Important note: Abstractis Imperialis Veritis (aka the swarm of butterflies) is effectively invisible. They don't exude their own essence and their body is "opaque" to essence vision. Which makes them an even stranger anomaly haha. However, don't edit your post Hawk. Reason being, we'll just presume that he detected the trace amounts of Reates' essence that was on the outer surface of their bodies due to them being near him so much.

Most of them wouldn't be visible, but those few were :P

They were probably feeding from him recently, as that is how they sustain themselves.
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Conversely he could be sensing the [I]air essence[/I] that is being displaced around the butterflies.

Anywho, I enjoyed both posts. I'm not certain how Reates will be reacting to Ian, but it ought to be interesting. Furthermore, I find it quite amusing that Reates is basically making reality seem like a dream due to how strange he is xD