Chronomancer of Mars

              I dreamed that I was a 'Mage of Mars' fighting to protect a small settlement. I could fly and cast lightning and fire type spells as well as some sort of chronomancer style magic. The first part of the dream I was flying around some towers of stone, trying to avoid detection. There was a child that needed to be rescued and a couple (Red shirt and blue jeans man with a yellow bloused and green denim dress woman) who I was also trying to help, but they ended up jumping from the tower just as I flew up to where they were.
              As they dove to the ground ahead of me, I set some sort of chronomantic bubble around them that acted like a sort of a shield. They would hit the ground, but the forces of the impact would be spread out over several seconds, possibly enough to save their lives.
              I managed to land on the tower and pick up the child a couple of seconds before our pursuers landed all around us. There was a sort of race through the Martian canyons at that point, with me firing blasts of lightning over the back of my winged lion, while the child steered us through the canyon. (The winged lion was really a mechanical mount, not a living being.) between the two of us we managed to stop or evade all of our antagonists. Unfortunately, the child had steered us to her home, rather than to the Explorer Society compound. The only reason this was a problem, was that our enemies were watching the house. While I was sure we'd been spotted, the child wanted to use the bathroom, and no amount of me telling her that we had one at the Society seemed convincing. I gathered up a couple of piles of her clothing and toys and wrapped them in her bedding. I was tying them on to the winged lion when I heard her shout.
              “I'm not done yet!”
              I ran around the side of the house, spotting a rider hovering over the roof. I bubbled him, the next minute would take an hour or so to play out from his perspective. The bathroom had a row of tiny portholes. I popped the glass out of them and reached my arm into the room, calling to the child to grab on as we needed to leave, now. The door erupted in lightning and the child scampered to the top of the toilet and grabbed my arm. I pulled her out of the room, and that was when I noticed that she was a good foot taller than me, even though I was an adult. I bubbled the house behind us, much larger area covered, so the spell would not last but a couple of minutes. Lightning flashed out of the bubble and I stepped in the way, taking the blast instead of the child. Fortunately the blast was meant only to stun, and I was able to stumble over to the lion, As soon as the child was aboard I ordered it to fly off. There was no way I could have mounted it. I watched it fly away, then turn back.
              “No!” I shouted, “Get away!”
              But the flying lion dove down to ground level and snatched me up in its front paws. I marveled at the kids control of the machine, I didn't think I could have done that, and I'd been flying it for almost a year. (A Martian year, at that.)
              The red-brown rocks of the Martian landscape rushed past, the sky was turning into an inky star-filled dome above the creamy layer of blown dust. The Winged Lion tore through the night, taking us to the domed towers of the Explorer's League. My arms had grown numb from the grip of the machine on my shoulders. When we landed, I knew I wouldn't be able to raise my wand to defend us if needed.
              I worried needlessly, we arrived, hovering down into the airlock of the tallest dome. I walked the child to the counsel chambers, and there she rejoined her parents, who'd been able to come directly here after recovering from their fall. I had no idea why the child was so important, or what she might know or be capable of to be such a target. I was just about to ask that question when alarms started going off all over the dome.
              Our enemies had infiltrated the Explorer's League dome! Everyone was shocked, and more than a little surprised.
              “They've got a chronomancer!” a running apprentice shouted as he ran for the stables.
              An old gnome, slightly taller than myself huffed and puffed his way up a short flight of stairs to reach me. “You have to come, now, or we may not be able to stop them.”
              He took my arm and we shifted. I pulled my wand and began to un-bubble our people where ever I could see them. It was draining, I'd never seen such power, it dwarfed my own by an order of magnitude. I realized that my only hope was that he'd used more of his power than I, so I began to only temper the strength of the time bubbles, rather than dispel them completely. I hoped it would be enough. I found myself glad that he wasn't targeting just heads or limbs, the carnage would have been horrible and the damage might not have been reversable.
              I spotted the chronomancer at the same time he spotted me. We enveloped one another in a bubble of twisted time. He began to strengthen and add to the time compression of his, and I knew I couldn't match him. I had a sudden insight.
              I linked our bubbles together, anything he did to mine, would be mirrored on his own, I managed to do so with great finesse and little energy, whereas he seemed determined to put his all into bubbling me into the far distant future. He seemed unaware of his own time compression. The outside world sped up, we were both out of the conflict. I realized that this was exactly what they were planning but hoped that getting their own chronomancer trapped as well would even the playing field.
              I fired a jet of lightning plasma at him, set to follow the link between our bubbles, and at that moment my mind detached and drifted outside our mutual time prison. I could see the two of us, frozen in time, the lightning just leaving my outstretched wand and entering the thin purple channel that connected us. I realized that while we hadn't stopped time for ourselves, it was slowed nearly a million fold. The spell would not stop building until my stun-bolt struck home, but by then a quick estimate was that two or three days would have gone by. Except for our part in it, this skirmish would be over.
              The man was angry looking, dark haired, dirty and disheveled, he glared at me, and I realized that the glare was intensely personal. His black pants and jacket had traces of the red brown Martian dust at the knees and cuffs, as if he'd crawled part of the way here. I couldn't read the red embroidered cosmic symbols on his jacket, but recognized them as powerful focusing runes of some sort.
              I was in a powder blue robe with a classic conical Gnome's cap. I too had runes stitched all over my garments. Mine were far more varied and many were defensive spells, always active. I looked tired, but, except for my brow furrowed in concentration over the center of my very large and slightly lopsided nose, calm. The courtyard across which we dueled was made up of kite shaped tiles that seemed to make a large non-repeating pattern, but still self similar. It was relaxing to look at. I drifted over to my attacker, studying him. I could sense no power but that of chronomancy in him, even his focusing runes were tangled up in the energies of time. No wonder he was so powerful.
              I didn't recognize him, though, and that was a little bit frightening. There were so few of us that we had a rather tight-knit club, the magics were difficult to learn, and horribly draining without proper training. Since most mage's first spells were cast on parts of themselves, chronomancers seemed to suffer more fatal mishaps that other types of casters. That was why my right hand only had three fingers instead of the normal four.