A portal buzzes upon the northernmost street beside the rock face. Originates as the sharp glisten of a door length line. Tiny lighting tickles the air. Sizzles between molecules. Grows beyond the line into a horizontal rectangle. Burns electric within the cobblestone.

A wine dark helmet slowly rises above the surface of the portal. Faces the stone. Turns around. Eyes under the helmet watch the forever midnight city of Ghosts. The blue clad armour soldier places both glove hands upon the street. Lifts themself out of the portal. Out of the hole between two realities, like through God's mouth. Then another soldier climbs out. And another until a hundred silent soldiers are in formation along the street. Another portal opens. Vertical along the rock face as the horizontal disappears like the turn of a knob from ten to zero. A blue legion marches through the upright.

The totality of the Leonard army arrives within the first reality. Soundlessly begin their invasion. Run along the street with stealthy steps toward preordained destinations within the Factory. The portal remains open.

Nigel watches from far above. Smiles like saliva drips down a chin from a set of fangs. Crouches naked upon the high crevice of a building that almost touches the cavernous sky. His skin's paper thin. Hard wrinkles. Scars. Menacingly osteal. Smells like marshland shit; the rot of mire water and the stringy guts of trout and poisonous pickerel frogs.

He came to the first reality through the portal in the mire. Through the void of the empty city simulation in Terra's mind. Followed the shadows through the city of Veridiction. Nigel easily gained an entrance to the Factory. An old aqueduct filled with rubble but not entirely collapsed. He had enough room to manoeuvre his sickly body through the crannies into the underground city. Fed on ancient bones. And through all the stench mixings and sweaty cavernous claustrophobia; the lipless taste of the dust of the world around him, he somehow smelt this portal before it even opened. And not only this portal but what's on the other side of it. And that's not all. He could and can smell every portal in this world. Knows where each exits into and knows he can escape and come back at his own leisure. Well, all but one. One of two portals exists in an alley far from his position in this underground. One of them is the only place he fears to pass through. A fireman's axe hangs at the entrance. Judith is in that place. Nigel wants nothing to do with that woman. She would eat him up again and he knows it. He'd rather face Muerte than feel the Judith's presence again. She taught him a valuable lesson; Judith Coal is a true monster. Don't fuck with the graveyard girl.

Nigel was right all along to fear the Judith back in the days of David Leonard's lab. The look in her eyes when Michael the technician was torturing her wasn't what he normally witnessed in a victim. Witnessed boredom in her countenance when Michael gutted her. A numbness so profound that she seemed born of the rock face that this city is built under and around and upon. He even expressed his concern to David while she was on that surgeon's table. His leader laughed at him.

The Nigel of now whispers to his own ear like silence speaks to sound.

"Judith was a very bad mistake, Mr David. And so was Muerte, in the end. And so were you, David. You're an abomination like them. But David, what time is it anymore? Where did you go? I can smell your corpse in this world. You don't breath. I hear only your ghost. Can't smell your apparition, but I can taste the air filled of three others. Muerte and two whom I don't recognize. They all smell so good but are all too powerful for me. But only for now. Ah, David. You met your fate in the embrace of Muerte, didn't you? Your own creation destroyed you. Your death was certainly fitting."

The bone saw man smirks to himself. Shrugs his shoulders. Cares very little for David's fate. It's time to focus on his own destiny.

Nigel spots a straggler come through the vertical portal in the street. A lieutenant in full slick leaden rock body armour and a full tinted window face mask. This soldier looks to be made of stone camouflage. The helmet has large horns which curve and twist to the sky. They're cattle prods of electricity in Nigel's nervous system. He jumps from his ledge perch. Lets the attraction of gravity pull his body. Swiftly lands upon the lieutenant's back. The armoured Leonard collapses to their knees. Mr bone saw man wraps his arm around the their throat. Pulls back in a choke hold until the lieutenant's head separates from their neck. Blood sprays. Gushes from the decapitation which flows and covers Nigel's bare body. He becomes aroused and finds his erection pleasing. Stuffs his sculpture into the gore of the exposed neck. Rams and humps it. Thrusts his pelvis hard. But he doesn't have time for this desire of necrophilia. Pulls his erection from the dead corpse neck muck. Edges. Calms. Strips the soldier. Pieces together the body armour upon himself. Waist and legs and boots and chest and arms and gloves and knees and elbows. Scoops the severed head from the helmet and fits the final piece over his face. The lieutenant's Honey Badger rifle has a strap. Slings it across his shoulder. Holds the rifle and feels large. Pretends to know how it actually works. He'll figure it out as he walks through the city.

Seems to Nigel that the Leonards want to rule the first reality. Whoever's in charge has such plans, or so he wagers. Nigel doesn't have the same proclivity. He wants to destroy the Factory and all of Veridiction, not rule it. A war between the Leonards and the Ghosts in this day and age may bring such a reckoning without his intervention. Laughs to himself in the language of eschatology. Knows full well he's going to cover this city in fragments of the ceiling above.

"I'm going to make the sky fall, my little skulls."

Nigel's not the original but he is the true bone saw man. Thinks about what that means and what that meant. Shivers at the thought of his own thoughts.

Stomps away into the night. Leaves the twisted decapitated body of the soldier he tried to fuck in plain view of anyone else who may come through another portal.