Chapter 219: The Jaguar Strikes
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.