Leviathan claws can't find purchase

For a handful of seconds, Leviathan seemed almost puzzled, like he didn’t understand what had happened. Lung had fought him to a standstill at Kyushu and Scion had chased him away in Khepri’s version of things, but I couldn’t remember him ever having been stymied like this before.

This must have been the first and only time he’d ever been blocked from even entering the city.

He didn’t stay puzzled for long; after that moment of apparent confusion, he summoned up a geyser of water, pushing himself up and up, and he managed to lift himself maybe twice his body length, sixty feet, before he tried to dig his claws into the surface of the barrier and scale the rest of the way.

It didn’t work.

His claws found no purchase, because they couldn’t punch through and give him the leverage he needed to haul his body up, and they made a piercing shriek that I could hear even from so far away as he slid back down and landed in the water with a great, big splash.