What remained of the city was a scattering of broken shards of concrete, lurching at angles like the fractured bones of fallen giants. Curled metal tracks were like their fossilized spines, dangling over all the churned ruins, frozen in that moment of death. Overgrown with centuries of vines, the city's broken structures were periodically carpeted by tightly woven fibers of leaf and stalk like layers of new flesh covering old bone.
The legs of a great walker droid towered above all. Formerly smooth ceramic surfaces were pocked with blaster holes. Metal seams, once riveted and welded, were now bleeds of rust with cavernous wounds in them. Access panels in which plasma was once fired to internal gears, were opened and exposed. Vegetation had twisted around these leg-towers, latching on to every curve and indentation, filling every wound in the skin. The drooping stalks of the vine trees wobbled in the gentle winds, offering a living pastiche grafted on the dead durasteel; a garden now pushing up into the night sky. The leg-towers of ceramic and rust bore witness that once something living had made them for the purpose of delivering death. The lifeless husks had been colonized and strangled by living tenants in turn.
In between the gaping concrete islands, and under the massive leg-towers, new energy pylons and stilled hulks of dirt-haulers and loader droids were motionless, left where they were when the Empire fell. The guards and their officers had fled. The prisoners who had worked the rigs had stopped their terraforming duties and left as well. In the silence, new residents had come to visit this place.
"Have you felt it, Brothers and Sisters?" spoke the Dark Sider.
A tattered red cloak, once that of an Imperial Guard, enveloped his body. A long hood covered most of his weathered, but handsome face. Within an alter of broken stones, each as high as a man, and arranged in a semi-circle, he knelt before a stoneware bowl filled with water.
At more than two meters tall, his long, brown hair falling around and obscuring his face, the red guard was an imposing sight to his followers. His eyes glowed slightly yellow with the the Dark Side behind them. The other adepts were draped in prisoner tunics, dyed black and tied tightly to their bodies, kneeling behind him, concentrating on unifying the Force amongst them. There were nearly a hundred of them now. They were Palpatine's prisoners, once; Force users who were sensitive to the calling of the Dark Side. Just once young boys and girls, mostly, they were mostly Human, but also Rodian, Mirialan, and Dathomiri. They had been altered however; their bodies interwoven with nano-machinery which had burrowed into their flesh and extended their carbono-durasteel tendrils into their minds.
The roof of this temple was nothing more than the sky itself; the tapestry of stars which wound around the galaxy. The floor of this sacred space in which they knelt was bare ground, covered with the dewy growth of knotted grasses. Their small altar itself was ringed by the concrete forms of what was once a city, destroyed by a savage war in ancient times which had devastated the face of the planet.
This place was a vector of the Force. The stones outlined what was once a Jedi temple, long ago, before the great city itself was fully built. The red Guardsman and his followers had wandered here from the largest secret Imperial facility in the wastes of Talinn, setting up temporary refuge in this clearing for the night. The open sky clear to the galaxy made this the perfect time and place to hold this ritual and to test their power. It was here that the Guardsman knew his group could channel the Force, and fully bond with the unity he knew they needed.
In between the periodic warm gusts of the night air, there was the squawking of the predatory bats and night birds hunting and mating in the forest of ruins above and around them. The small group of humanoids huddled, meditated, and embraced the bridge between life and death. The red guard watched the water intently through the wind-battered cloak which kept the warmth of his body from escaping into the starry night.
All the painful tortures he had endured would now prove their value. He'd suffered Lord Cronal's vile experiments with metals, poisons, and burning, all prodding him to produce a deeper, purer connection with the Dark Side. Cronal was the madman Palpatine had tasked to see to the Force users his Inquisitors had gathered. The intent was to use the Force Sensitives for their power, to process them like a butcher processes animals into edible meat. Lord Cronal told him that the plan was to break with the Sith restrictions once and for all, and to merge flesh with machine, using a small army of Force users to power the Emperor's future weapons. Synthesizing kyber crystals for the Death Star was only the start of his plans of channeling the Force to be his servant.
The criminal Force worshippers and other followers of the Jedi were rounded up, and they provided useful slaves for the Empire. But the true Force sensitives were found out and isolated, and slowly turned into something else as pieces of their bodies were unified with machines.
When the red guard held Cronal by the throat after the destruction of the Death Star at Endor, and the realization that Palpatine was dead, he'd only spared the life of that wicked little mage after he'd begged for his life and divulged his secrets. Cronal had acceded and opened the cages of the Palpatine's Dark Acolytes. Now, those secrets belonged to the new remnant of Force users who had no need for the Sith. They were the ones who were in thrall to the pure Dark Side, no longer restrained by politics or the arcane rules of Sith sorcery.
The red guard contemplated the Force, his fingers trembling with concentration and rage as they were clutched against his chest. He remembered deep in the recesses of his mind, feeling again the fire squirting through his veins.
The water shook slightly.
His broken, hoarse voice spoke again.
"The Force is loud now. There is an emptiness. The Force itself cries out. It is wandering, unchained. This water is a vessel. To the Force itself branching through all life in the Universe. Feeding on the turmoil of all life. Of rage. Of the transition to death. Of all against all."
He shouted now.
"The chaos is unleashed. It echoes inside of us. We speak through The Force. We feel its wounds. All of us. Connected as we are to other adepts in the galaxy who may sense it; we call to them. Come here. To this place. We commune here through the well of chaos in darkness never-ending. This place of once great sorrow and terror."
"Yes," spoke a female voice beside him. A tall female figure with flowing, braided yellow hair and unnervingly perfectly symmetrical features stood next to the red guard. The Dathomir priestess in a shimmering cloak which alternated between yellow and black swirling patterns, raised her head with eyes closed, shouting at a volume to match the red Guardsman, with her hands opening and closing in ritual movements. She was flanked by four of her Nightsisters, similarly attired. Unlike her improbably beautiful human appearance, they were horned, pale, and striped, as was more typical of the Dathomiri. They stood to the side smiling, as their beautiful "human" sister enchanted the followers.
"Sidious and Vader are no longer here. The Dark Side collapses on itself looking for a perch. It seethes now. It desires. It reaches out and touches us. There is no Sith. There is no Empire. There is no law. There is the Dark Side. As distant as the stars. As close as the water before us.
"It's power is no longer constrained by the gates built by the Sith. It could never be domesticated and milked. But the Sith did corral it, and it fooled them, and it moved the hands of the Sith. We kneel among their destruction, of the folly of those who thought the Dark Side was their servant. It is free now. It is All. It is glorious to behold."
The thrall of the Dark Side overcame the worshippers. Their bodies were limp. The muscle slackened, as bone and sinew slumped within them. The Force was embracing them. The Guardsman shook with his rage until he weakened, himself falling in surrender to the Dark Side's thrall. He held a yellow eye still on the bowl, gleaming from behind the shock of hair, his mouth twisted with a pained smile. His channeling had worked. They were ready.
The water began to gently boil.