Policeman and the cat

29 - Clothes

Madison checked the time, then looked over the class - "Any questions?"

"So, none of those clans practice stuff like black magic? I mean, sacrificing babies, orgies with demons to complete deadly rituals, and the like," an undecided about faction boy with an amazing name - Angel White - asked.

"No," Madison said. But to a follow-up question of whether are there witches or warlocks who do that, there was a - "Yes, but that sounds more like undead witch magic. There are witches who commit atrocities, but the percentage is the same as with humans who commit atrocities. Witches are not more likely to have criminals than any other human group."

Madison added that rituals like those took multiple people to set up - a regular witch would have a hard time finding conspirators, and murders by regular witches were usually solo-acts.

Beverly put up a hand. "I think there's often a mix-up between priests and witches. Those rituals are often led by priests or priestesses of evil gods who have no connection whatsoever to any witch groups."

Karen added - "And from what we know about Terreans, that's likely what you mean by demons, they mostly hate the undead and dislike gods in general, so the chance of them joining rituals of that sort are low."

"And, well, sex and orgies are acts that celebrate life and promote fertility in rituals, including that in a deadly ritual makes little sense," Beverly added.

"Wouldn't it work if they killed the people having sex?" Rylee asked.

"A Terrean would not join a ritual with that sort of intent," Karen said waving her hand in a dismissive gesture. "They would either know or feel the pull-in phenomenon."

And for the last dozen or so minutes of the class, it was witches breaking down some facts to Angel White. The pull-in phenomenon was something curious about rituals - if you started them and set them in motion, they usually pulled you to finish them 'right'. A murderous ritual involving orgies would need to have all participants sacrificing their own lives to finish it up, but half the time, someone's survival instincts acted up and broke the ritual, because there was that duality of celebrating life and celebrating death.

It would take a very risk-loving evil god to push for that kind of ritual. If the ritual is broken by a priest or a priestess of the said god, then the god would get a backlash and likely even suffer changes in their personality, which was a well-known risk. One of the high-ranked goddesses - no.7 - Harledo, started out as an evil goddess and her priest blotched a ritual of that sort so completely that Harledo was knocked out.

Harledo meant to curse a city to have lovers killing lovers and parents murdering their own children and the ritual she devised (which would actually work if done properly) was to move to a dead-zone, give birth to a child of one of her priests and then have that priest murder the child and then the rest of her priests should draw curses on their chests with the child's blood and have an orgy then kill themselves.

The priest was a complete scoundrel before all this, he was no better than his goddess, but something 'awakened' in the guy during the ritual and rather than murdering the kid, he sacrificed his life to protect the child, breaking the pull-in phenomenon and all and turning into a guardian spirit himself.

With their goddess being out of commission and their 'boss' priest being dead as well, the rest of the priests and priestesses were lost on what to do even. They were a bunch of suicidal and resentful scoundrels who meant to happily follow their goddesses will, have an orgy, commit suicide at the end of it with the blissful knowledge that their acts would lead to a lot of innocent people dying. But their 'boss' the biggest, evilest person they ever knew couldn't kill just one child, but then--