The Popol Vuh introduces Vucub Caquix early in its account of the world before the present creation, a being of enormous size and dazzling ornament, his teeth set with metal or jewels and his eyes glinting like precious stones, who boasts openly that he is the sun and the moon both, a light to those who had survived the earlier flood destruction of the wood people. His pride is presented as a usurpation of a status not yet properly filled, since in the Popol Vuh's account no true sun exists yet at this point in the narrative, and the Hero Twins Hunahpu and Xbalanque set out specifically to end his false claim.
They shoot him from his perch in a nance tree with a blowgun dart, wounding his jaw but not killing him outright, and he retreats home to recover. The twins then enlist an elderly couple, Zaqi Nima Tzi's and Zaqi Nim, generally read as their own grandparents Ixpiyacoc and Ixmucane in a stripped-down healer role, who approach Vucub Caquix disguised as itinerant doctors offering to treat his injured jaw and aching eyes. Under the pretense of medical care, they draw out his jeweled teeth and replace them with plain corn kernels, and pry the shine from his eyes, and the loss of his dazzling ornaments causes his final death, the source of his boastful divinity revealed as ornament rather than substance.