Desperate times

It had been many years since he had attempted it. The last time he spread the candles wide and drew the symbols in salt, he had only been met with disappointment. It had been a waste of time, materials, effort. Everything. But this time he was not going to fail. This time he had employed help.
When he was a boy, desperate to summon the departed spirit of his mother, he thought the failure to complete the ritual was through some fault of his own. Maybe he didn't study the tattered, crumbling book hard enough, maybe he didn't pronounce all of the complex Arcane words just so. As he grew older, he came to understand that just because you had some affinity for magic did not mean you had affinity for all magic. More's the pity.
The hag in front of him stood hunched she was decrepit, the flesh wasting away from her very bones. Hags were foul creatures, in his estimation. They had no appreciation for culture or intellectualism and they had no loyalty except to themselves. But he could work with that. She had been hired for a job and once the job was completed, her beloved sisters would be returned to her. It seemed very forthright and simple to him.
Make no mistake, the wailing of separated sisters had been something terrible. He had lost half a squadron of his soldiers before they finally managed to capture the vicious women alive. His lieutenants pointed out, correctly so, that it would have been much simpler if they had been allowed to kill one or two of them. But he needed them alive to ensure that the ritual was completed properly. The sister who would cast the ritual needed to be incentivized to do her job properly. Corpses were not leverage.
It seemed the hag took hours to draw the circle. She went over the symbols several times before finally lighti the candles she had placed at the corners of the pentacles. "It is time," she rasped. "I will call her, but do not forget, her spirit has been gone for a long time. It may not be as you expect."
"Do the deed," Noxtras snapped, "and let me worry about the coexpectations. All will go well, or your sisters will suffer. Are we clear?"
She hissed and drew away. Her eyes blazed in anger, but she had no recourse. They both knew it. Without taking her eyes from him, she began chanting the Arcane words, tracing the sigil in the air before her. The candles blazed high, their simple lights growing into pillars of fire. Noxtras shift his gaze. his palms were slick in anticipation.
Lightning crackled above, and thunder echoed around them. Purple smoke began coalescing in the center of the sigil on the ground. Within moments, the smoke had formed into a vaguely corporeal shape. "Mother?" he whispered, barely daring to hope.