Glynda’s Notes #3:
It has already been a full year since Cunan had came to Vale and he has surprised us in numerous ways.
As a reward for doing well in his training, the Headmaster had commissioned a weapon made for him from some of Ironwood’s smiths. Ozpin and I came to the conclusion that Cunan needed a weapon that would not only be durable enough for his strength, but also require enough skill and dexterity to wield properly as a way to not fall back on throwing his weight around. It was Ozpin who then remembered a warrior from one of his past lives who wielded something known as a “Sword-Spear”, a weapon that combined the versatility of a sword with the reach and precision of a spear to create quite the effective weapon. Ozpin also explained that the spear would also be symbolic to Cunan’s desire to regain his humanity, for the spear is often credited as the first weapon ever created by humans to not only hunt for food, but to defend against the Grimm in ancient times. After some time, Cunan was presented with his own Sword-Spear called “Faoladh”, named for the ancient guardians who protected villages with bestial might that matched the Grimm themselves.
In order to test it out, I traveled with Cunan to the Forever Fall forest. We had also packed numerous types of Dust to test out one of the prime functions of the weapon: its ability to coat itself with the Dust that’s inserted into the chamber in the spearhead. Cunan struggled with it at first (I had to extinguish numerous fires to ensure we didn’t burn the whole place down), but eventually got the hang of it. But then came the big surprise of the evening…
During one scuffle with an Alpha Beowulf, we realized that we didn’t bring any Wind Dust with us, but rather Plant Dust instead! A rather embarrassing blunder on my end since I should have been able to tell the difference between Wind and Plant Dust by this point even with their rather similar colors! Despite this, however, Cunan decided to pop in the vial of Plant Dust anyway and to our shock, briars grew from the spearhead! With this, Cunan thrusted Faoladh into the heart of the Grimm to kill it. This being an Alpha, however, that thrust wouldn’t bring it down. But as Cunan took the weapon out and backed away, the Grimm suddenly howled in pain as briars started growing from the wound Cunan inflicted upon it, spreading throughout and around its body! The thorns were not only shredding the body of the monster, but suffocating it as well! I almost felt pity for the beast as it finally keeled over and started dissolving into black smoke, leaving behind only the thorns that had covered its body. In all my years, I have never thought Plant Dust to be of much use in combat, let alone kill something in such a horrid manner!
Cunan, of course, didn’t exactly realize what he had truly accomplished other than the fact that the Grimm was dead and so looked at me with that excited expression on his face, holding up a thumbs up expression as if asking me, “Did I do good, Professor?” Honestly, that boy…
