If Ikky got somehow defeated by a prophet and had his cryptex stolen, then he guessed, the summary of his totem to be: 'A resident of the farthest edges of the universe who wields fear.'
His totem allowed him to sense and wield unique icy mist that every living creature secretes, like it was a part of his own body.
The darkness in the mist represents the dark emotions, nature and purpose of living beings, the tiny stars stood for the good emotions, nature and purpose; while the white pole represents the creature's experiences throughout its life. These things could only be removed once those beings were ceasing from existence, or dying.
The uses Ikky was able to draw out of the night mist so far were:
• Enhance his body by feeding on the mist, but suffer a side effect of freezing his soul.
The advantage only works because his Living Totem made him resistant— immune if he could control his essence— to the soul chilling night mist. If another person were to get too much night mist into their own bodies, they would only suffer the side effects of soul freezing, during which they feel heavier than they are, and their soul becomes extremely fragile and brittle.
• The second use was bending the mists like his limbs, taking advantage of the side effects of the night mist when he infuses it into a target. However, this was extremely hard to do and would take a long time, since the only reason he was able to absorb night mist fast was because of his unique anatomy during his totem's use. For other targets, it could even take up to a whole day before he could infuse the mist into only a fraction of the target's body.
But, there was a way to speed up the soul freezing process on his targets, and that would be to gather a very condensed mass of the night mist into the white pole, then shaping the pole and plunging it through that target. He could make the pole form different shapes, but his ability to use it was not of intricate levels, as he could only form flat objects like boards.
Ikky had learned so much about his totem while making his charms with Izel. One of the two charms, a thin white bracelet seemingly made by arranging tiny rhomboid shaped objects side by side, was simply a tool to aid this mist condensation, shaping and easing his burden of using the night mist on his own body.
———
The fairy-like woman got ready to pull Ikky into the air before his body fell on the hard ground. However, Ikky was a prophet after all, so he must have some kind of trick to survive the fall. She wanted to see it.
Ikky's knees bent like he was bracing for the impact, but as soon as his feet reached mere inches from the ground, he suddenly shot his body sideways, straight at the woman. A stretchy black platform had appeared out from beneath his feet to launch him.
"!!!" The fairy swung her head back reflexively, however Ikky was already too close. He caught her face between his palms with the unexpected momentum pushing him still. His face met hers, and with his mouth open, Ikky swiped his tongue across her face.
"Ghn!" Her being repulsed by the amber-eyed man's actions just gave Ikky more time to do whatever he needed to.
Using his other virtue, the Night Chant, a ghostlike creature flew right out of his body, going behind the woman and tying her arms together with the night mist string hanging from the end of the pole of its night mist scythe.
The fairy moved her fingers to rip out a tree and toss it at him, but it was evaded.
Ikky brought his head down and took a bite at the fairy's neck, but just as his mouth was about to touch her again, the fairy decapitated its self, making Ikky bite an empty space.
However, doing so just made her body fall limp on the ground as her head remained in Ikky's palms.
"Wow. This takes you back, doesn't it?" Ikky cackled as he rubbed his legs together to soothe his 'family jewels'.
In just a few moves, he'd won.
Ikky hadn't just let the previous actions of the spirit pass off as useless information. From their short interaction, Ikky had already deciphered two flaws that she had.
One he'd found out was her abnormal dislike for getting herself dirty. It was so much to the extent that she was bobbing her head around, looking for soap in a place that clearly doesn't even have the ingredients for it. She had a clear cleanliness disorder.
The second weakness was a hypothesis he was glad was correct. The fairy, although with the power of a very strong form of telekinesis, was required to use her hands to manipulate objects. So after putting her in a mental disarray by rubbing his tongue all over her face, he was able to sneak his Night Chant conjured phantom behind her, and tie her arms with the condensed night mist string.
The decapitation part was the fairy's own doing when she desperately tried to prevent her body from being sullied further by Ikky's mouth.
"This takes you back, doesn't it?" Ikky chuckled.
"You remember me?" She asked.
"I was right? I just made a guess since your voice sounded familiar. You're that knight that saved me in my first omen, aren't you?" Ikky remembered that small knight's manner of speech. And as he held her living head in his hands, he thought, no wonder she had acted so casually at seeing him decapitated in his omen. It was probably a normal thing to her
"Oh. Yes. That was me." The fairy nodded.
Yet another question popped up in Ikky's head: "How the heck did you get there?"
"Well, I belong to a special unit. We go into first omens to kill the calamity spirits in case the new Prophets can't." She surprisingly replied this time, so Ikky pushed his luck for one more answer,
"Wait, so you mean you can help prophets conquer their first omens?"
"We won't. We go only into first omens that contain evil spirits too powerful for what starting Seers can handle. We subdue them before they pour unfathomable calamity into our world. So usually, we leave those prophets who couldn't conquer them to die trying. For those who survive, they are without Totems, and so they become Disciples."
Ikky brought her face closer to his, as he stared into her plain golden eyes for a few seconds. Then he sighed with relief. The fairy did not sound at all like it was lying, so Ikky was darn sure that in his first omen, she would have let him die as well if she hadn't already thought he was dead when they met.
Ikky had been decapitated when a second spider spirit had come to completely end his life. But then she suddenly appeared out of nowhere to kill it, most probably because she hadn't realised that Ikky was still not down for the count.
The curse of eternal suffering was the only useful curse Ikky had gotten so far. But that was before his virtue had advanced from Seed of Nyx to Child of Nyx, making the costs or curses he would get with his advanced virtue even worse. So that first and useful curse was most likely a one time thing.
"That doesn't hurt you, does it?" Ikky pointed at the black night string before walking towards one of the red leaved trees and pulling out a vine.
The fairy didn't reply to that question, and Ikky didn't force her to. She had said quite enough to satisfy his current curiosities. Setting her head aside, he lifted her limp body onto his back and tied her to his body. After, he picked up her head, held it under one arm before treading the dark red forest.
"Now let's get out of here before unexpected company finds us."
"Wipe your spit off my face."
"Oh come on. I brush my teeth now. Arley says I'll need to check the dentist, but I'm fine. See?" He grinned at her.
Ikky's dentures were hard, sharp and white. But they were not clean-white, more like, carnivorous-animal- bone crunching-white. Nox had cruched into a lot of bones of different hardness. And his body enhancing virtue only aided the deception against Ikky's gross hygiene.
"That doesn't even matter to me. So clean my face."
"Can it, subordinate. You don't tell me what to do." Ikky cackled.
"Damn. That was Yaga's thing I just did, wasn't it?"