It is perhaps necessary at this junction to step back and examine the thought process of the magician in more detail.

This might reasonably be conceptualised in something like the following details:

Oh shoot oh crap oh ballyhoo oh drat oh chucklenuckle oh lord lee I’m doomed.

Sure, he had spent the entirety of six years doing nothing more than cultivating; but the cultivator before him had likely been cultivating for far more, and had all but certainly attained a far higher level. The magician was no more than a frog in a well, challenging the stars.

Consequently, upon having to enter combat with those stars (for he would not leave a child in danger) the magician did the rational thing: he used all of his strength in the first attack.

Not for him was the build up of strength, the gradual and subtle interplay of ever greater techniques designed to be progressively more and more impressive: this was simply the use of all the strength that he possessed, delivered in as short a time as he reasonably could manage.

The demonic cultivator, on the other hand, had been preparing for a gradual and subtle interplay of ever greater techniques designed to be progressively more and more impressive: consequently, he had been completely unprepared for the ghost of the magician hitting him with everything he had on the first blow.

And so he had been immolated on the spot.

The energy of the ghost had overwhelmed him, who had been prepared for at most the blow of a mortal; it also overwhelmed (albeit in an entirely different sense) the audience, who were silent for a solid several moments following the outright annihilation of the demonic cultivator, finally following his defeat up with an “Oooooh.”

This, in turn, was followed by clapping, although as the inhabitant of the bedsheets was completely invisible they weren’t quite clear who they were clapping for. All except one small boy, who grinned with unabashed glee, even amid the pain, as he recognised the style and panache of the ‘great magician’ who’d spoken to him, one evening so long ago, and set him on the path to befriend the monster under his bed.

Amidst all this hubbub and pandemonium, two spirits watched in an equally surprised, but perhaps more measured, pace. They, unlike the humans in the room, could see him - and a strange thing he was.

“Is that a ghost?” The shade whispered. Death looked at him askance.

“Does he look like the same kind of creature as you?”

“I can't tell. My knowledge of supernatural taxonomy is terrible - for reasons I consider suitably clear cut as to be unworthy of remark,” the shade remonstrated.

Death blinked, and remembered who she was talking to. “My apologies. He may have been a ghost, once; and may yet be part of a ghost, amidst all his many other parts.”

The difficulty of Death and the shade may well be understood, upon a description of the half a spirit in question. His head and upper torso was that of a normal young man of twenty two: translucent brown hair, dark green eyes, fair skin, a slight aftershave under a firm jawline. His ears stuck out just a titch too much from his head, and one of his eyes twitched intermittently, but other than that his upper form was the epitome of the usual.

His arms and lower body were quite another matter. A long neck and reedy body broke off at the arms, which were not those of a man: one, the left, was one long purple tentacle which eventually broke into several more, mimicking the fingers of a human being; the other, his right, was a mechanical apparatus, a robotic arm only barely sheathed in metal, its gears ticking slowly.

Where, exactly, the human portion of his legs stopped and the chicken feet began was not something that could be determined, on account of his magically crafted pants, but that they did at some point was undeniable.

The spirit was sneaking back up the stairs, seeking to avoid the further notice of the inn’s inhabitants, but must not have been paying proper attention as he failed to notice Death and the shade following after him. The pair were quiet as they snuck after him, making no sound until they reached an old, abandoned attic which the spirit was evidently using as a cultivation spot.

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The shade was a little worried that the strange amalgam of many different creatures would be distressed at the sight of two complete strangers bursting into its private abode, but to his surprise the fantastical creature’s face burst into a luminous smile as it saw them enter the attic.

“Hullo, how can I help you? Who are you? Are you spirits? Immortals? Separated soul bodies? Are you here for cultivation, or do you have some other purpose for being here? How do you eat without a body? Do you need to eat? What about baths? Baths are great; do you ever regret being a spirit? Because you can’t take baths, that is,” he added, almost as an afterthought, his endless train of questions finally tottering out, with only a few strangling behind them.

The shade blinked, but Death took this in stride. “Well, if you must know, I’m Death, and while I don’t need warm baths or delicious snacks I can assure you I absolutely adore both. This ghost over here is my colleague…”

And then, for the first time, Death realised she had never asked for the shade’s name. The ghost raised one eyebrow and gave her a wry smile.

She made him a small motion, prompting him to give the thing his name. He demurred, peevishly gesturing for her to introduce him. She glowered at him, then her face turned into a wicked grin.

“This is my colleague, the ghost with no name… They call him the Nameless Nightmare. And you? What is your name, friend… whatever you are?”

“Oh, I’m a ghost too - err, I was. As you can see I’m in the midst of a mid-afterlife crisis, and am currently between species,” and here he looked down at himself ruefully. “I rather, shall we say, mucked up my body regeneration technique, and have yet determined how I can - or even if I can - or, for that matter, if I should - fix it. In fact, I’m not entirely sure what fixing it would look like.”

He inclined his head in a self-deprecating gesture, motioning to the various unusual assortment of limbs. Death, however, was paying him no attention. She had stopped paying him attention at the words ‘body regeneration technique,’ her eyes going wide and luminous, and was now staring straight at the shade with an evil smile on her face.

“A body regeneration technique? You don’t say, mr.-”

He picked up the cue. “Ah. It’s Edward, Edward Brittleby, although I usually go by my wizard name, Artimaeus, and my friends all call me Art. You can take your pick; I don’t mind.”

“A body regeneration technique? You don’t say, Mr. Art. By sheer good fortune, we’re in the market for just such a technique. There isn’t, say, a chance you’d be willing to let us buy it off you. We-”

“Buy it? No no no no. There’s no need for that,” Art said, waving his hands in the air, “I’ll just give it to you. No need to pay me - at least, not money.”

“I beg your pardon?” Death said. She was shocked - normally it was hard enough to buy a technique; giving it away for free was unheard of, in the most literal sense of that phrase. Nonetheless, she would be lying if she said she wasn’t delighted.

“I don’t need money. I’m afraid,” and here he gave another self-deprecating laugh, “I haven’t quite mastered the creation of internal organs yet. You’ll have to take a copy of the technique with limited advice from me rather than my expert advice. No, I only need one thing - your stories.”

“My… stories?”

“Sure. I’m here for the sake of knowledge - stories. Anything you know, anything you learn, tell me when next we meet. Over dinner or something.” He scratched his slight stubble. “Maybe I will need money. Enh, we’ll deal with this as we come to it.”

“That’s it? You just want dinner and a story when next we meet, and you’ll give us the technique?” Death asked sceptically.

“Yup.”

Death shrugged. His choices were his choices, no matter how insane they seemed to her. “Fair enough. We accept your offer.”

The deranged creature-thing rubbed his hands evilly, cackling maniacally. “Perfect, perfect! There’s only one thing I need from you first: your age.”

“My… age? I’m twenty,” Death replied, very confused, but Art just waved her off.

“Not you. Your ghost buddy. No disrespect, but I can’t tell his age by looking at him, and I don’t want to give a cultivation technique to a child - it’s not safe, you know.”

Death supposed this made sense. The shade, who’d been staying silent throughout their conversation, concurred.

“My age? I would have turned twenty one while in the afterlife,” the shade said. Death’s jaw dropped.

“Wait, hold on, I thought you said you reached your late teens while in our world? Wouldn’t that mean that you’d died at the age of two, three, or four in your past life?”

“Yes, I did.”

“But didn’t you say you had memories of your past life?” Death said. “Forgive me if my knowledge of child-rearing is somewhat lacking, but I was under the impression that children, generally, did not retain memories of that particular period of their life.”

“Oh, absolutely. Met quite a few children - toddlers, if we want to be a wee smidge more accurate - and you know, wonderful as they are, their memory is not their strong point.”

“So then how do you have memories?” Death prompted, motioning with her hands.

“Hmmm? Me? What do you mean?” The shade asked, his voice dripping with confusion.

“Well, if human children lack memories of when they were a very young child, and you were a human child, then presumably…”

“Me, a human child? But… When did I ever say I was a human?”