Name: Onyx Lotus, goes by “Nyx”

Race: Unicorn

Gender: Mare

Age: Mid-twenties

Physical Description: Nyx’s coat is a dark red, accented by dyed, brighter red swirls that decorate her legs and neck. She has a sleek black mane and tail that fall in loose waves, and golden eyes. Her cutie mark is a black symbol of the orbital paths in an atom, representing energy. She also has three piercings along the outer edge of each ear, and frequently wears gold studs in each. Jewelry she likes, but she greatly dislikes any type of clothing and often goes undressed to even the fanciest of parties.

Special Talent: Energy absorption and construction

Bio: Born in a small town on the outskirts of Equestria, Nyx had great ambitions from Day One. She matured unusually quickly, learning to talk and read much sooner than most foals. She knew she wanted to do great things, and she knew she was smart enough to do them. She wanted to be a unicorn mage that every Equestrian citizen knew the name of. And in she was right, in one aspect. She did have the intelligence.

But she lacked the power. She picked up levitation quickly, but didn’t seem to be able to lift anything heavier than a few pounds. She could easily change the color of an orange with her magic, but only to its neighboring shades: red or yellow. She was summoning storm clouds as a filly, but they never lingered for more than a few minutes.

And as she grew older, she tried harder and harder. Her classmates earned their cutie marks one by one, while Nyx’s flank remained blank. But Nyx didn’t give up. She just told herself that if she practiced enough, the power would come. She practiced and drove herself to exhaustion every day, not that it took many spells to do so. She entered her teens, and still, no cutie mark.

Then… there was the fire.

Nyx’s hometown was nestled deep in a large, dense forest. Nopony knows how it started; it could have been anything, a camper’s fire not put completely out, a freak lightning bolt hitting a tree… Either way, if somepony caused it, they never came forward. The fire started in the middle of the night, and spread frighteningly quickly, starting in the southern part of the forest and steadily heading towards the town. As it drew nearer, the smoke was finally spotted. Authorities were alerted, and teams of pegasi took to the sky and tried to gather enough storm clouds to douse the fire. But it was too late.

The fire had grown too large, too powerful. The town, unused to such disasters, was far from prepared, and even though they were evacuating as quickly as they could, it wasn’t fast enough.

Nyx was woken by her parents, and not even taking the time to take any belongings, the family fled North. It was dark, and smoke filled the air. The panicked cries of ponies rang out, filling the forest with cries of terror and anguish. The noise’s echo off the tree trunks distorted ponies’ locations, and many ponies were accidentally separated from their groups.

Nyx was one of these. She lost track of which dark, fleeing shapes were her parents. She pressed on, but she was still young, and very frightened. Not being able to find her family, she came to the conclusion that she must have gotten ahead of them. She started South, but the smoke and the smells and the fear confused her, making a familiar forest into a deadly maze.

She kept going, even as she knew she was drawing nearer to the fire. She had to find her parents. They were all she had. Having travelled more to the East than she intended, she missed the town entirely and kept going towards the blaze. Shadows do strange things to a pony’s mind, and she wasn’t even aware she was right in the fire’s path until the trees around her caught fire. She turned and ran, but she knew the flames were faster. She could feel oppressive heat behind her, and gathering all the courage she possessed, she turned and faced the fire. Only one coherent thought went through her head…. survive.

The trees behind her suddenly seemed to be shining, the trunks and branches dripping pure green light. But Nyx didn’t turn. She closed her eyes, and suddenly an energy filled her like it never had before… and she knew what she had to do. She crafted a shield from pure energy, the magic flowing from her horn a mix of unnatural green and her usual gold aura.

Some rational part of Nyx’s brain was still operating, and that part told her that it would not be enough to form a dome of protection around the town and the forest that had not been consumed- she had to kill the blaze itself.

And so the shield grew, both meeting the forest floor and flowing upward, eventually starting to curve away from her. The wall of energy grew faster and faster as more power flowed through her. The curving wall reached its apex, above even the tallest flames, and started to curve back down. The far edges of the powerful gold and green dome slammed against the ground, sealing the fire off. This was no magical protection that merely limited what could breach it. This was pure energy, and nothing, not even the innocent air, could bypass it.

Cut off from oxygen, the fire died as quickly as it started. When not even an ember remained, the dome vanished and Nyx’s magical aura faded. She felt more energetic, more powerful than she had ever felt in her life. But... where had that strange green power come from?

She turned, and her jaw dropped. At least thirty trees behind her, previously full and green, were completely dead. Their trunks were rotting, their leaves brown and tattered as if the trees had been dead for years. Filled with the clashing emotions of exhilaration and numbness, Nyx headed North to find her family. With such strange events happening so rapidly, it wasn’t until hours later that Nyx realized that amid all the strange magic, a symbol had appeared on her flank.

She was hailed as a hero when it was learned what she had managed to do. A week letter, her parents sent Nyx to Celestia’s School for Gifted Unicorns. Even though she was significantly older than the average age that most unicorns were admitted at, she was accepted. She tested out of class after class, until she had caught up with the others her age, in just a little under a year after she was admitted.

Fast forward several years, and Nyx had become one of the most talented mages in Equestria. Her publications on the nature of magic and energy gained her a following that she called loyal, while others called it cult-like. She was particularly popular among the young blood in the magical community. Everything from the dyed swirls in her coat, to her many piercings, to her laid-back nature and forward-thinking theories endeared her to ponies that had tired of the traditionalists that dominated the scientific and magical community.

Of course, those very traits made her many enemies in academia. Though few were brave enough to confront her directly, many rumors were whispered behind her back, rumors claiming that she was everything from a scam artist to a real-life psychic vampire.

This mostly stemmed from the practice of “Energy Donation” that Nyx used to fuel her research. Nyx had developed a process for not only drawing energy out of her environment, but out of other ponies as well.  She only took a very small amount out of each pony, claiming she never took more than five percent of the pony’s current “raw power”. It started with just accepting donations from other unicorns, but Nyx quickly broadened her focus and process, and started to accept the innate magic of pegasi and earth ponies as well.

She became an expert in detecting, measuring, and extracting energy. The process, she was constantly reminding the media, was, “Completely safe, painless, and helps support research that, in time, could virtually solve any problem that arises in the future due to lack of natural resources. Each pony’s magic will naturally replace all the amount of energy that they have donated. In most cases, this will occur within 24 hours after the donation, making donation a simple and noble way to help build a better future for everypony.” She had such a loyal following that, even if a donation did somehow go wrong, they would never draw the media’s attention to such a fact.

Through these donations, and extractions from natural sources, Nyx slowly built up a store of magical energy. Though she did what she had promised and put most of the donated energy towards towards research, she did keep a subtle “back-up” store. Fearing that one day she would lose support and go back to the talented but weak unicorn she had been in her childhood, this storage served as her insurance. Since Nyx was really just transferring magical energy from others, not generating it herself, the color of her magic varied with whose energy she was currently using. Plants’ energy tended to be green, other organic but non-living sources, such as the wind or a river, could have any hue of magic. And of course, the energy she gathered from ponies were different for each individual. With so many colors of magic in store, they often blended together and made Nyx’s aura a veritable rainbow.

Now, Nyx’s days are filled with research, donation collection, and writing and speaking to draw support from the public and her fellow mages and scientists. She loves her life and work, and wouldn’t trade it for anything.