Inkwhumptobertale 2024

Day Twenty-Seven

LOVE - Voiceless, Laboratory, Muzzled, "I have no mouth and I must scream." 

This one gave me so much trouble smh-

Trigger warnings: mentions of murder.

Comments are welcome and appreciated! 

Please enjoy!

~~~~~

"LOVE." Ink tilted his skull. "It's an acronym. It stands for 'Level Of ViolencE' - don't ask me why they capitalized the last letter of it." Ink paused, before snorting. "Oh, wait, you can't! Sorry!"

Dream crossed his arms, glaring at Ink; someday, Dream would give him a talking-to he'd never forget! Unfortunately, that day wouldn't be today. Being trapped in stone for five hundred years had its drawbacks, and one of the most noticeable was that Dream hadn't spoken in five centuries; over time, his magic had just forgotten how to make words! It had been such a simple part of life before, but now Dream had to go through magic therapy to get his speech back, and it was slow - painfully slow! Dream was grateful that he knew sign language, or else he wouldn't have been able to communicate at all! Maybe he should have paid more attention when Nightmare had been trying to teach him how to read and write; at least then he'd be able to communicate with more people. But..for now, he'd deal with sign language. 

Earlier today, at the park (he'd begged Ink to let him leave this stupid house for once via angry signing), he and Ink had stumbled upon a person who had..felt weird. They hadn't looked weird, and they hadn't been acting weird, but they had felt weird to Dream, and his aura hadn't done a thing to affect them, it had seemed. When Dream and Ink had returned home, Dream had asked about it, and now, Ink was explaining just what exactly Dream had felt before. It was..odd.

"Anyway, most people just call it LV for short, since it sounds more menacing and stuff!" Ink continued. "And most people don't have it."

"How do you get it?" Dream signed, tilting his skull. 

"Well, most of the time, people gain LV by killing other people."

Dream's eyelights shrank; the person at the park had killed someone?!

"But sometimes, people can just get it from being super apathetic, if their code allows it." Ink shrugged. "Plot events, and all that."

"Do you have LV?" Dream wondered.

"Oh, yeah, I have tons!" Ink nodded, causing Dream to flinch. "Uh..I won't kill you, though; I don't kill people I'm friends with!"

That did not make Dream feel any more comfortable; perhaps he would not be giving Ink a talking-to when he got his voice back, after all..

"Back to LV, though..most of it is gained through self-defense kills, since it doesn't discriminate. What it does do is make people stronger and more durable, make them more aware of their surroundings at all times, and for people other than me, it gives them LV spikes (long, grueling periods of pain), nightmares, and levels of apathy, depending on how high it is! Those are typically considered the 'punishments' for LV, and, boy, am I glad I don't have to go through that! So, got any-" Ink paused; it seemed that Dream had left, for some unknown reason that definitely wasn't at all related to the fact that Ink was terrifying. "Oh, well! Guess that means the leftover cupcakes are mine!"

And so, Ink got up to raid the fridge of the leftover cupcakes from..some event. 

He didn't know. He didn't care.