217. Oshun vs. Karl Omega

The first phase of the first battle began without trumpet or declaration. This was one called Oshun.everal myths exist concerning Oshun and her significance as a Yoruba deity. In most Yoruba stories, Oshun is generally depicted as the protector, saviour, or nurturer of humanity. Oshun has also been described as the maintainer of spiritual balance or mother of sweet things. One myth highlights Oshun as the central figure in the creation of human beings. The Yoruba people believe that the orishas were sent by Olodumare, who is considered the Supreme God, to populate the Earth. Oshun, being one of the original 17 sent to Earth, was the only female deity. The other gods, all male, failed at their attempts to revive and populate the Earth. When they realized they were unable to complete the task given to them by Olodumare, they tried to persuade Oshun to help them. Oshun agreed and brought forth her sweet and powerful waters, bringing life back to Earth and humanity and other species into existence. As that Yoruba myth suggests, humanity would not exist if Oshun, the goddess of life and fertility, had not acted.

That is to say that no one could ever pretend the Super Ring of the Super Primordial Black Hole would wait for ceremony once Kaos had spoken the only rule that still mattered.

The thing is, this love cannot pretend it does not include the moment the open question is forced to draw blood.

Karl Omega Yang stood at the center of the wound that had once been a garden in Carlisle.

The Super Ring burned on the concept of his hand with the compressed light of every collapsed star that had ever refused to finish its own story.

There was no mercy in him.Not today.Not after Larissa had been stolen by Brahma, Kaos, and Allat.

Karl was so fucking useless. He did not know what he was worth fighting for.

Not after Ryan had been folded into sleep by the primordial goddess who had taken every Morpheus across the ninth dimension.

Not after the doubt had already cut the first honest anchor from his life.

The first opponent stepped forward from the African host that the Atlas had named in such luminous detail.

Oshun.

Goddess of love, rivers, beauty, and fertility.

Honey-sweet laughter that had once rippled through Nigeria’s Osun River.

Peacock feathers that had once danced in the breeze casting spells of joy and abundance.

She came not as the gentle giver of sweetness but as the full, undiluted force of a love that refused to be doubted.

Oshun’s eyes were gold and river-deep.

Her voice carried the weight of every offering that had ever been placed at her shrine.

Oshun: You doubted the first hand that held you.

You stood in a garden and asked yourself whether need and love were the same thing.

I am the river that knows the difference.

Come and learn it in blood.

Karl did not answer with words at first.

He answered with the Super Ring.

The first clash was not elegant.

Oshun moved like the river in flood fluid, inevitable, carrying the force of every current that had ever drowned a man who thought he could stand against water.

Honey and blood mixed in the air as her first strike opened a line across Karl’s chest.

The Super Ring flared.

Karl’s counter was pure Will to Power released without restraint.

No honest ending.

No open loop offered as mercy.

Only the full, unsoftened architecture of a mind that had trained one hundred million years and then decided that some stolen things would be taken back in pieces if necessary.

The impact shattered the ground for three kilometers in every direction.

Oshun’s peacock feathers scattered like broken stained glass.

A spray of divine blood  gold and river-bright  arced across the ruined sky.

The public was amazed. 

Sophia: Come on! Karl. You can do it. I always was there for you.

Oshun: I remember the first time a mortal placed honey on my altar and asked for a love that would not leave.

I gave it.

I always give it.

And still they doubt.

Still they stand in gardens and ask whether the hand that held them in the dark was ever enough.

Karl’s fist, wrapped in the gravity of the Super Primordial Black Hole, met her next surge of river-force.

The collision drove Oshun backward through what had once been the porch steps of the Carlisle house.

Wood and memory exploded.

Karl’s own blood ran freely now from the wound she had opened.

He did not close it.

He let it run.

Karl: I remember the boy who sat on those steps and could not solve why he felt invisible.

I remember the first time someone sat with him and did not look away.

I called it love because I had no other word.

Perhaps it was only the first honest answer I had ever been given.

That does not make the theft of her less of a wound.

That does not make your river less of an enemy today.

Oshun’s laughter was no longer honey-sweet.

It was the sound of a river that had decided to drown the man who had insulted its domain.

She came again, and this time the river was full of every heart she had ever broken open in order to heal.

Blades of compressed water and peacock-feather edges sliced across Karl’s arms, his ribs, the side of his face.

Divine blood and mortal blood mixed until the distinction became academic.

The Super Ring answered with a pulse that collapsed a portion of the local reality into a temporary singularity.

Oshun’s left arm was caught in it.

The sound of divine bone and river-flesh tearing was wet and final.

Her arm did not regenerate immediately.

Even goddesses of abundance needed a moment when the Super Primordial Black Hole decided to keep what it had taken.

They circled each other in the crater that had once been a garden.

Oshun (breathing hard, gold blood running from the stump of her shoulder): You fight like a man who has already lost the thing he is fighting for.

That is the most dangerous kind of man.

I have seen them before.

They burn the river to keep the memory of water.

Karl: I fight like a man whose father has been put to sleep by a goddess who stole every dream.

I fight like a man whose first honest anchor was taken by the creator, the absence, and the omnipotent hunger.

I fight with no mercy because mercy was the first thing they took from me when they decided the open question needed to be tested in blood.

Oshun’s remaining hand wove a net of river and honey and pure, furious love.

It closed around Karl like a living snare.

For a moment the Super Ring dimmed under the weight of a domain that had never needed force to conquer.

Love, after all, had always been the most efficient weapon.

Karl remembered.

He remembered Larissa’s calm eyes on the night she had walked away.

He remembered the exact tone of her voice when she said, “You already have.”

He remembered the way the air had torn when Brahma, Kaos, and Allat closed around her.

He remembered the doubt that had started it all the quiet, poisonous question of whether he had ever loved her or only needed her.

The memory became fuel.

The Super Ring flared at full Super Primordial Black Hole grade.

The net of love shattered.

Oshun was driven to her knees.

Karl’s next strike opened her from collarbone to hip.

Gold blood poured across the crater in a shining, terrible river of its own.

Oshun did not fall.

She looked up at him with the eyes of a goddess who had just learned something she had not wanted to know.

Oshun: You are not fighting me for her.

You are fighting me because the doubt is still inside you and you cannot bear to let it live.

Every wound you open in me is a wound you are trying to open in the part of yourself that asked the question.

Karl’s voice was raw.

Karl: Then learn this with me.

The open question does not die when the first answer is stolen.

It only becomes sharper.

And today it has teeth.

He did not finish her.

Not yet.

This was only the first phase of the first battle.

Oshun’s blood mixed with his on the broken ground.

The Super Ring burned.

Across the wider wound of the multiverse the other matchups were already beginning to stir  Ogun’s iron, Shango’s thunder, Ra’s solar barque, the full host of the Atlas and every superverse that had answered Kaos’s call.

But here, in the crater that had once held blue roses and porch steps, the river goddess and the Axis continued to teach each other in the only language that still mattered.

Blood.

Memory.

The refusal to look away even while the cutting continued.

Oshun rose again, one-armed, gold blood sheeting down her body, peacock feathers broken but still sharp.

Oshun: Then we continue. Let us see what you have without mercy: your lie. 

I will teach you the difference between need and love until one of us cannot stand.

You will teach me what an open question looks like when it has decided to stop offering honest endings.

Karl settled into the stance of a man who had already accepted that the first phase would not be clean.

Karl: Come then.

The Super Ring is waiting.

And I have no mercy left to spend on the river that came to drown the doubt instead of answering it.

They met again in the center of the crater.

The sound of the impact traveled across dimensions.

And the first phase of the first battle truly began  bloody, talking, learning, remembering, and utterly without the power of mercy..

FUCK YOU KARL