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Ah, maybe he'd check up on some of the survivors, soon.

Heck, maybe he'd check up on some of those who didn't survive, too.

It never hurt to be extra sure of something like that. Historically speaking, servants and reapers had a pretty good track record when it came to faking their own deaths. Even to people like him.

Lozaro, for example, definitely should've been gone forever after being tossed through the Red Rift mere moments before its destruction. And yet somehow Morgunov had seen the guy, alive and well, a little under a century ago.

What a surprise that had been.

Unfortunately, Lozaro hadn't been in the mood to catch up at that time--and indeed, the slippery fellow had been running away from him ever since. Which was totally unnecessary, by the way. Morgunov had no intention of removing him from this plane of existence a second time. He just wanted to chat. Ask him what it was like on the other side. And how he found his way back. And maybe a few other things.

And there was also Yaki, one of the very few female apprentices he'd ever taken. His contemporaries at the time had told him that it was a mistake to allow a woman to study under him, but he'd always been quite pleased with her progress. Until, that was, she started trying to sell secrets to those Vanguardian vultures in the so-called "Grand Scientific Initiative."

Talk about a dagger to the heart.

So he'd vaporized her and her reaper--or rather, he thought he had, until he found her some six decades later, working out of an underground laboratory in Qenghis. Surprisingly, they'd been able to make peace and part on more amicable terms that time. Which was nice.