Ikú challenged Ebbó, son of Orunmila, at the game of Ayó, with a final bet about the New Moon: if it came out the next day, she would take him to Heaven; if not, she would stop taking human beings. Eshu, after eating the he-goat, had the children of Heaven step on the Moon's white dress: she did not come out until the 31st day, and Death, beaten, promised not to come again — though she declared human flesh would be her food, and from then on used the fierce deities.
As soon as man set foot on Earth, Death began to snatch people away by the thousands, day after day.
Orunmila stopped it on the day Ikú showed up to take Ebbó, his son —sacrifice— who sheltered people from death's attack.
It was in Heaven that Ikú found this out: that Ebbó protected people and warned them against Death. So she came down herself. Since Ebbó was famous as a great Ayó player, Death decided to challenge him on Earth, and she set the condition that, if she beat him, she would take him with her to Heaven, and every form of sacrifice would then end in the world; but if Ebbó won, she would never come back to Earth.
The game started clean and, round after round, she stayed ahead. At dusk, when the two of them left the board to go on in the morning, Death noticed that with the next day it would be a full month of her beating him. Ebbó did not understand and wanted to know how she could talk about a whole month when they had barely played one day. She pointed out that the New Moon would show up the next day. Ebbó said the opposite: the Moon would not come out until the third day. The argument was settled when Death took Ayó out of the deal: if the New Moon came out the next day, as she said, then besides taking Ebbó to Heaven she would keep coming back to the world for human beings; and if Ebbó was right, she would not only leave him alone, but would not take anyone else again. With that bet made, night parted them.
Ebbó ran at once to tell his father everything. Orunmila checked his calendar and saw that Ikú was right: the Moon would show itself the next day. He then asked Okpele, and the answer was a he-goat to Eshu with no delay, asking him to block Death's win over Ebbó, because such a victory would weigh very heavily on the Earth.
Once he had eaten the he-goat, Eshu went up to Heaven to see the Moon. She has only one dress for coming down to the world; that morning she had washed it and had it spread out on the grass in the yard, waiting for the hour to dress at night. Eshu asked her when her monthly trip was, and she answered that she was going out that very night.
With that news he left. The Sun was already on its way out of its daily run. Eshu gathered the small children of Heaven and set them to play on the white dress, which was dry, until they trampled it: it was completely ruined, so dirty that, if she showed up in it, the Moon would hardly have been noticed.
When she got up and saw the damage, the Moon rushed to punish them. God stepped in to find out what was going on, and she told him the matter. God scolded her: she wanted to take her anger out on innocent creatures over a simple bit of carelessness, when it was those same children who cheered her with songs of praise every time she made her monthly appearance. The Moon apologized for being so forgetful, forgave the children and announced that she would wash the dress again the next day, hanging it this time on a line and not on the ground, so as to show herself on Earth the day after.
Down on Earth, Death and the rest waited that night for an appearance that never came. The Moon showed herself only the following night. Up to that moment she came out every 30 days; from that night on she came out every 31.
Death admitted to Ebbó that the facts had favored him, and promised not to come back to the world. That was how Orula and his son Ebbó drove Death off the face of the Earth.
Even so, since she had already declared that her main food would be human flesh, she had to come up with another way to get food, and she turned to the fierce deities, who found her food on Earth. They are Oggún, owner of strife, of accidents and of war; Shangó, owner of thunder, of lightning and of electricity; Olokun, owner of water, of witchcraft and of spells; and Shapaná, who kills with all kinds of epidemics. Even those who fall at the hands of the elders of the night are carried to Heaven, to Death, by her own messengers. Illness, her wife, on the other hand is slow to collect her victims, above all when they take shelter in sacrifice or in Ozain, owner of medicine.
When he found this out, Orula reminded the other deities of that order God had given in Heaven: do not kill on Earth. God's permission went only so far as letting Death feed on those who did evil and on those sentenced in the weekly court of the divine council. Why, then, did she carry off the innocent along with the guilty?
It was at that point that Orunmila stated his famous treatise. He explained to the other deities that God, in forming man to serve them, expected men to turn out good like them and, on top of that, to stay alive forever. He added that good would have had a better chance of winning over evil if God, when he let Death in, had separated the one from the other: had he set life without end for whoever did good, while Death collected whoever practiced evil, the generations would have realized that only the wicked died, and the wicked would have ended up convinced to do good and to hate evil. Given the choice, nobody wants to die. There Orula points at the deep mistake of creation, since as a rule those who do good die before those who do harm.