LT: 9.4 Ascent

Ascent 9.4

2005, August 9: Adelaide, Australia

I remained within the several blocks of the city nearest to the coast, acting as underwater rescue. Eidolon was busy blocking the waves. Legend and Hero led mobile artillery teams against leviathan. Alexandria was our foremost brute, even if all she could do was get in the endbringer’s way. Capes who could move fluidly in water were few and far between.

I would dive, save a few people, then rush to the surface to collect myself before moving on towards another target. 

Whenever I came up for air, I’d take a minute to confirm Leviathan’s position, ensuring that between Dragon, Hero, and myself, he never managed to lose us in the rain.

Leviathan kept destroying my dragonfly drones, so I had to stagger their deployment, keep them from drawing too close. Otherwise, he’d condense the rain around them and smash them out of the sky. It was nice, a much appreciated distraction from the water.

Almost thirty minutes through the battle, I heard Dragon report, “Leviathan is headed towards the B-2 endbringer shelter. All combatants respond.”

“On my way,” I replied. I was on the edge of A-2, a mere three blocks away from the shelter.

This one was a high school auditorium that had been reinforced with a dome. It was probably cheaper to build than an underground bunker, but I couldn’t help but question their choices.

Then again, maybe there were advantages to not being underground. The walls weren’t as thick, but the shelter was harder to flood. And, I’d heard that foreign capes getting lost and being unable to find a shelter was a real possibility when said shelter was a fancy hole in the ground. At least with that big dome, everyone knew it for what it was.

“Hyunmu? Are you sure?” Dragon asked. Despite technically being a toddler in age, she’d taken on a big sister-esque personality where Riley and I were concerned.

“I am. I’ll manage, Dragon,” I replied firmly. I had to step up. Otherwise, I felt I’d never would.

To my surprise, I wasn’t the first to arrive.

I found Baihu there, already scratching at Leviathan like the world’s most pissed off cat. He didn’t look at all like a tiger, but he did have the ferocity down to a tee. Judging by the deep gouges that ran along Leviathan’s back, Baihu hadn’t so much beaten me here as ridden Leviathan like a tick on a dog. Whatever else he was, he sure as hell was no coward.

Endbringer shelters could house thousands of people because they weren’t meant for long-term habitation. They just needed to be durable enough to survive for a few hours, tops. That meant most were standing room only, with a few allowances made for the elderly, pregnant mothers, et cetera.

If Leviathan got inside one, the civilians would be massacred. Thousands would die in seconds, the very shelter that promised them protection becoming a mass grave.

There was nothing for it. Maybe it’d be like a pair of sparrows dive-bombing a bear, but I had to help Baihu hold him off.

“Engaging Leviathan,” I told Dragon. “Baihu and I will hold him off for as long as possible.”

“Understood. ETA two minutes. Be careful.”

I choked out a laugh. “When am I not?”

Though I could not rely on the Kindred this time, I was far from helpless. At this point, I had a respectable grounding in multiple martial disciplines taught across Ionia. I had armor most people would kill for, weapons that could put the majority of heroes' to shame, and the World Rune's various boons. Plenty of people who fought the endbringer did so with less.

That didn't make the prospect any more attractive.

I emptied another four shots into Leviathan at range. As fast as I could travel, I didn't have the time to reload more than once, but my mass accelerator wasn't doing as much as I'd like anyway.

As I neared, I heard Baihu shout something in Cantonese, not that I knew enough to do more than recognize a few swears. He laughed like a madman, cackling and roaring with a delighted smile on his face that could not be faked. His limbs were a flailing mass that even I had trouble tracking, each swing allowing his flexible arms to sink his claws into Leviathan with the crack of whips.

I swiftly took out two of my sister’s syringes before jamming them haphazardly into my thigh. These were special. Rather than their regular payloads, these contained concentrated doses of the Elixir of Iron and Elixir of Wrath, and not those watered down variants handed out to capes with barely any mana in their bodies.

A bark of laughter tore itself from my throat as mana coursed through my muscles. Using them together was dangerous for the average mage, but the strain was nothing compared to housing the Kindred. With skin like iron and strength empowered beyond even Zaun’s most violent chemtech berserkers, I charged.

Isolde grew and lengthened, becoming the equivalent of a cavalry lance. I stabbed at Leviathan with all the reinforced strength I could muster, point aimed directly at the central part of his chest where I knew the core to be.

Leviathan, distracted from Baihu’s onslaught, could not defend himself from my thrust. I struck true and felt the tip of my blade bury itself into his flesh. 

Such was my newfound strength that for a moment, I managed to stop Leviathan cold, his full nine tons and near supersonic momentum held against the tip of my blade. I dared hope that I’d at least scratched his core with such a deep thrust.

Then again, I’d never been that lucky. The first layer caved with ease, no more durable than aluminum, but that changed quickly. Every subsequent layer was twice as resilient as the last. I didn’t know how many layers I pierced through, I couldn’t see into the endbringer, but I could feel that it wasn’t nearly deep enough.

I settled for the next best thing. Scissors still stuck inside Leviathan, I pulled the two blades apart and tore Isolde away in a move that would have damn near bisected any other opponent.

He clawed at me with enough force to crumple a school bus like a tin can, but I saw that coming. I leaned my body out of the way and shrank Isolde until it was only twice the length of my palm. 

Then, his tail lashed at me with the crack of thunder. Without my unique eyes, it would have been impossible to follow. The blow would have torn me in half, like a mooring rope that suddenly snapped from the tension.

Time-Warp Tonic kicked in. The potions I’d consumed triggered the lesser rune, giving me a brief moment of clarity. My personal time accelerated and allowed me to use Isolde’s shortened blade like a parrying dagger, catching the whiplike appendage on the looping handle and redirecting its momentum over my head.

Leviathan was strong. That went without saying, but there was a world of difference between simply knowing and feeling his strength firsthand. Several more blows followed, each hit reminding me of Alexandria at her best.

His tail cracked like a whip once more, curving up from the flooded street without losing any momentum. I caught it on Isolde, but my potions didn’t make me any heavier. I was launched like a rocket, clear into the air.

Baihu laughed and shouted something else. The crazy bastard didn’t miss a beat and used my liftoff as the chance to claw at Leviathan. He took the water echo directly with his body so he’d get that extra chance to claw at our opponent.

The endbringer had sent me at least fifteen stories in the air. I caught myself, forming a platform of condensed clouds beneath my feet. Then, head pointed down and feet towards the sun, I kicked off like a dart.

The World Rune ignited in my soul. One of the Keystones rotated into prominence, like a constellation coming into view. A book as old as Runeterra itself opened in my mind’s eye with a fluttering of pages.

For a moment, I could almost smell the scent of old parchment. It was the Unsealed Spellbook, a record of some of the most foundational spells in Runeterra’s history, spells which inspired countless schools of magic.

Words came to my lips unbidden, in a language I’d never heard. I’d never spoken these words before, but nor had I delved so deep into the Unsealed Spellbook either. Usually, I preferred to engrave these spells into objects using runes, not cast them personally.

Yet, they were familiar, each syllable as native to my ears as Korean or English.

And why wouldn’t they be? What was a rune if not a means of communication? What was the World Rune but the origin of all language?

Every tongue and every script used on Runeterra originated from the World Runes, just as the world itself had. And just as my World Rune kept a record of Inspiration, so too did it keep a record of language. From the dialects spoken in the Kumungu Jungle to the eloquent speeches of Demacia’s nobility, I knew that I could speak them all, and with them came the spellwords favored by each culture’s mages.

Smite, a spell of pure force, smashed down onto Leviathan. There was little refinement to it, no elemental alignment, no shape given to maximize the impact. Raw kinetic force replaced the artistry of a true spellweaver.

My spell struck Leviathan’s head like a hammer, snapping his skull back with neck-breaking force. I continued my assault, knowing that wasn’t even an inconvenience. Out behind my head, I saw Baihu’s claws rake towards us, nearly on course to take off my arm as well as take a chunk out of Leviathan. I dodged out of the way, using the shifting size of Isolde to alter my center of balance.

I frowned. The reports were always a little ambiguous where the Saint Beasts were concerned. Whip-like arms that could extend almost indefinitely made Baihu a formidable opponent, but whips weren’t known for their precision.

Did he just not have precise control over his limbs once he got going? Or was he so much of a battle maniac that he didn’t care if he cut his allies? For all I knew, he slowly lost his mind over time, like Brockton’s own escalating changer.

I rejoined this three-way dance while taking him into account. From this point, it’d be better to assume my ally was temporarily insane. Fortunately, I could see in all directions so keeping an eye on his two flailing limbs was merely challenging, not impossible.

Still, dealing with Leviathan, his water echo, and murder-Gollum’s occasional slips taxed me like only one other opponent had before. It took all my training in Shojin kenpo and Wukong’s unique brand of Wuju to keep my head attached to my shoulders.

On the plus side, the two of us were keeping Leviathan occupied. He didn’t have time to so much as glance at the shelter without one of us trying to slit his throat or carve out his heart.

To make it easier on myself I released a blast of cold air from my armor, freezing the water echo. It wasn’t enough to encase Leviathan in ice or anything, not when he constantly outputted more water with his dimensional bullshit,  but it slowed down the echo enough to be more manageable.

Then, I heard it, the oncoming rush of a tidal wave. It was a noise I’d long since grown sick of, but here it was anyway. Never mind that we were several blocks inland, or that there were multiple sturdy buildings between us and the sea; Leviathan was more than happy to bring the sea to us.

The waters came, crashing with a dull roar that drowned out the rain, and I froze.

It wasn’t for long. I’d grown desensitized to my own phobia over the past dozen underwater rescues. But though my inattention lasted for barely a fraction of a second before the Ymelo drew me back to the present, that was already a critical vulnerability. Against an endbringer, not even half a second of distraction was permissible.

Leviathan slammed me into the ground with one hand. Though his claws could not pierce my armor, such was his strength that I felt the force rattle my bones. Then his echo came, a downward pressure that made me feel as if I’d suddenly been thrust into the depths of the Mariana Trench. For a brief instant, Leviathan’s brute force overwhelmed my mana reinforcement and I felt several organs pop like grapes.

I couldn’t even shout in pain. The echo slammed my head against the cement, making me see stars. Water filled my lungs, not that I had the air to shout with.

Vaguely, I saw a barrage of blue and gold lasers. The blue lasers struck with enough concussive force to shatter a building while the gold beams of light seemed to dematerialize sections of the endbringer where he stood.

Hero and Legend had arrived. Their tagalongs wouldn’t be far behind them. I watched, detached from it all, as another tidal wave smashed into the shelter Baihu and I’d been defending. The domed shell held, but I doubted that’d last.

Blood filling my lungs, I reached for my lifeline.

Back when I first moved to DC, I’d been a scared, paranoid child. I’d expected to have Cauldron on my ass from day one. Knowing that was a conversation I couldn’t dodge, I’d sought a position of strength to negotiate from. My metaknowledge had been the answer.

And, to prove I knew what I was talking about, I crafted a way to keep Hero safe from Manton. The Manton Incident happened and the Siberian ripped Hero in half, but he survived thanks to a teleporter I gave him that brought his body to a tank I’d made for that exact purpose. Hero did his goldfish impression, Armsmaster called Hero an exhibitionist, I threatened to sell his bathwater, and all was right with the world.

By using the Water of Life as a catalyst, and relying heavily on the alchemical knowledge of the sages of Helia, I’d crafted a healing agent that could fix any injury or illness. It was ruinously costly in terms of mana and materials, but by the gods was it worth it.

Every Cauldron executive had one, as did Riley, mom, Richter, and Fortuna’’s pet ballet dancer. Of course, I was no exception.

With the last of my strength, I jammed the syringe into my thigh. I felt the Elixir of Life rush through my veins, repairing my pulped organs like they’d never been injured at all.

I stood up and spat out some residual blood to clear my throat.

“Hyunmu, evacuate the shelter!” Hero shouted into my ear. It was as good a plan as any. I’d done what damage I could and didn’t enjoy the thought of ramming my head into a brick wall. Better that I do something useful.

I left Leviathan to the ranged blasters and hopped into the air. I stood atop the structure and began to dig. Without the endbringer’s dimensional nonsense, the shelter was laughably easy to breach. Concrete? Tinkertech-adjacent building materials? None of that mattered. A single, overpowered Smite and a downward cleave from Isolde was enough to pry myself a neat hole.

There were lots of screaming people inside. Granted, the shelter being breached wasn’t usually a good thing, but I had sensitive ears, damnit. At least these guys spoke English.

I dove down and swung Isolde in a large windmill. The enchanted scissors extended as I swung, until it became too large for the shelter and lodged itself into the wall. The deafening screech of severed metal and sparking concrete quieted those below.

I looked down at them from halfway up the dome, sitting on the handle of a massive pair of scissors. I offered them a jaunty wave, Alexandria did say first impressions were important.

“Tally ho, guv’nuh!” I paused and hummed in thought. “Wait, you’re Aussies, not Brits. Eh, whatever, all’s the same under the queen and all that, right?”

Bewildered silence greeted me. Not to toot my own horn, but I was one of the most recognizable capes in the world. Even halfway across the world, a fair number of people in the crowd knew my name.

“Hyunmu! It’s Hyunmu!”

“Who?”

“Turtle-boy!”

I sighed. That was what I got for having an animal theme. No one else on the exec team had an animal theme. “Enough, we’re not too pressed for time, but the heroes are holding Leviathan off while I evacuate you lot. Let’s not give them one more thing to worry about.”

So saying, I held out the Wayfinder and fired at the ground below.

Like my gun, the Wayfinder was another relic weapon, tools used by the Sentinels of Light to combat the corrupting influence of the Shadow Isles. For whatever reason, the original smith had shaped it into a literal portal gun and I’d seen no reason to change that.

It was also a one-way trip. Portals could be made from anywhere, but they only led to an area covered by the Worldstone Network. Seeing how I’d yet to expand to Australia, anyone who went through my portal would have to wait until someone sent them back or apply for asylum in the United States.

That wasn’t any of my business though; I’d let the politicians figure that out. Here and now, my priority was getting everyone out of Leviathan’s way.

My Wayfinder glowed a brilliant white before launching an orb of mana down below. There, it opened into a glowing, white disc twice as tall as a grown man.

Opening a portal here was like throwing a zebra into a den of starving lions. People immediately began to shove each other out of the way, desperate to be the first to go through.

I drew upon the True Ice embedded in my armor and crashed down with enough force to shatter the concrete below. A U-shaped wall of ice formed around the portal. Though my ice would never hold against Leviathan, normal humans weren’t anywhere near strong enough.

“Single file!” I shouted.

Over the next several minutes, I evacuated several thousand people. They were being sent to Phoenix. Director Lyons would probably chew me out for this later, but Phoenix was the first city that came to mind.

As the home my mother and I settled on, the city had been among the first I’d ever added to the Worldstone Network. And, because of my presence there as both Hyunmu and Rubedo, the local government had spent a lot of money on building refugee camps on the outskirts. Phoenix really was among the best places I could send them.

“Hyunmu, how are things going in there?” Dragon asked.

“Everyone’s just about through. How’s Leviathan?”

“My Azrael Mk. II is totalled,” she said, stoically. It was about as close to pouting as an AI could get. “Hero is moderately injured. Eidolon is still on the coast. Alexandria has arrived.”

“Hero’s Stilling. Has he deployed it yet?”

“He has not found the chance to use his latest weapon, no. But he believes it will only pierce a handful of layers of the endbringer’s defenses. Any more and it will not have the penetrative force needed to breach the core.”

“Then we give him the chance.” 

“You have a plan.”

“Anivia’s Grace. At its best, it’s a zone of absolute zero temperature and bone-shattering wind. It’ll disintegrate virtually anything. Alexandria was immune, but–”

“An endbringer’s spatial layers are meant to be broken so as to give fighters hope. You think Leviathan will not be as durable,” Dragon finished for me.

“Yes. It probably won’t reach the core, but it should give Hero his shot.”

“And if Leviathan primes his core to explode?”

Right, that was a thing endbringers could do. Behemoth did it in canon in New Delhi as a final “fuck you” to the defenders.

One theory said that only Behemoth could do it because he was the dynakinetic in that fucked up family. During Gold Morning, Leviathan was killed by Scion and he just crumbled.

It made some sense, but I was skeptical. Any Shard with enough power to fold dimensions should be capable of causing that kind of explosion, dynakinesis be damned.

While Leviathan didn’t explode during Gold Morning, nothing about Gold Morning was normal and I was loath to take that at face value. Would Scion’s own predictive algorithm have allowed him to neutralize that final explosion? Was it a unique interaction between endbringer cores and the Stilling?

I had no idea. Two dead endbringers were hardly a reliable sample size.

“Then I guess we’ll see if my field can bleed that energy too,” I said finally. “Don’t worry, everyone else will be long dead or far away before that point.”

“We’re more worried about your survival, Hyunmu,” she said, frustration clear.

My hand went to a small object in my pocket. It was yet another boon from the World Rune, an artifact of absolute, inviolable certainty. “I can survive it. Just once, but it’s worth it.”

“I… Okay, Hyunmu. I’ll pass the plan along.”

“Evacuate everyone. Heroes included. My field is indiscriminate. The smallest I can make still has an eight hundred meter diameter. Hero’s going to have to shoot from outside that range.”

“Four hundred meters should be well within his range. Can you create a bubble to protect people inside?”

I shook my head. “Not this time, not like Eagleton. There’s too much chance of Leviathan escaping. If anyone’s caught inside, they die. Hell, even Alexandria has to hold her breath inside my field.”

“I understand. I’ll let them know.”

Plan made, I closed the Wayfinder and headed back out to the battle.

Already, I could see several capes disengaging as Dragon’s message played through their armbands. Good policy, that: When a tinker said they had a superweapon; the ones with good sense ran the other way.

Baihu didn’t get the memo. He kept fighting like a madman, slashing at Leviathan with all the single-minded viciousness of a rabid dog.

“Do you speak Cantonese?” I asked Dragon.

“Of course I do. Baihu is more akin to a berserker than a civilized cape at this point,” she huffed. “Alexandria says to go ahead. If she has the chance, she’ll drag him out herself.”

I nodded. That was the best I was likely to get. With the shelter emptied, there were no civilians around. As soon as the last hero left, I could cut loose.

Soon, only a handful of people were left. There were a few of the speediest blasters like Legend, who could simply zip out of range with a second of forewarning. There were also a few brutes, or force field generators, who clearly didn’t get the memo.

“They said they could handle the cold,” Dragon informed me.

“Did you explain what the fuck ‘absolute zero’ means?”

“Father was correct. Human arrogance is an impressive thing.”

“Fucking idiots,” I swore. I took a deep breath and ran along the sky until I was directly above Leviathan. This was the best I’d get. I’d have blood on my hands, but at least these idiots were dying for a good cause. “Descent in five.”

“Affirmative”

“Five…” I spoke into the comms.

Down below, I saw some of the blasters make ready to leave.

Ice gathered in my hands as I channeled the same spell I’d used to summon an avatar of the Cryophoenix so many years before. Then, it’d been a dance, a ritual done on the winter solstice to beckon the Great Eagle to me.

As I’d told those children at Lordsmith: The Eagle was a friend to humanity, and to the Turtle.

“Four…”

Leviathan launched himself into the air to pick one blaster out of the air, her body crushed before one of my drones could get to her. She wasn’t the only one having a hard time. With so few people left to delay Leviathan, the burden on the shoulders of remaining heroes was immense.

Slowly but surely, a miniature phoenix formed in my hands. I could feel the winter calling. The wind howled in my ears, a song that drowned out the battering rain.

I’d saved so many today, either indirectly through my drones or directly with my own hands. But I’d seen just as much death. There were so many who couldn’t be saved, people whose lives mattered to someone else.

“Three…”

When he landed, he came down with enough force to crater the ground. A torrent of water lashed out in every direction, sending the surrounding brutes into disarray.

The sky itself seemed to shift, as if preparing for the arrival of its rightful sovereign. Rain froze into hail. If the raindrops felt solid before, they now struck with tearing force, almost as bad as a sandblaster ripping at tender flesh. Just being in my vicinity was dangerous for a normal person.

“Two…”

Alexandria ignored all of that like the flying brick she was. She punched straight through the wave and jammed her fist into his eye. As vestigial as the organ was, she must have found something to hold onto, because she hung there like a ragdoll, refusing to let go and pulling him down.

A few of the injured brutes tried to leave. Perhaps they finally realized they were in over their heads. Or maybe they thought that they’d have enough time to get out of dodge.

Standing here, getting ready to kill my own allies in an attempt to create an opening for Hero, I couldn’t help but feel I’d begun to understand. Maybe not in its entirety, but just a sliver of Anivia’s self-imposed duty.

In Freljordian myth, the Great Eagle wasn’t just the goddess of winter. She was also the goddess of death and rebirth, the one who heralded the coming of spring and the renewal of the cycle.

The winter was a ruthless killer. It starved and froze and brought untold destruction without care for any individual. But it was also an opportunity, a promise, a chance at something new, something brighter.

Maybe I was letting the high of the spell get to me, but I wondered if that was also my lot. Much as Anivia watched over countless seasons, perhaps I too would one day watch over countless lives.

The thought resonated with me. Let the Wolf give chase. Let the Lamb grant mercy. Through it all, I would bear witness.

“One…” 

I felt for them. I recognized a few. Bastion, the newly appointed head of the Boston Protectorate, wouldn’t be going home today. Some of these were locals, brave people who felt they shouldn’t leave the welfare of their city in someone else’s hands.

And yet, it was too late. Already, I could see Leviathan begin to shake Alexandria off. Indestructible she might have been, but as far as Leviathan was concerned, the best she could do was become an anchor around his neck, maybe slow him down for a minute or three.

I could not wait any longer. I struck down like any icy meteor, hand outstretched for Leviathan’s head.

“Anivia’s Grace.”

It was a whisper, a soft-spoken invitation to a dear friend. A sapphire eagle spread its wings from my hand, enveloping me in sheer, biting cold.

For a moment, the world stood still. Alexandria hung in the air, her momentum frozen before her Shard reasserted itself. I saw Legend grab two people and blink out of range, knowing exactly what was coming.

Everyone else was nowhere near as lucky.

Just as it had in Eagleton, my strongest spell tore through the area. Nothing was spared, no distinction made between living or nonliving things. A wave of cold froze the very atoms that made up this world until a world of gray greeted me.

Then came the wind. It howled and tore at the newly brittle structures, eroding them all away. It was almost like watching time speed up, the work of millennia done in the span of seconds.

Nor was Leviathan spared. The outer layers of his crystalline flesh, almost entirely regenerated throughout the battle, vanished in an instant. It was a little like watching dust clouds emerge from an old rug that had been taken outside and beaten. The water his Shard expelled merely added to the destruction.

I could see him lose layers with each additional second I maintained this storm. Each dimensional layer took a little more time to erode, as expected of the increased density, but he wasn’t immune. Fortunately, mana was the one thing I could never run out of. Eventually, Leviathan was left looking anemic, almost like a wireframe skeleton of an endbringer some sculptor had yet to flesh out, not that anyone else could hope to see into this storm.

We reached an equilibrium, he and I. My winter winds battered his body, but his core continued to extrude more and more material, constantly reinforcing his skeleton. The rate at which my winds eroded his body balanced out against his rate of regeneration.

He tried to escape, but all motion save my own winds were forms of energy, energy my spell sapped to almost nothing. Alexandria, free to move in her dimensional bubble, tackled him to the ground, helping to keep him trapped.

Then, when Alexandria tapped her throat for breath, I released the spell. Several things happened all at once.

A veritable geyser erupted from Leviathan as he attempted to launch himself into the air. Alexandria grabbed him by the tail and tried to yank him back down. She was successful for a moment, but he soon broke free by drowning her, her breath already taxed by staying in my spell.

But that moment, as brief as it was, was enough. Hero had not squandered this chance. Four hundred meters away, I saw Hero take his shot, a massive gun held aloft on one shoulder. A needle-thin beam of golden light carved a line through Leviathan’s chest.

I tensed, hand on the Commencing Stopwatch. For but a few seconds, it would make me completely invulnerable, removing me wholly from the flow of time. If Leviathan did have a sacrificial card up his sleeve, I’d be ready.

Then, almost anticlimactically, the second endbringer crumbled away.

Author’s Note

Leviathan’s physical feats are all over the place. He can run up a building and launch himself with enough force to clear twenty feet past the rooftop. He can lunge as fast as a locomotive (up to 150 mph in the US). He can swipe his claws as fast as a speeding car (~60 mph). That’s all taken directly from Taylor’s observations.

That said, there’re a lot of people who claim Leviathan is hundreds of times faster than sound. The argument for this comes from the fact that when running on all fours, he is fast enough to run on water. Given his nine tons, he’d need upwards of 2200,000 mph to do that.

Except that obviously doesn’t track with Taylor’s observations. Also note that Armsmaster, a non-mover, was able to dodge Leviathan’s strikes and grapple himself out of the way of a “water-walking” charge with his hook. We also see Clockblocker tag Leviathan as well.

Given the above, I’m in the camp that thinks Leviathan runs on water with the help of his hydrokinesis, not pure speed.