By the time Nairmis plucked the final note, the burns on Anthea's arm had completely faded. She gently flexed her fingers, then yawned.
With the warmth of healing divine power and the covering of the god of sleep's divine power, the five nymphs curled up beside the campfire one after another. Before long, they were all sound asleep.
Nairmis sat beside the fire with the lyre in his arms, not lying down. His mind was still working.
Authority over water had largely been divided among Oceanus, Tethys, and their descendants: the three thousand Oceanids and the gods of the great rivers.
Nairmis counted on his fingers through those genealogies, their names woven as densely as a net, and could not help muttering inwardly that the couple had far too many children.
As for sky-related domains such as clouds and rain, trying to claim them now would be no different from reaching out under the god king's very nose. He did not yet have the nerve for that.
The truly powerful divinities capable of influencing the shape of the entire world were either in the hands of powerful gods or still dormant, only to emerge one by one after the Titanomachy. Only then would there be room for him to make plans.
So the only domain he might be able to contend for right now was probably mist.
This divinity was not particularly conspicuous, nor was it on the list of that couple's children. It was a leftover scrap, just right for him to pick up a bargain.
So what he could probably pursue was the divinity of mist. It was marginal enough and inconspicuous enough, and no god should have formally taken charge of it yet.
But the problem was how to make mist appear. The world's temperature currently showed almost no difference between day and night. The alternation of day and night was merely light appearing and disappearing; temperature itself remained in a chaotic, uniform state, leaving water vapor without the conditions to condense.
His gaze unconsciously fell on the burned woolen dress beside Anthea. The edges of the fabric were curled and blackened, and the places scorched by fire had crumbled into brittle ash. Inspiration flashed through his mind: temperature could produce mist.
When cold water met something hot, or hot air met a cold surface, water vapor would condense into mist. But temperature itself required a divinity, and with temperatures almost the same day and night, where was he supposed to get a temperature divinity?
All sorts of ideas tumbled through his head. After turning them over for too long, his temples began to throb faintly. He rubbed the space between his brows and glanced at the sleeping nymphs again.
Forget it. Whatever I can't figure out today can wait until tomorrow.
He set the lyre down properly and lay back on the grass, his golden hair spreading beneath him. He stopped resisting the god of sleep's divine power, and his heavy eyelids closed.
When he woke the next day, Nairmis spent the entire morning running all over the mountain with the nymphs.
They collected brightly colored stones and flowers, crushed and ground them, and mixed them with water to produce a few basic pigments, including red, yellow, blue, and black.
The texture was hardly fine, with a pronounced graininess, but it was good enough for recording things. It was not as though he was holding an art exhibition.
He spread out a sheet of parchment and sketched a simple outline in charcoal, starting with the nymphs for practice. The water nymph Acenoe sat on a rock as his first model, sitting perfectly straight and blinking curiously.
Nairmis painted very seriously, but once he put brush to parchment, he was the first to fall silent. The lines were crooked, the proportions of the brows and eyes were off, and he had failed to capture even a trace of the water nymph's lively grace.
He forced himself to finish. The laws still gave him a response: a lesser Painting Divinity condensed within him, settling quietly beside the Craft Divinity.
Nairmis breathed a sigh of relief. With the Painting Divinity to help him in a moment, things should go better.
He handed the portrait to Acenoe. The water nymph took it, looked down at it, then looked up at him. Her lips parted two or three times, but she could not squeeze out a single word.
Of course she recognized herself. The pool reflected her every day; she knew that outline better than anyone.
She just had not known she looked so-she deliberated for a long while before settling on the word "rustic," but still did not say it aloud.
Anthea leaned over for a glance, then silently stepped away. The other nymphs took turns coming over to look, and the atmosphere grew rather peculiar.
No one knew how to praise it. After all, their master had painted it himself, but the words of praise stopped themselves short whenever they reached their lips.
Watching their conflicted expressions, Nairmis could not help laughing. He waved a hand. "All right, all right, I know it's not good. I'm just practicing. It'll get better. Next, I need to do something that requires complete concentration. Guard the area for me, and don't let anything disturb me."
As though granted a pardon, the nymphs swiftly sprang into action, running off in different directions to stand guard. With their backs to him and their eyes fixed on the perimeter, they had finally sidestepped the awkward predicament of not knowing where to begin praising him.
Nairmis sat back down before the rock, picked up the brush dipped in pigment, and took a deep breath.
With the Painting Divinity, his hand was much steadier than before, and the lines followed his wishes precisely onto the parchment.
From the first opening of chaos to the five primordial gods awakening in succession, from the union of sky and earth to the birth of the Titans, from the giants falling into the abyss to the mountains and seas declaring war on the sky, from the devastation of living beings to his own tears and taking form.
Every stroke carried emotional resonance, and every scene came alive again beneath his brush.
The power of the laws continued to surge around him, swirling like an invisible tide that rose and fell with every stroke.
Whenever he finished recording a god's deeds, that god would sense something through an unseen connection. The laws were anchoring this history, and their names and existences were being embedded in a new order taking shape.
All the gods he painted sensed through that unseen connection that they had been recorded. Gods of the first rank and above could even see blurry images.
Yet none could trace the source of that sensation, though the feeling of being remembered swept clearly through their consciousness.
High in the sky, Uranus kept his eyes tightly closed, his brow creasing. The twelve Titans all stiffened their backs within the space between. After days of growing divine power and days of repeated frights, they were almost unable to bear it any longer.
Nairmis did not stop. He finished painting every scene in his memory that deserved to be remembered. When the final stroke fell, he gently set down the brush and stood once more.
The power of the laws circled him, waiting for him to speak. He faced the world and proclaimed.
"I am Nairmis, lord of emotions, pioneer of craftsmanship, watcher of records. I came from the far shore of chaos and witnessed the entire journey of all things from nothing into existence."
"I saw, I remembered, and I preserved them. From this day forth, whatever I see shall no longer vanish into time, and whatever I record shall not be swept away by the torrent of oblivion. Thus shall I be the god of records, preserving the shadows of all things and safeguarding the forms of the past."
The laws rejoiced. The underlying pulse of the entire world answered his proclamation, its resonance vaster and more enduring than when the Craft Divinity had been born. The wisp of Record Divinity within him burned, transforming into a Third-Class Divinity.
The Record Godhead—he had finally obtained it. After so much hard work, painting and proclaiming alike, he had at last grasped the authority of records.
Then that familiar killing intent came bearing down, blotting out heaven and earth.
Before he could savor this joy, an immense surge of divine power pressed down from the sky. The whole world seemed to freeze in an instant. The nymphs felt it too, and every one of them fainted from fright.
Nairmis raised his head. He could sense Uranus's icy gaze.