Unchosen Champion

The Jaguar Sun had no chance of winning against the Cult of Chakyum in a head to head battle. Coop knew it, Juliana knew it, and so did everyone else with any sense. That was why they never had any intention of conducting a straightforward invasion with the intent to besiege the Cult’s holdings. The reason they took such circuitous routes on the way to the Yucatan settlement was because they remained justifiably guarded against their opponent. It was their method of picking their battle. They were too outnumbered to do anything else, but too desperate to avoid the confrontation altogether.

Hundreds of thousands of people joined the Jaguar Sun by the time they reached the Cult’s gathering point in the Yucatan settlement, but even that number was only a tiny fraction of the Cult’s total membership. They would be destroyed if they crashed against the might of the gathering of Chakyum.

Juliana had wisely stopped them while they were still a great distance away from the settlement proper with the presumption that Mateo and Tzultacaj would do the same. Their overall strategy of engagement remained the same as it was during their trip into the settlement’s territory. They would avoid open confrontation and focus on engaging in smaller battles that they actually had a chance to win. They were actually miles away from even the edge of the development, which was already miles away from the shard.

Coop couldn’t imagine a way for such a large mass of people to make a stealthy approach to a specific location, and creating an ambush that was inclusive of their entire army seemed impossible. They had surely been detected days before they arrived, even if they kept their distance, and yet the Cult had no reaction to the Jaguar Sun’s army. If the latecomers were able to find and join the army, then anyone with enough interest would be able to do the same. Coop had been worried they would easily be infiltrated, but evidently it wasn’t overly difficult to determine if someone had joined the Cult. They were always Oathsworn once they became Acolytes. Even if they did sneak among the Jaguars, unless they could assassinate Coop or Juliana they wouldn’t be able to accomplish much more than a simple scout could have. However, despite Coop’s concerns, Chakyum had simply ignored the Jaguar’s challenge.

If Coop underestimated their opponents, he would think that the Cult was ceding the initiative to the Jaguar Sun, leaving themselves exposed to a potential opening strike. It seemed unlikely that was the case. Coop even suspected the gathering could be a trap in itself, but Juliana was more convinced that the Cult was simply not scared of the threat the challengers represented and felt no pressure to take defensive measures.

The lack of any prepared organization to receive an army filled with killing intent was a perplexing decision to Coop. He had been put under the impression that Chakyum had reacted to his solitary presence in Central America with sweeping decisive actions, but half a million warriors intent on overthrowing the Cult barely generated a response. Coop may have been feeling more and more confident with regard to his abilities, but he still didn’t have a big enough ego to accept that he was individually more worthy of consideration than half a million pissed off and desperate warriors. Ignoring the Jaguar Sun would be added on top of the many other strange choices that the Cult had made.

At first, Coop believed Chakyum must have been supremely self-assured in his inevitable victory. It was basically how it went with most other prideful and arrogant leaders. However, given the other odd behaviors demonstrated by the Cult, he wasn’t so sure if it was merely confidence that resulted in the strange decisions. After seeing the arrangement of the Priests and Acolytes in the settlement proper, Coop concluded that Chakyum simply had different priorities, finding himself ultimately agreeing with Juliana’s initial assessment. The Cult was busy with other projects and didn’t feel the necessity of interrupting them to take a defensive posture for the Jaguar Sun.

The Priests had never really lied to Coop. Sure, the Voice of Kukulkan had attempted to deceive him for his own advantage, but they had all been consistent with their stories regarding the motivations of the Cult. Though Ghost Reef as a whole had been invited to join the Cult of Chakyum, they did not care about settlements and civilizations shards. Their actions made it clear that they were primarily interested in experience and methods to manipulate it for their benefit above all else. The security of settlements that Coop and so many others fought for was, at best, a means to an end. It was even more likely that it was simply irrelevant to them.

Knowing the Cult’s priorities didn’t help level the playing field for the Jaguar Sun, but it did help them manipulate the Cultists into fighting on the Jaguar’s terms when they did finally enter battle. The Jaguar Sun’s warriors represented significant quantities of the experience that the Acolytes and Priests desperately sought after. The hierarchy of the Cult was obviously based on experience, and there were many members vying for positions on higher rungs of the ladder.

The explosions that rocked the southern edge of the settlement and set the battle off were enough to draw the attention of tens of thousands of the Cultists. The Jaguar Sun remained in the jungle while Cultists rushed away from the temple that had gripped their attention in order to pursue free meals of experience.

The one Jaguar Elite that Coop had yet to meet, Mateo, was primarily a strategist who had plenty of time to scheme for the battle. Naturally, he aimed for an extended campaign relying on guerilla tactics that took advantage of the survival skills that the warriors had developed while living in the wild untamed lands of Central America. Coop wasn’t clever enough to think of any alternative, so he found himself falling in line. He agreed that taking advantage of the natural environment was their best shot.

Juliana had spread their army in wide zones that covered miles upon miles of jungle. Their battle lines would easily be broken by coordinated efforts, but the Cult was anything but cooperative. The Priests operated independently from each other just as the High Priests did, only connected to the rest of the Cult by gathering their own underlings among the Acolytes. Chakyum was the root of the organization, but the rest rarely collaborated unless directed to do so by their master.

Coop stood in his own section of forest, participating in the campaign like a dutiful soldier. He claimed a small clearing in between a series of looming palms in front of him, and thick flowering trees behind. A small circle of sunlight breached the canopy and spotlighted where he stood.

Coop was a warrior that was clearly out of place in the tropical jungle. His ancient gladiator armor belonged halfway around the world on warriors that were thousands of years gone. Still, his presence was a clear challenge. No one would mistake him for a tourist when he was fully geared up in his mist-touched equipment.

His round shield gleamed in the late morning sunlight as he leaned it against his left hip and his ethereal spear rested on his right shoulder. He tapped the butt of his weapon onto the leafy ground cover, listening to the soft crunch as he found the dry twigs hidden within, just casually waiting for some action.

The land had borne witness to many types of warriors throughout history. The ancestors of the Jaguar Sun had fought in the region for thousands of years, etching their blood in the jungles and on the mountains. Conflict had been a necessity starting from the oldest founders of the Olmecs, Nahuas, and Toltecs, from the Aztec Empire’s expansion to the Maya Civilization’s competing city-states, down to the K'iche' armies and the resistant Lenca People, all the way to the arrival of the Spanish Conquistadores. Despite such a history, Coop was a warrior that hadn’t been seen before.

A light mist had spread throughout the trees and Coop let Presence of Mind monitor his surroundings. To his right, nearly a hundred yards off, a group of Jaguars had climbed into the canopy and waited to ambush individual Cultists, mimicking the Ruin Nebulas that hung from the branches. To his left, equally distant, a lone warrior painted with mud and covered in leaves had buried himself underground after fashioning spiked traps in between the trees.

Coop just waited, tapping at the dirt with his spear.

The first to see any action was the group to his right. A dozen cultists slowly pressed forward through the jungle, nearly bypassing the hidden Jaguars. They were exceedingly obvious with their gray robes as they plowed through the underbrush without any subterfuge, giving the warriors a chance to shift around tree trunks and maintain concealment until they were ready.

The ambushers waited in the branches of trees, masked by leaves and trunks as they crept in the shadows. They let the group of cultists meander beyond their area, and for a moment Coop thought they would let them pass deeper into the jungle, deciding that the group was too large to take on. A woosh of air, arriving at the last second before the cultists moved on, disagreed with his assessment and marked the start of the ambush. The last cultist in the group was shot in the neck by a blowdart, decorated with red and green feathers, and collapsed face first into the dirt stained roots without making any other sounds, neck veins bulging with venom.

The other cultists turned once the body thumped on the ground, just in time for half of them to receive more surprise attacks from above. The Jaguar warriors used projectiles that were small enough to conceal where they had come from, leading to another wave of collapsing bodies. The remaining cultists unleashed wild attacks, striking wherever they believed someone could be hiding with firework-like displays of magic, but their response only opened themselves up for more retaliation.

The last cultist was killed with a series of frozen slingshots. The first splashed into his chest, interrupting a purple vortex he had been forming, and causing a frozen spot to appear on his robes. The second spread the frost down his legs, and the third and fourth caused his limbs to become frigid, turning his skin blue and freezing his face into an image of pained effort. The fifth toppled him over where he shattered like a brittle ice sculpture. Coop winced at the brutal victory while the Jaguars leapt into a different set of trees further forward, leaving the shrinking remains in the empty gray robes to be claimed by the jungle.

Coop waited for someone to enter his arena, but it still wasn’t his turn. The traps of the man on his left were triggered next. A cultist among a group of five stepped onto what he thought was solid ground, but his foot broke through the thin layer of dirt supported by dry sabal palmetto fans. He dropped three feet down with a shriek of surprise. The man’s shriek quickly transformed into howls of pain as spikes in the bottom of the hole pierced his leg so that he couldn’t escape.

One of the other cultists in his group rushed to help pull him out, but as soon as she put her weight on the edge of the hole, the whole thing collapsed, revealing a pit trap large enough for an entire platoon to fall inside. She fell backwards and didn’t make a sound when she was impaled more critically than the first.

The others in the group froze, afraid of triggering another trap while the first victim cried for them to rescue him. The remaining cultists took a moment to decide what to do, and the conclusion was to leave the injured party and head back toward the settlement. They decided the potential gains they could make weren’t worth the risk. As soon as they turned their backs, the hidden warrior popped out of his hole among the traps, like a mud themed jack-in-the-box. Once he exposed himself, he immediately leapt into action, stabbing the Acolytes in the back with a mere sharpened stick before they recognized the additional threat.

The first injured cultist had a few seconds to beg before the warrior picked his way across his own traps and finished him off. Unlike the first group, the individual warrior dragged the shriveling bodies by the hood of their robes, dumped them into the pit, carefully reset his traps, then concealed himself back in his hiding place to await his next victims. He would be reusing his location until told otherwise. Coop better understood why the Jaguars spaced themselves out and would make sure not to encroach on any of their ally’s arenas.

While the individual warrior finished concealing his section of the forest to the point that even Coop, with Fog of War and Presence of Mind, could barely detect that anything was out of place, Coop finally had his first encounter. Coop raised his eyebrows at the crowd that had gathered at the edge of his little clearing, observing him with some mild trepidation. They thought he was bait.

“I don’t know if you’re lucky, or unlucky, that I’m the one you ran into.” Coop shook his head. “At least I won’t make you suffer.” He muttered as he raised his shield and pointed his spear in an unmistakable challenge.

26 cultists spread along the clearing, waiting for the other shoe to drop. They didn’t think it would be a straightforward fight with a single individual, and they were right, but not for the actual reasons. Fighting Coop would be anything but straightforward. Their eyes scanned the brush, the ground, and the canopy, seeking the rest of Coop’s allies, but the real problem was right in front of them. He inspected the cultists, not expecting much, and his expectations were still not met.

Every one of them was an Oathsworn Human, confirming their membership to the Cult beyond the uniform they wore. Every one of them was over level 80, but none of them were above level 100. None of them were Priests.

“Kill him!” One of the Acolytes suggested from the back, but none of the others volunteered.

Coop decided to get it over with. He threw his shield with his offhand, flinging it like an oversized frisbee and letting the shiny object grab their attention. An instant after the disc left his hand, he lunged through the sunlit section himself, letting the light flash on his armor, still gripping his spear rather than throwing it. The shield smashed the largest of the group straight in the forehead, and the cultist closest to his side was impaled by Coop’s thrusted spear before the first body hit the ground.

Coop pressed forward, aiming for the Acolytes that remained in the second line. His spear shifted into an ethereal glaive and he toggled Vaporform as he stepped straight through the bodies that were in his way, teetering before they fell, and placed himself in the center of the group. When he toggled Vaporform off, his first opponent had an instant of fear before the glaive painlessly ended him.

Between Vaporform, mistjumps, and quickswaps, he was more of a wraith than any of his summons. He completed the bloody task before any of the cultists could demonstrate more than simple skills that he easily shrugged off, blocked, or countered.

Coop was surrounded by torn gray robes that littered the edge of the clearing. He frowned at the scene.

“Nah.” he mumbled in the aftermath, disgusted by the dry shriveled bodies disintegrating into black dust. “Screw this.”

Coop marched forward, making a beeline toward the settlement. Unlike the Jaguar Sun as a whole, he had no need for an extended and brutal guerilla campaign. The only people he should be fighting were much stronger than the cultists that ventured into the jungle on the opposite side of the explosions. These weren’t just low ranked cultists, they were either the weakest or the dumbest as well.

“Thank goodness for the Jaguar Sun.” Coop added, appreciating that he wouldn’t need to be responsible for the destruction of every bit of the Cult.

If he had to dismantle the Cult of Chakyum by himself he seriously would have failed just by being presented with the task of slaughtering so many weak zealots. He would lose his mind if he hunted them all down. No, he’d do his part more aggressively and aim to headhunt the more powerful leaders. That was the role the Jaguar Elites had envisioned for him before the dynamic changed, and while he wanted to fulfill Sierra’s position in the army, he agreed that they were right in their initial assessment as to where his best place would be.

Coop let his Fog of War spread further as he marched through the last mile of jungle. He carved a clear path straight to the settlement, defeating nearly a thousand more gray robed Acolytes on the way. They meandered through the jungle like squads of ants aggressively searching for what disturbed their nest. Soon enough, he stood at the edge of the enormous city that had been full of cultists when he viewed it from above. It hadn’t changed much.

The vast majority of the members of the Cult remained in place, facing the temple in the middle. Coop had a clear view of one of the highway-like paths that aimed straight toward the center. It was entirely full of cultists. The number that had left to hunt their attackers in the jungle wasn’t insignificant, but compared to the whole assemblage it was probably a single digit percentage.

The Jaguar Sun had felt the urgency to start their campaign for a good reason. They knew the entire project of defeating the Cult would necessitate an extended battle. Essentially, they had hoped for the battle to begin the day they left Corozal, almost two weeks earlier, but the gathering of the Cult within the settlement had thrown their plans out of whack. Now, even if they didn’t lose a single fight, Coop wasn’t convinced that they would be successful before the next settlement event began. There were thousands of smaller conflicts erupting across the jungle, but there would have to be millions before the war ended. They would be trapped in combat straight into the next settlement event unless someone like him contributed in a big way.

The Jaguar Sun’s plan was to keep fighting regardless of the event, but they were making sure they would be inside any potential mana domes this time around, but Coop wouldn’t stick around, no matter what message Jones left him about not worrying about Ghost Reef.

It seemed like he wasn’t the only person with the same impatience to have things concluded before it dragged out. On the opposite side of the lake, miles away with literally millions of cult members in between, Coop could see purple and crimson lightning exploding into the sky at a steady cadence. Tzultacaj had pushed into the settlement long before he had. The leader of the Jaguar Sun sure didn’t seem like the type to wait for his battles to come to him. Coop admired that a little bit. Where Coop felt like he just went with the flow, Tzultacaj was someone who marched to his own beat.

Coop would be joining him in assaulting the settlement itself. While Coop could simply bypass the Cultists in front of him, mistjumping straight to the middle, he had still volunteered to cover one section of the forest. He didn’t want to shirk any perceived responsibility, and he thought it was only fair that he carved a single lane from his designated spot until he reached his destination. Besides, if he managed just a few more levels, he would have the opportunity to take the final skill of the Mistwalker path. Every little bit would help if he was going to challenge multiple High Priests at once.

He raised his spear in the air and cleared his mind as much as he could. From the perspective of the Cultists, the random ancient ethereal warrior must have looked particularly out of place as he stood at the end of what was the equivalent of a four lane pedestrian highway, framed by native jungle plants, apparently challenging the heavens themselves. A few glanced along the point of his spear, trying to figure out what he was aiming at.

The ground was a layer of woven material that provided a slight bit of cushion beneath his feet. It was a material he would have expected to find on a park’s playground. The city was organized in an extensive grid, but the pattern ended abruptly once it reached the uncleared jungle. It was dry and dusty without the more consistent canopy shielding the surface from the baking sun, but they had the foresight to leave individual trees scattered around the blocks to provide at least a little bit of shade.

The blocks themselves were uniformly occupied by individual stone buildings, designed like the ancient pyramids that were scattered around the region from previous civilizations. They were enormous monumental structures, but they had all been picked apart. Chunks of the buildings were missing, starting from the top down, as the white stone blocks were cannibalized for the temple in the middle of the lake.

On each corner of the pyramids were giant braziers the size of massive cauldrons emitting strange black flames that flickered in the wind and sent spirals of dark smoke drifting in the air. While the flames themselves were black, they sparked the more traditional red and orange that a normal fire would emit at their tips. The effect of hundreds of the strange braziers lining the streets gave the entire city a ghoulish feel. Gray light danced wherever shadows appeared in the nooks and crannies that the sun didn’t reach. The city could have been a fictional depiction of the underworld, which made sense to Coop given the Cult’s insistence that they followed the Lord of Death.

Cultists nearby mumbled as they noticed his presence, but they weren’t decisive enough to prevent his preparations. Coop imagined his own army flowing forward, leaping into the fray, as he envisioned a battle erupting around him.

Mists swirled as his Fog of War was agitated and Coop spent 9,702 mana at once. Even with his eyes closed, he could still see, in a way. Presence of Mind filled his mind with a sense of his surroundings, but what he felt he could see was something unreal. The world of mana that had been revealed to his consciousness by Vaporform swirled and flowed as he caused waves of turbulence. The outline of the city’s miles of outstretched blocks was clear, but he and the Cultists were impossible to decipher. It was like a picture was gradually coming into focus. When his vision finally started to solidify, each of the swirls of mana took on a more familiar but still nebulous form.

When his eyes snapped open, his imagination became reality. 99 phantasms leapt from portals of mists in unison, stabbing their own spears forward as they carved a section of the street away from the surprised cultists. The fog that spilled from their appearance splashed onto the ground like blocks of dry ice and drifted toward the Acolytes, clouding the air up to their knees. The action had drawn the attention of all the distracted Cultists nearby, but they faced an unexpected army rather than a smaller individual disturbance.

Normally, Coop’s standard phantasm summons were randomly generated from various eras and styles, but this time, they were a uniform team. Bronze breastplates matched polished round shields and shiny face-covering helmets, so smooth they seemed gold. Red cloaks mirrored the red plumes on the crowns of each helmet, and long spears already dripped with the red blood of the first defeated cultists. This was the current maximum for Legacy of the Mists.

Coop’s mists from Fog of War continued drifting forward, invisible to the naked eye, from knee high up. The fog guided his phantasms forwards as they formed an organized phalanx, presented their golden shining shields, and marched forward.