Swamped

Now that you think about it, as strange and unsettling as Mantis is right now, there's one part of all this that you can't make any sense of at all.

He ran off in a hurry once you mentioned Rider, but now he's stopped here. If he wanted to find Rider, why did he stop?

It's something you can ask him about.

"Why were you in such a hurry before?" you ask.

"I did not want to lose the trail of Rider's aura. Ironically, it turns out I have the opposite problem - his spiritual presence is too dense here. I cannot track it clearly. So I am praying for guidance."

You don't understand what he just said at all.

"Do you really have to stare directly at me while you pray, though?"

"My apologies. Grebling auras are very different from human ones. I have had time to adjust to Crosswinds, but your arrival must be very recent, so I find your aura harder to read. At the moment, I am observing it as a means of keeping my spirit focused."

More of this aura nonsense. You've got no idea what he's on about.

And apologetic as he sounds, he still doesn't seem to want you to go running off. It's not in anything he's saying or doing, it's just a feeling you're getting from him.

Well. You suppose you did get some new information from him out of those questions, you've just got no idea what it actually means. Now what?