| Halt's Ranger Apprentices | This is War | Volume 2 |

CHAPTER TEN

A/N: I kind of gave up on editing, i did a few chapters but I really want to write instead of editing and all your comments are amazing!! I love reading them and I truly mean it when I say THANKYOU! I know it probably doesn't mean so much, but I actually love you guys so much, because without you guys I would've given up on writing!! So, here's the next chapter hope you enjoy!! XD

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Everyone fell silent as Will said those words. Annabelle kept her eyes on Will, as she felt the eyes of Gilan, Horace, Alex, Logan and Devon burning a hold in her back. She clenched her fists tightly to prevent the shaking in them to show. She felt the salty tears drip onto Will's ranger cloak. After several minutes, Annabelle felt a pair of warm hands on her shoulders and turned to see the caramel coloured eyes of Gilan, who she considered as her own brother fill with sympathy. She almost cringed, hating the look he gave her.

Sympathy. It's a word that Annabelle dreads. A look of sympathy turned toward her meant she was weak.

But, for once, Annabelle didn't care anymore. She slowly stood up and instead of adopting a look of strongness, she let her weaknesses show and gripped onto Gilan's shirt pulling him in a tight hug. She felt her leg panging as the clawed wound on her leg kept bleeding out. Annabelle suddenly feel her knees go weak, the shock of the the Loran situation and the Wargals almost killing Will and her wounded leg all seemed too much for her to take in all at once. Gilan gripped onto Annabelle, making sure she didn't fall to the ground. He gently helped Belle sit on the ground and she ripped off another bit of material from her Skandian clothing and wrapped it tightly around her wound.

Gilan shook his head, his face grimaced as her watched the wound getting wrapped up with the material. "That won't be enough for your wound, you need a proper physician to treat it, otherwise it'll get infected." Annabelle shrugged after tying the last knot in the bandage.

"And where do you expect we could find one of those? It's hopeless out here." She then shook here head after a moments pause staring at the material. "I'm not worried about my leg. Right now, we need to focus on getting Will healed so we can follow a Wargal concentration camp to wherever Morgarath's construction is. We need to know what we're up against." Gilan and Horace both simultaneously jerked their heads back at the sudden talk about some sort of construction that Morgarath was building. Belle saw the million questions that were about to pass through the lips of her two friends. But, she began speaking before they could get even a breath in.

"There's a rumour going around that Morgarath is gathering all the Celts to build a contruction since they are miners. Reason why they're all missing. Very few have escaped and the ones who have are hiding somehwere around the otherside of Celtica and are being bottled up by the Wargals which is why we haven't heard anything from Araluen.

"They're basically stranded here, so we're planning on finding one of their groups where some Wargals are bringing in some more Celts and we're going to follow them to the construction. Once we find out what this construction is, we can head back to Araluen and warn them so we have the advantage instead of Morgarath and his stupid Wargals."

The small group was silent for a while, Gilan and Horace speechless from this sudden mass amount of information. Will, Horace and Gilan had noticed that the streets of Celtica had been awfully silent and Gilan's suspicions had been growing, but before he had made any assumptions along came Annabelle.

"You're not going." Gilan said abruptly, breaking the silence among the group. Devon, Alex and Logan giving each other looks of confusion as they had caught on that they were calling her 'Annabelle'. But they kept silent, watching closely as Gilana and Annabelle exchanged words. Alex saw the sudden anger flare in her eyes as Gilan's words passed through his lips.