New Patreon fiction: “Nilly’s Choice” (Arachne’s Crime tie-in)

To make up for going a while without new Patreon fiction, here’s the second story in just under a month, this one newly written exclusively for Patreon. As I mentioned in my last post, “Nilly’s Choice” is a character vignette (if a 5200-word story can be called a vignette) filling in the backstory of R’nilinnath, aka Nilly, the young Chirrn apprentice mediator introduced in the second half of Arachne’s Crime. She was one of my favorite characters to write in that novel and Arachne’s Exile, and I realized it was an oversight that I’d never established her background and motivations for becoming a mediator. This story reveals her reaction to the events of the first half of AC, and it also lets me flesh out a few more details about the Chirrn.

You can find the story here on the $10/mo Fiction tier:

Fiction: “Nilly’s Choice”

As usual, annotations for the story are also up at the $12/mo Behind the Scenes tier:

“Nilly’s Choice” Annotations

This makes, let’s see, the fifth Arachne story I’ve done, after the original “Aggravated Vehicular Genocide” (reprinted in Among the Wild Cybers), the duology, and the “Comfort Zones” prequel story (which is also on Patreon as well as in The Arachne Omnibus). The sixth if you count “Among the Wild Cybers of Cybele,” which is an indirect sequel.