“A. Few. Hundred?” I asked slowly, trying not to sound like I was ready to smack Val into the sun if I didn’t like his few words.

  I felt a hint of hypocrisy iing mad over him, calling the death of a few hundred civilians as a ‘tiny’ colteral damage. I had destroyed voidships with tens of thousands on board, but there was one distinct differeweewo instances.

  The voidships were manned by soldiers and their loyal servants. The civilians Val had o death by his negligence were civilians. That might not have mattered to some people, but it mattered to me.

  And he did n them. I kneerful he was, and I had a good estimation of how dangerous this Daemon Prince would have been at its prime. A moment’s thought was all I o repy the rec of his battle with the daemon, as captured by the eyes serving as cameras oside of my ship. I let the rec py out in my mind, sped up so it’d fit within a single nanosed as I dissected it with my enhanced itive speed.

  I’d seen cats that pyed less with their food. He could have disabled the daemon in moments, without incurring a single casualty. It might have been hypocritical, sure, but I did feel angry — though maybe annoyed or frustrated would better describe the mild levels of anger I felt — on behalf of those who died.

  “Yes … ?” Val said his turies of experience likely alerting him that my reception to his report was much less enthusiastic than he’d first expected. “It is an exceedingly low number of casualties sidering I fought a Daemon Prin a poputiore. By all metrics, anythihay being wiped off the map is an above-average result when taking into at prior Aeldari assaults on Daemon Princes of the Dark Prince.”

  I closed my eyes and calmed myself with an effort of will. Instead of snapping back at Val, I reached out to Seleh a mental nudge.

  I was gentle, a her smile through our Bond as she stopped what she’d been doing oher end of the ship. I took a peek and found her … painting? Huh,

  ‘Hey?’ Selene asked. ‘What’s up?’

  ‘I am in dire need of my favourite moral pass,’ I said, putting some exaggerated cheer into my voiask the frustration I felt underh. Hundreds of people had died in an absolutely preventable manner. I had the right to be angry … or had I? ‘My own might need some re-calibration.’

  With an atrocious tearing sound that made me wince, Selene appeared before me with Blink. I already had a smile on my face by then. She ractising, and it seems she’d speime w towards makieleports quicker and not more … fluid.

  I was sure if any Eldar other than Val saw her, they’d have called it a barbaric w of Sorcery with how she just banged her head against reality until it gave way.

  “Hi?” Selene asked, taking a moment to spin around and take in the room. Her gaze lingering on the scorched blood on the floor where our erstwhile daemon prince had been and on Val’s kicked-puppy expression before she turo me with a raised eyebrow. “How I help?”

  ‘Val here seems to think he was justified in causing the deaths of hundreds of civilians ued by Chaos taint just because it all ended in him taking down the daemon prince.’ I sent her. ‘While I’m of the mind that if he didn’t feel the o gloat and py with his enemy, he could have achieved the same results without a single casualty. I didn’t tell him that though, because it feels hypocritical as hell with how many humans I’d killed i few days without a sed thought.’

  ‘I’m holy surprised he only killed a few hundred.’ Selene said with a little sigh as a frown creased her brows. ‘You say whatever you want, he’s still an Eldar and they barely sider most humans to be better than the wild animals roaming their maiden worlds. Would you care if a thousand flies died iurn for your most hated foe losing a favoured minion?’

  ‘I wouldn’t,’ I said with a frown of my own.’But it matters little. I’m asking whether I should drop the whole thing, in your opinion. I know dismissing the existence of humans is practically in his genes.’

  “Did you even tell him why you’re annoyed with him?” Selene asked aloud, though there was a geone in her voice. “He’ll never know what exactly upset you if you don’t tell him.”

  “But … " What if my idiotic choiinimising needless deaths es back to bite me in the ass someday? What if when Val had a choice to do something important or save lives, he goes with obeying my orders instead of doing the sensible thing. “Okay. Fuck it. Val, the fact that you pying around with your enemy killed hundreds of humans needlessly when you could have been doh the daemon prin seds is what’s upsetting me. Sure, killing the thing had been the most important part of the task I’d given you, but it doesn’t mean you ’t put in minimising needless casualties as a sedary priority.”

  “Ah, that is … a unique viewpoint, Mistress.” Val said, frowning and looking thoughtful. I could practically see his opinion of me lessen by a fra. “Though if I may be so pretentious as to ask for a crification?”

  I raised an eyebrow and nodded, motioning for him to go ahead.

  “ecies deserve the siderations you’ve given to these humans?” Val asked, eyes narrowing. “Would you spare Orks? Nes? … Eldar?”

  “No, no, yes.” I fired off my answers, crossing my arms. “I’d only spare an ork of it to either join my army, or was fun to fight. Nes are out of the question, unless it's one of the few of them you actually iate with. As for the Eldar … “

  I levelled an impassive gaze at him, squinting at his carefully sculpted mask of stoicism. Those pair of amethyst eyes watched every micro-expression on my face.

  “Drukhari get killed to the st, no questions asked and I don’t care what they say.” My face darke the thought of them. There would e a time when I’d have to meet with those wretches, but I sidered every day I could go without having to do so, a blessing. I also wasn't sure I could maintain my sanity if my passive empathy was bsted by the collective agony of h’s sve popution. “On the trary, I’d only kill an Aeldari if they’d given me a reason to. Self-defence, being an asshole and killing humans before me qualifies as a reason.”

  I came up with those answers on the spot, but they seemed to have a weird effe our resident Eldar. Val seemed to be deep in thought, like I’d just said something incredibly profound. It was weird, but I guess that’s just him being Val. Though, maybe all Eldar were weird like that.

  “I’ll have to meditate on your answers, Mistress.” Val bowed his head. “Internalising your value system as my own will take siderable time and effort. May I take my leave?”

  I briefly sidered rewriting his genes and ging his body like I’d done so with my own Eldar tempte to remove that i dislike they had for anything less blessed with psychic might than them, but Val had those built into himself his whole life. For all I knew, removing those would be like kig a foundational pilr out from underh his psyche and sending him colpsing in on himself.

  It was much better if he just went ahead with whatever internalising he was talking of, and acted in accordah what I’d told him today. Even if it meant, deep down, he’d still feel like he was having to take into sideration the lives of flies.

  “You go,” I said, waving him away. “Aside from my gripes, you have done well. The task is done.”

  “Thank you,” he said, then Blinked out of the room with a thoughtful look still worn on his face.

  “And now, please make sure no one is listening in,” Selene asked, turning to me with a serious look. When I did so, she let a small smile show through. “Sit. I am going to beat some basic leadership skills into your head. I learhis when I was twelve, but punishing one of your underlings for doing what you had told them to do aing angry at them for not being able to read your mind is just about the most horrible thing a leader do.”

  I made a couch behind me, and a fy armchair behind Selene. Colpsing atop my ow, I took out a notebook and pen before putting on my best dutiful student expression.

  Selene giggled, thely lowered herself into the armchair and crossed her legs. Folding her hands atop her knee, she gave me a pyful smile.

  “I’m gd you’re willing to learn,” she said. “Power by itself won’t be enough to build you an empire, if that’s really what you want. Not if you don’t want it to be made up of quadrillions of mind-trolled sves anyway. You’ll o learn how to lead and inspire loyalty in billions. I ’t really help you with that, but I’ve spent a good portion of my life leading people, squads, ptoons or even a whole ship’s worth of them. I’m fident I help you take the first few stumbling steps down that path and catch you when you eventually fall face first into the dirt … like with Valenith.”

  I grimaced, willing myself to not get defehat’d get me nowhere and I could see where she was ing from. I had expected Val to have the same values as me, despite knowing how Eldar are. Hell, nobody would have values like me, with how messed up and voluted they are, mixing 21st-tury earth values, with more than a hint of jaded realism and knowledge of how shit this whole gaxy was.

  “ you tell me where exactly it went wrong?” Selene asked me gently.

  “I didn’t explicitly tell him how to go about the task I’d given him,” I said. “I … trusted his judgement would be sound?”

  “No,” Selene said. “Your problem was that you jumped right over the first few dozen steps. Let’s set that as aual goal: you want to be able to give vague orders to your lieutenants without having to worry about them doing anything wrong.”

  “Sounds good … ?” I said.

  “It does, doesn’t it?” Selene said, shaking her head. “That’s the end goal. Having people who work as extensions of yourself around you, additional arms ao do what you want in your stead.”

  “I could make droo do that for me,” I said, challenging her line of thought.

  “Do you know how many officers there are in the whole of the Astra Militarum?” Selene asked. “Spread far and wide across the Imperium and beyond?”

  “Millions?” I asked, seeing the dire she was leading this in. “I have limits, I ’t trol a whole military for par with the Imperial Guard even if I syphon power from hundreds of star systems at once, is that what you’re saying? That I o learn how to delegate?”

  “You are already delegating,” Selene said. “Zedev is stantly w oemptes for you, isn’t he? While Bob is ba the moon building up your city.”

  “If I still had a human brain, it would be starting to ache right about now.” I massaged my temples with a mock gre. “Don’t dance around it, please. What are you saying?”

  “There is no simple way of summarising it,” Selene said. “I’m trying to teach you a lesson, so please py along. What were you expeg from Zedev when you delegated to him, and what were you expeg from Bob when you’d given him his task?”

  “Likely some minor success from Zedev,” I said holy. “I didn’t really appreciate just how limited by his tech level his mind was, so he over delivered from my perspective. Bob … Well, I gave him those sub-brains loaded up with a whole lot of knowledge, so I think I’d be expeg some buildings from him that are above average?”

  “You just gave it to him and decided to see what’d happen, didn’t you?” Selene asked.

  “Kinda.” I shrugged. “I fix it in moments if he fucks something up.”

  “What if Zedev fucks something up?”

  “Then I’m just back to ground zero, I lost nothing?” I said.

  “But not when Val fucked something up,” Selene said. “Because dead people ’t just be fixed.”

  “No, they ’t.” I rying to guess where she was going with this. Did I o manage my expectatioer?

  “So let’s get back to Zedev,” Selene said. “He is a Magos specialising in biologism. He would be an Arch Magos if he wao be, he is the pinnacle of knowledge in the Imperium when it es to biology aics. That means something. It does to me, at least, but I’m not sure you appreciate how much of a savant one had to be to achieve that if you expected just some minor successes from him.”

  “Then there is Bob,” Selene tinued. “The random human you didn’t know what to do with. The one who’d spent his st few turies as a vagrant trying to heal his lover. Why do you expect him to be able to build anything worthwhile even if he got your super upgrades? He’s never done anything of the sort.”

  “I mean,” I mused. “I loaded enough knowledge into those brains for him to build just about anythis his mind on.”

  “I might be wrong with this one,” Selene said softly, frowning at me. “But I think you should set your expectations with him much lower. Even if your sub-brain upgrades work perfectly, he never used anything of the sort before, I’d expect him to stumble around at the start as he gets used to them.”

  “Right,” I said, processing still.

  “To set your expectations, you o know the person yiving the task to,“ Selene said. “And you need general knowledge to give it text. So, that brings us to why you expected an Eldar to give two fucks about a few human lives.”

  “Hundreds of lives aren’t ‘a few’,” I said with a frown.

  “text,” Seleed. “With the quadrillions of humans in the gaxy, a couple hundred are truly not a ‘few’ deaths. It’s miniscule. Nothing. Billions die every day in service to the Imperium, or starving in some hole. A good fra of those deaths is caused by daemons, or their mortal servants. I know and uand why you’re mad at Val, but a few hundred deaths, statistically, are aremely low price for putting ao a Daemon Pri’s not a perfect score, but you ’t ever expect perfe in war. That’s a recipe for being stantly let down and disappointed. It also severely diminishes morale if the anding officer is always disappointed, no matter how good of a result the troops achieve. I tell you now that Val likely came in proud and gd of his aplishments, and rightly so, because he pleted your assigask perfectly and only got beaten down. That’s not how you build loyalty or maintain morale. His failure was your fault. You gave him his orders and failed to properly put into words what you were expeg of him.”

  “I see,” I mumbled, thoughts swirling and trying tht themselves. A part of me wao get defensive and ignore her words just out of pride. But I at least uood how little I knew of actually being a leader.

  “Which brings us to setting realistic expectations, because this all crumbles if you set those sky high,” Selene said, leaning forward with a serious look on her face. “You know how this gaxy works, intellectually, but you don’t seem to uand it. You ruly accepted this not being the same peaceful Earth you’ve spoken of, have you?”

  P3t1