Inwardly, the Lichemaster smiled grimly to himself.

The Furnace Knight was not the true enemy here. The Aotrs long ago had learned - especially from Temnis - when fighting heavily divine-powered beings (or just highly religious ones) that, ultimately, you did not fight the monkey, [i]you fought the organ-grinder[/i].

So his next spell was perhaps completely surprising; neither a defensive spell, nor an offensive one - but a honed and precise probing spell, that locked directly on to the very concept of belief itself and traced directly the path of the bond between deity and servitor. This version was the most recent permutation, a full 95th level spell, with two-and=a-half millenia of experience in divine counter-measures, presense nullfiers, conceptual-dissonance traps and resonant backlash fields (extensively tested, in fact, on the few remaining quasi-deities on Temnis).

It sole purpose was to precisely locate the realm - divine, conceptual or otherwise - from where the divine power was coming from. Any damage the Lichemaster took in the process was entirely worth it, since it meant that they would know where, functionally, the god [i]was[/i]. And, short of it permenantly severing its connection to reality and denuding it servitors of power - functionally committing suicide - when that was known, the Aotrs could reach it.

Gods had a nasty tendancy to believe that they were utterly unkillable and they the furthest-removed from direct reality were thus beyond harm. And, as not just the Aotrs, but others had proven, that belief was entirely wrong. Even greater dieties could be killed.

The Lichemaster recalled with perfect satisifaction the first time they'd been able to use the distant ancestor of the [i]Howling Void's[/i] thaumic lightning cannon on a greater deity. It had taken a huge amount of raw mana from Temnis - equivalent to over a year's planetary production. The weapon - at that point little more than a giant wand or magic staff - had to be mounted on a massive fixed installation. But the look of total and complete incomprehension on the god's manifested face when he had looked up to see a Gate open right into the heart of his divine realm in front of and then literally, impossibly, been shot dead was a fond memory.

The Lichemaster could not fight and kill a god all by himself... But as a power, an army and a nation, the Aotrs COULD.

They'd had to.