"I am from the Lichocracy! We have an official name but it's not used by people who've been alive at any time in the last 500 years, even on official documents. I don't think you'd have heard of us, having heard of us and not believing in magic seem like mutually exclusive stances - we use a lot of magic for public infrastructure. In the long term, I would like to return home, but at this point I am quite certain that doing so will entail a great deal of trouble and research, so I'm trying to be helpful and productive to ingratiate myself with you and ensure that I'll have somewhere to build a tower. Or maybe, since you don't have magic and generally seem very strange, you need me more than my country needs me. But I do have a duty, and the political situation at home is precarious at best."

"Politics?" She frowns and shakes her head. "I think you're lying and also that magic isn't real. Or there's some stupid technicality that you're calling magic but is just science that we haven't gotten to yet. But if you're offering to help us out of the kindness of your heart..."

"Of course I wish to help, and while I suppose it doesn't really matter how you think I do what I do as long as you do not dispute that I can do it, by what mechanism do you think I transmuted the meat with which I supplied you?"

"... also the idea that magic is just science is semantically nonsense by the way, science is a way of knowing and magic is a thing to know about. Saying that magic is science is like saying that metallurgy doesn't exist because looking at metal to see what it's like exists - obviously both exist, and just as looking at metal is an important tool for a metalurgist, science is an important tool for a mage." 

"How should I know? Well, you sure talk like an engineer, anyway. I suppose that's good enough even if the skull thing is incredibly bizarre."