. She let out a cry as she turned
to her child.
   In the wake of the gunshots, the silence was
deafening.
   I didn’t want to see what was coming. Again, I had
no choice.
   The girl wasn’t unconscious. There was a lot of
blood. Her father screamed and knelt with Helen,
trying to stop the bleeding. He tore off his shirt,
pressing it to the child’s midsection. He babbled
something to Helen and ran for the nearest phone.
   His white shirt soaked through as Helen tried to
hold it to the weakly struggling girl.
   This was the worst part.
   The child was in pain. She cried out with it. I
expected her to sound horrible and inhuman, but she
didn’t. She sounded like every little kid who had ever
suddenly found herself faced with her first experience
of real, nontrivial pain.
   “Owie,” she said, over and over, her voice rough.
“Owie, owie, owie.”
   “Baby,” Helen said. The tears were blocking her
vision. “I’m here. I’m here.”
   “Mommy, Mommy, Mommy,” the girl said. “Owie,
owie, owie.”
   The little girl said that.
   She said it over and over.
   She said it for maybe sixty seconds.
   Then she went silent.
   “No,” Helen said. “No, no, no.” She leaned down
and felt her daughter’s throat, then desperately
pressed her ear to the girl’s chest. “No, no, no.”
   Their voices, I realized, sounded almost identical.
They blazed with the same anguish, the same
disbelief.
   I watched Helen shatter, rocking back and forth,
trying through blinding tears to apply CPR to the
silent little form. Everything else became an
unimportant blur. Ghostly figures of her husband,
cops, paramedics. Dim little echoes of sirens and
voices, a church organ.
   I’d known that the Beckitts set out to tear Marcone
down out of revenge for what the warring gangsters
had done to their daughter—but knowing the story
was one thing. Seeing the soul-searing agony the little
girl’s death had inflicted upon her helpless mother
was something else.
   And suddenly, everything was bright and new
again. Helen and her family were laughing again. In a
few moments, they were walking again toward the
parking lot, and I could hear the engine of the car
whose gunmen would miss Marcone and kill the little
girl as it approached.
   I tore my eyes away from it, fighting to end the
soulgaze.
   I could not go through that again, could not remain
locked in that horrible moment that had shaped what
Helen had become.

(click to show/hide)

   I came back to myself standing, turned half away
from Helen, leaning heavily on my staff with my head
bowed.
   There was a long moment of silence before Helen
said, “I didn’t call anyone in the Ordo, Dresden.”

(click to show/hide)

   Evelyn Derek’s deep green eyes almost seemed to
expand around me, and then I found myself staring at
a room that was, if anything, almost identical to the
woman’s office. The furniture was beautiful and
minimalistic. Ms. Derek, it seemed, was not the kind
of person to overly burden her soul with the care
and mementos most people collect over the course of a
lifetime. She had devoted her life to her mind, to the
order and discipline of her thoughts, and she had
never left herself much room for personal
entanglements.
   But as I stared at the room, I saw Ms. Derek herself.
I would have expected her in her business clothing, or
perhaps in student’s attire. Instead, she was
wearing . . .
   Well. She was wearing very expensive, very
minimalistic black lingerie. Stockings, garters, panties,
and bra, all black. She wore them, ahem, very well.
She was kneeling on the floor, her knees apart, her
hands held behind the small of her back. She faced
me with her lips parted, her breath coming in
quickened pants. I was able to change my viewpoint
slightly, as if walking around her, and those green
eyes followed me, pupils wide with desire, her hips
shifting in little yearning rolls with every tiny correction
of her balance.
   Her wrists were bound behind her back with a long,
slender ribbon of white silk.
   I caught a motion in the corner of my eye, and I
snapped my gaze up, to see a slender, feminine form
vanish into the corridors of Evelyn Derek’s memory,
showing me nothing more than a flash of pale skin—
   —and a gleam of silver eyes.
   Son of a bitch.
   Someone had bound up Ms. Derek’s thoughts, all
right, and woven those restraints together with her
natural sexual desire, to give them permanence and
strength. The method and the glimpses I’d seen of the
perpetrator, flashes of memory that had managed to
remain in her thoughts, perhaps, gave strong
indicators as to who was responsible.
   A vampire of the White Court.

(click to show/hide)

   And then there was a wrenching sensation and I
was kneeling over Evelyn Derek. Her eyes were wide,
her expression a mixture of terror and awe as she
stared up at me.
   Oh, yeah. That was the thing about a soulgaze.
Whoever you look at gets a look back at you. They
get to see you in just as much detail as you see them.
I’ve never had anyone soulgaze me who didn’t
seem . . . disconcerted by the experience.
   Evelyn Derek stared at me and whispered, “Who
are you?”
   I said, “Harry Dresden.”
   She blinked slowly and said, her voice dazed, “She
ran from you.” Tears started forming in her eyes.
“What is happening to me?”

(click to show/hide)

   Martin’s eyes were on mine for a fraction of a
second. No more. But I felt the soulgaze begin. I saw
his agony, the pain of the mortal life he had lost. I saw
his years of service, his genuine devotion, like a
marble statue of the Red King kept polished and
lovingly tended. And I saw his soul change. I saw that
image of worship grow tarnished as he spent year after
year among those who struggled against the Red King
and his empire of terror and misery. And I saw that
when he had come into the temple, he knew full well
that he wasn’t going to survive. And that he was
content with it.
   There was nothing I could do in time to prevent
what was coming next, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to.
Martin said that it had taken him years and years to
run a con on the Fellowship of St. Giles. But it had
taken him most of two centuries to run the long con
on the Red King. As a former priest, Martin must have
known of the bloodline curse, and its potential for
destruction. He must have known that the threat to
Maggie and the realization of his betrayal would be
certain to drive Susan out of control.
   He’d told me already, practically the moment he
had come to Chicago, that he would do anything if it
meant damaging the Red Court. He would have shot
me in the back. He would have betrayed Maggie’s
existence, practically handing her to the murderous
bastards. He would betray the Fellowship to its
enemies.
   He would destroy Susan.
   And he would die, himself.
   Everything he had done, I realized, he had done for
one reason: to be sure that I was standing here when
it happened. To give me a chance to change everything.

[Griffyn612]

3) Harry's Close Calls
     There have been several soulgaze failures throughout the series, for a variety of reasons, and numerous references to Harry avoiding soulgazes.

(click to show/hide)

   “Why should I?” I snarled, and for once I didn’t
avert my eyes. I stared into her gleaming amber eyes
and braced myself for the impact of looking into her
soul, and for her to peer into mine.
   Instead, nothing happened.
   That, in itself, was enough to make my jaw drop
incredulously. I continued the stare, and she didn’t
blink, didn’t turn away—and didn’t fall into soulgaze
with me. I shuddered in reaction. What was going on?
Why didn’t the ’gaze begin? There were only two kinds
of people whose eyes I could meet for more than a
second or two: the people who had already met my
eyes in a soulgaze were one kind; inhuman beings
from the Nevernever were the other.
   I had never looked upon Tera West’s soul before. I
remembered a soulgaze, every time it happened. The
experience wasn’t the sort of thing you could forget.
That only left one conclusion.
   Whoever she was—whatever she was, Tera West
wasn’t human.

(click to show/hide)

   I peered at her eyes. They were dilated wide. I
braced myself, and looked deeper into her eyes. When
a wizard looks into your eyes, you cannot hide from
him. He can see deep down into you, see the truest
parts of your character, the dark places and the
light—and you see him in return. Eyes are the
windows to the soul. I searched for Murphy behind all
of that terror, and waited for the soulgaze to begin.
   Nothing happened.
   Murphy just sat there, staring ahead. Another low
breath rattled out, not quite making a sound—but I
recognized the effort she was making for what it was.
   Murphy was screaming.
   I had no idea what she was seeing, what horrors the
Nightmare had set before her eyes. What it had taken
from her. I touched her throat with gentle fingertips,
but I couldn’t feel the bone-chilling cold of the
torment-spell like the one upon Malone. At least there
was that much. But if I couldn’t see inside of her, then
Murphy was in another place. The lights were on, but
no one was home.

(click to show/hide)

   She shone a light at my eyes. I winced. She peered
at each eye (mechanically, professionally—without the
intimacy that triggers a soulgaze) and shook her head.
“If you’ve got a concussion, I’m Winona Ryder. Get off
that bed and get out of here. Make sure to talk to the
cashier on the way out.” She pressed a moist towelette
into my hand. “I’ll let you clean up this mess, Mister
Dresden. I have enough work to do.”
 

(click to show/hide)

   I didn’t meet Mab’s eyes. I wasn’t worried about a
soulgaze any longer. Both parties had to have a soul
for that to happen. But plenty of things can get to you
if you make eye contact too long. It carries all sorts of
emotions and metaphors. I stared at Mab’s chin, my
hand burning with pain, and said nothing because I
was afraid.
 

(click to show/hide)

   The mordite sphere glided gently back to rest
between the Archive’s tiny hands, and she stood
regarding me for a long and silent moment. There was
nothing in her expression. Nothing in her eyes.
Nothing. I felt the beginnings of a soulgaze and pulled
my face away, fast.

(click to show/hide)

   There was a second where I felt the beginnings of
the almost violent psychic pressure that accompanies
a soulgaze. Kincaid must have felt it coming on, too.
He let his eyes slip out of focus, turned away from me,
and started unpacking a box in the van. “I understand
you,” he said.

(click to show/hide)

   The girl opened her eyes. They met mine for a
heartbeat, and boy howdy did I chicken out and look
away fast. No soulgaze, please. I’d had too many dying
sheep tattooed into my memory for one day. But as
Inari turned the chair, Justine suddenly lifted her
head and her hand and pointed out into the darkness.
The motion was weak, but in comparison to the others
it was nearly forceful.
 

(click to show/hide)

   “Brass-plated pain in my ass,” I said. “He knows
that plenty well.” I avoided her eyes. The last thing I
needed was to endure another soulgaze now.
“Justine, you need to rest. I’ll dig him up. Don’t worry.”

(click to show/hide)

   I shied away from her gaze at once. When a wizard
looks into another person’s eyes for an instant too
long, he sees into them in a profound and unsettling
kind of vision called a soulgaze. If I’d left my gaze on
Alicia’s eyes, I would get an up-close and personal
look at her soul—and she at mine. I didn’t want to see
what was going on behind that dimpled smile. I
recognized that perfect surety in her manner and
expression as something more than rampant ego or
fanatic conviction.
   It was pure madness. Whatever else Alicia was, she
was calmly and horribly insane.
 

(click to show/hide)

   Luccio’s steps faltered. Her head snapped around
to look at me, and in her eyes I saw a brutal cruelty
that could never have belonged to the captain of the
Wardens.
   I felt the first tug of a soulgaze, but I made my
decision in the moment that my voice caused her
steps to falter. She opened her mouth, and I saw the
Corpsetaker’s madness twist Luccio’s eyes, felt the
sudden, dark tension as she began to gather power.

(click to show/hide)

   Our eyes met and I braced myself for the
soulgaze— but it didn’t happen. Hell’s bells, I had
my Sight wide-open, enough to let me see the
flow of energy straining between our outstretched
hands, and it still didn’t happen. Guess the rules
change when you’re all soul and nothing else.

(click to show/hide)

   For a second I saw his eyes, and at my words they
suddenly burned with a manic loathing and scorn. I
could see, quite clearly, that Liver Spots wanted me
dead. There wasn’t anything rational or calm about it.
He wanted to hurt me, and he wanted me to die. It
was written in his eyes so strongly that it might as well
have been tattooed across his face. I needed no
soulgaze, no magic, to recognize murderous hate
when I saw it.
   And he still looked familiar, though for the life of
me—maybe literally—I couldn’t remember from
where.
   I avoided his eyes in time to avert a soulgaze of my
own and said, “Get into the car.”

(click to show/hide)

   I didn’t feel like being drawn into a soulgaze with
Crane, but I had little to lose. If nothing else, it might
provide me with some valuable insight to his
character.
   Crane’s nerve broke first. He turned to walk away
from me, pretending that he’d just received a call on
his cell phone—he already had a new one. He stood in
the shadows on the other side of the room.

(click to show/hide)

   I averted my eyes before a soulgaze could get going.
And before she could see them tear up. Charity,
regardless of how she’d treated me in the past, had
been there when the chips were down. She’d cared for
me when I’d been injured. She’d supported me when
she didn’t have to do so. As abrasive, accusatory, and
harsh as she could be, I had never for an instant
doubted her love for her husband, for her children, or
the sincerity of her faith. I’d never liked her too
much—but I had always respected her.

(click to show/hide)

   I looked away, too. I’d seen too many things
with my Sight already. And I had a bad feeling
that trading a soulgaze with Vadderung would
not improve my performance over the next day
or so.

(click to show/hide)

   Deirdre stared at me steadily, both sets of
eyes on mine, and I dropped my gaze away from
hers hurriedly. The last thing I needed, at the
moment, was to accidentally find myself in a soul
gaze with a Fallen angel or a psychotic
murderess with centuries of dark deeds behind
her.

[Griffyn612]

4) Soulgazes Observed
     This is a collection of soulgazes between two other parties, which Harry has been present for. 

(click to show/hide)

   I closed my eyes and turned my face a little from
the window. I could imagine what was happening.
Butters, probably on his knees, being held by a pair of
zombies, Grevane standing over him in his trench
coat, pinching Butters’s chin between his thumb and
forefinger. I could imagine him forcing Butters’s eyes
up to meet his, to begin a soulgaze. Grevane wanted to
see the inside of Butters’s head, in a swift and harsh
attempt to assess the truth.
   And Butters would be exposed to the corruption of
a soul steeped in dark magic and a lifetime of murder.
   I heard a high-pitched little sound that rose rapidly,
growing louder and louder until it was a wail of terror
and madness. There was no dignity in the sound. No
self-control. I would never have recognized it as
Butters’s voice if I hadn’t known he was out there. But
it was him. Butters screamed, and he kept screaming
without pausing to take a breath until it wound down
to a frozen, gurgling sound and died away.

(click to show/hide)

   “I,” he said very quietly, “am not food.” And he met
her eyes.
   I hadn’t seen a soulgaze from the outside before. It
surprised me, how simple and brief it looked, when
one wasn’t being shaken to the core by it. Both of
them stared, eyes widening, and then shuddered. Lara
took a small step back from Ramirez, her breathing
slightly quickened. I noticed, because I’m a
professional investigator. She could have been
concealing a weapon in that décolletage.

(click to show/hide)

   It was only the second time I’d ever seen a soulgaze
happen to someone else. There was an instant where
both of them locked their eyes on each other’s.
Molly’s eyes widened suddenly, like a frightened
doe’s, and she jerked in a sharp breath. She stared at
him with her chin twisting to one side, as if she were
trying—and failing—to look away.
   Thomas went unnaturally still, and though his eyes
also widened, it reminded me more of a cat crouching
down in anticipation, just before pouncing on its prey.
   Molly’s back arched slightly and a soft moan
escaped her. Her eyes filled with tears.
   “God,” she said. “God. No. No, you’re beautiful.
God, you hurt so much, need so much. . . . Let me
help you. . . .” She fumbled for his hand.

(click to show/hide)

   Molly and the dark wizard went into a soulgaze,
and there wasn’t a thing I could do about it—
except keep trying to get closer.
   I could feel power flickering between them,
though, like bursts of heat coming out of a
furnace, as I got glacially nearer. It was an entirely
invisible struggle, a simultaneous and mutual
siege of the personality. Mind magic is dangerous,
slippery stuff, and doing combat with another
mind is all about imagination, focus, and sheer
willpower. Right now, Molly was thrusting an
array of images and ideas at the Corpsetaker,
trying to force the other to pay attention to them.
Some of the thoughts would be there to
undermine defenses , others to assault them,
and still others trying to slip past unnoticed to wreak
havoc from within. Some of the thoughts would
be simple things— whispered doubts meant to
shake the other’s confidence, for example. Others
would be far more complex constructions, idea
demons imagined ahead of time, prepared for
such an occasion and unleashed upon the
thoughts and memories of the foe.

[Griffyn612]

5) Sight Theory


6) Harry's Sight Visions

[Griffyn612]

7 <reserved for expansion>


Soulgaze by NeyaAnamMeanoiche

[Griffyn612]

8 <reserved for expansion>


Harry Dresden - Soulgaze Inked by Polar15

[Griffyn612]

9  <reserved for expansion>


Dresden Files: Murphy by exorcisngemily

[Griffyn612]

10 <reserved for expansion>


072610 Tiny but Fierce by GillyPerkyGoth

[Quantus]

I dont know if you can reliably call this a Sight Vision, or something else, but it seems to be related.  When he does magic in Fool Moon without the insulation of Magic Words, he starts seeing and feeling strange things for a while:

Magic is a kind of energy. It is given shape by human thoughts and emotions, by imagination. Thoughts define that shape-and words help to define those thoughts. That's why wizards usually use words to help them with their spells. Words provide a sort of insulation as the energy of magic burns through a spell caster's mind. If you use words that you're too familiar with, words that are so close to your thoughts that you have trouble separating thought from word, that insulation is very thin. So most wizards use words from ancient languages they don't know very well, or else they make up nonsense words and mentally attach their meanings to a particular effect. That way, a wizard's mind has an extra layer of protection against magical energies coursing through it.

But you can work magic without words, without insulation for your mind. If you're not afraid of it hurting a little.

I drew in my will, my exhausted fear, and focused on what I wanted. My vision swam with dots of color. The man on my back snarled and growled incoherently, and spittle or foam dribbled onto the side of my face. Dried leaves and mud pressed against the other side of my face. Things started going black.

Then I ground my teeth together and released my will with a burst of sudden energy.

Two things happened. First, a rush of blinding thought, brilliant and wild and jangling, went through my head. My eyes swam with color, my ears with phantom sound. My senses were assaulted with a myriad of impressions: the sharp scent of the earth and dry leaves, the rippling scratch of a centipede's legs fluttering up the skin of my forearms, the sensation of warm sunlight against my scalp, dozens of others I couldn't identify-things with no basis in reality. They were a side effect of the energy rushing through my head.

The second thing that happened was a surge of electricity gathered from the air around me to my fingertips, gripped on my attacker's wrist, and surged up through his arm and into his body. He convulsed against my back, out of control, and the strength of his own reaction threw him off of me and to his back on the leaves, jerking and flopping, his face stretched in a tight-lipped expression of shock and fear.

I wheezed in a breath, stunned and shaking, then scrambled back to my feet, only to stagger against a tree. I huddled there, watching my attacker's convulsions fade into a numb paralysis. Finally, he just stared at the sky, his lips open, his chest heaving in and out.


[...]


MacFinn was sitting up, evidently recovered from the jolt I'd given him. His face was pasty and stunned as he looked around him. His chest rose and fell in uneven jerks.

There was a rustle, and then I caught sight of Tera West tumbling to the ground from the branches of the pine tree. She landed with a thump and sat there coughing and staring, her mouth hanging open in surprise. She blinked at me and nervously scooted a few inches backward over the ground.

"See there?" I wheezed, raising a hand and pointing at MacFinn. "He's breathing. He'll be all right." My mind was still spinning from my unshielded magic attack on MacFinn. I caught the strong scent of wild-flowers and stagnant water, and felt what I was sure were the scales of a snake slithering across the palms of my hands, while something with wings and glittering, multifaceted eyes hovered at the edge of my vision, vanishing whenever I tried to look at it. I tried to shove everything that didn't make sense out of my way, to ignore it, but it was difficult to sort the false impressions from the ones that were in front of me.

Tera rose, and made her way toward the fallen man. She knelt down over MacFinn and wrapped her arms around him. I closed my eyes and wheezed until my head began to slow down a little. I focused on all the pain that was lurking in the midst of the confusion. Pain in my shoulder, my throat, my jaw, gave me a concrete foundation, a place that I knew was stable, if unpleasant. I fastened on it, concentrated, until I began to get less woozy. Once the pain returned in force, I wasn't sure I wanted to be less woozy, but I opened my eyes anyway.

[StarbornWinterKnight]

Awesome list.

Just wanted to add that I'm pretty sure Harry has soulgazed Michael offscreen. I think it is mentioned near the beginning of Grave Peril that when they first met Michael insisted on it and Harry says something about how Michael's soul was so pure that it made him weep.

[Serack]

I don't know if you want to add this, but you might reference it ....

He attempted to soul gaze Tera West, and was unable to do so.