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.
