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Wonderful story! One of my favourites :)

Excellent story! Good work

Overall. One of the more interesting stories I've read so far. I'm happy to say that I think the quality of your writing is good and doesn't warrant criticism, my critiques are just about story framing and POV stuff. My main critique is just on the adherence to theme - the inquisitor doesn't seem like they use the elixir creatively. They are given it, they're tempted by it, they drink it, they become enlightened, the story ends. Though, maybe the inquisitor *is* the resource used by the Cult, but I don't know if that's what was intended, and feels like I'm reaching a bit.

Concepts & Originality: 3/5. Pretty classic manipulative cult story that uses drugs (whether they're magical or mundane) to induct members. I'm a fan of both the format - POV via journal - and the premise. I think the first-person POV of the inquisitor's descent into madness is a bit weak, however. Horror in madness comes from the contrast between the delusions of a POV and the reality of their situation. The setup of the initial entries was good here, but Day 14 feels like it needs a bit of contrasting POV to let the horror sink in. 

I wanted to know more about what the inquisitor was actually doing during these two weeks, especially after Day 7 and before Day 10 when they drink the elixir and entries become further spaced apart. Are they actually investigating while maintaining a veneer of sanity? Did they immediately go full psycho-murderer but we only see the euphoria of discovery? I've always found the distortion between reality and how people perceive and then record their reality fascinating, which is why I have a lot to mull over in this story. 1000 words is not a lot, and I empathize with needing to pick an angle of a concept and stick to it.

Flow & Clarity: 4/5. Well-written!

Adherence to Theme: 2/5. Unfortunately I don't see a strong connection between this story and Creative Resources.

You're welcome!! I wish you nothing but the best for your future works :)

Thanks for your feedback! Fair criticism on different fonts for different characters. It's something I personally enjoy in reading, I think it's fun to push the boundaries of how written stories are presented, if only a little bit.

Thank you!

You're correct about me changing the tense mid-way through the project :p I enjoy present-tense stories and wanted to try it here (it also requires fewer words that past tense, which mattered a lot here).

Overall: A fun little story that functions very well as a joke (this is not an insult!). Jar's section is the setup and Amariel's section is the punchline. The weakness of the story is in the writing and structure. It's a tricky thing to define, since the clarity of the exposition is okay, but the writing style, use of punctuation, and sentence length make the flow feel a bit stiff. Amariel's section adds some fun novelty with her internal quips, but they feel out of place because Jar's section is "normal", and that section feels dryer in comparison.

Okay, so to prove my point and to hopefully help your future writing, I took Jar's section and split the whole story up, sentence by sentence. (A sentence is defined by at least one word which is ended with a period, ellipses, or question mark). There are 25 sentences in Jar's section. 11 are more than 20 words. This is actually a high density of *long* sentences. There's some consensus in contemporary writing that most sentences should be, at most, 15 words. Don't treat this like a law, just a guideline. Point is, in future writing, try to experiment with more sentence length. Use more kinds of punctuation - remember, the written word is a visual medium - variety is fun!

Here's an article about this. https://www.wyliecomm.com/2022/07/how-long-should-a-sentence-be/

There's also some punctuation issues with possessive apostrophes:

"When the computer came online, it would take over the ships controls and cut the engines"
- Should be "ship's"

"Icons representing Kellians fire appeared on the HUD as he proved his point"
- Should be "Kellian's"

"(camera’s can see it- damn its close)"
- Should be "cameras" and "it's"

Concepts & Originality: 4/5
- Fun stuff here, we've got a doomed heist and a bored gunner who's overqualified for her post. For them, it was the worst day of their lives. For her, it was Tuesday

Flow & Clarity: 2/5
- Explained in the above section. Note that Amariel's section felt better because her internal quips were shorter and felt more natural.

Adherence to Theme: 4/5
- Both Jar and Amariel were working with limited resources creatively. Jar had limited... everything, and Amariel's older turrets actually came in handy to bring down Jar's ship (note, I actually missed the significance of her older turret on my first read. Good job on making that her creative resource, but the issues with flow/clarity got in the way).

Overall: I really enjoyed reading this story. Your dialogue is excellent, as well as actions and "pacing" of human behaviour between dialogue. My main critique is the plot. This story is about one character, Protagonist, convincing another, Tell, about the merit of horses in futuristic warfare. Protagonist argues for the merits of horses. Tell provides an occasional weak rebuttal. Protagonist convinces Tell: they "win". Story ends. It's an entertaining conversation, but the lack of conflict or other character goals leaves more to be desired, especially since you had a couple hundred more words to work with. We also don't see if Protagonist is *right* when it's time to fight, though it's implied they're justified with their (ostensibly honest) history of using horses.

Concepts and Originality: 3/5
- Solid. "Antiquated means of warfare still has a place!" is a a familiar trope, but a fine one.

Flow & Clarity: 5/5
- Despite my critiques on plot/character, it is an engaging and enjoyable read. 

Adherence to Theme: 4/5
- I struggled between a 3 or a 4, mostly because we don't see the use of these creative resources, and it's just about the merits of using these resources. I rounded up because I still like the story/premise/tone.

LOL