There's no time for this. Words, useless, meaningless, drifted into his roaring ears, drowned out by the sound of a frantic pulse, of life so strong in his own chest when it is just about to drain out of her. Somewhere, somehow, the words were imprinted on his mind, branded into his subconscious, but he did not actively register — nor acknowledge — them. They disappeared in the din of chaos, and as he drifted aimlessly throughout the two bodies and mind conjoined he felt the echo of excitement, of victory, success, feral pride and a hunter's glee at sinking something sharp into flesh.

Red warmth spattered against his face, the violent spray of blood fueled by a desperate, dying heart; the shower of life shook both owl and unicorn out of their reveries, returning to the places where their minds belonged — she, blinking rapidly, breathless with the overwhelming sensation of what she'd just done, the thrill of the hunt leaving her light, elated, and he, stringing thoughts and vague memories together to come up with why Delinne lay dying by his feet.

In the moonlight, she looked only like the one he knew; the sharp tang of blood obliterated every other smell which may or may not have existed. Ragged breaths came in through widened nostrils, blood drying on his face and freezing on his horn. A last shudder passed through her body, the blood in her veins growing stale, and cold. Despite the too-obvious fact that she was dead, he could not comprehend it — could not accept it. Every wall in his mind had been thrown up, and he couldn't hear the hammering of Irma against his icy walls, nor feel the desperate swell of her emotions against the barrier. All he felt was an odd sense of detached disbelief, numbness, and for several long, quiet moments he just stared at her glazed-over eyes, and the red soaking through the soil.

Then, in a moment both painful and freeing, life seemed to catch up with the frozen monarch.

"WHAT THE HELL HAVE YOU DONE?!" he roared, his voice a bellow rolling across the meadow and startling birds into flight; trembling, he backed away from the corpse, his bloodied head turning to stare, accusingly, at Irma. Her eyes were blank, her wings close to her body.

It was not Delinne, her emotions said.
"Look at her!" he screeched, his voice shrill.
It's still not her, came the frustratingly cold response.
"YOU KILLED HER!"
Yes.

And what could he say? What could he do, to argue, when she did not even deny it? It was not the first time he had killed, not the first time he had seen death, but it was the first time he had killed a friend. A friend who trusted him.
It wasn't her the owl patiently repeated, though he could tell she was exasperated. For a moment everything had been so simple, when he had seen the world through her eyes, felt her thoughts, her clarity, the crystal edges, the black and white which refined her actions.

Sparing the corpse a last look Mauja turned on his heel and ran north, to the Basin.

Mauja Frosthjärta