Necromancing
"What do you think you're doing?"
Lorant freezes in his preparations and blinks at the foot that just kicked over one of his foci and stomped out a patch of runing in the sand, ruining his last half-hour's work in one swift movement.
That's cool. Great and cool.
He looks up at the interloper with a forced smile and his grip tightens on his staff. "Who are you?"
"Someone who's doing you a favor. You shouldn't mess around with demons like this." They cross their arms and Lorant isn't sure if this is some coward mage he somehow doesn't recognize from the library or some random hick who doesn't know shit about magic other than to be afraid of it. Either way he feels like an eyeroll would be appropriate, if that were a thing that people actually did with their faces.
"This might be shocking but I actually do know what I'm doing." He starts, trying not to sound as pissy as he feels. "It's actually pretty standard with necromancy to use demons as a proxy."
He taps at the husk of a doll lying in the center of his setup, ready to host his demon. The stranger's eyes follow the movement and their scowl unwinds, not into disgust like he expects at the mention of necromancy, but a wry frown.
"That can't possibly be true." They scoff.
"You should read up more on necromancy if you don't believe it....I'd show you my book but I've done this enough to not need a recipe." Lorant says with confidence
"That just seems...so overly-complicated." They crouch down to get a better look at the doll and the bits of runing they didn't fuck up. "It's certainly nothing like how I do it."
"How...you do it?" Lorant was fully expecting to spend the next few minutes tuning out another holier-than-thou lecture about how demons are bad and wrong and necromancy is bad and wrong, but now he's intrigued at the turn this conversation is taking. "How do you do it?"
"I just..." They pause, gesturing at nothing once they collect their thoughts, "Do it? A body knows how to move, it isn't difficult to get them to start up again."