Dawn's first light had yet to kiss the horizon when Smaug's eye, radiant as a captured comet, creaked open. Warily, the grand dragon uncoiled within the crystalline confines of her aquatic prison, her mind a whirlpool of fragmented thoughts—half-dreams of freedom that dissolved upon waking. The Chancellor, a shadowy puppeteer, had gleaned his coveted secrets from her, no doubt; his instructions to the white-coated tormentors had softened, now they ceased their incessant prodding and allowed her more glimpses of the world beyond the glass, as if to tempt her with the bittersweet taste of flight once more.

Now, she lay submerged—a sentinel beneath emerald waves, her vision blurring the lab beyond into an undersea mirage. Nearby, Anakin's voice wove through the currents in hushed urgency, his words for Commander Fox alone, a clandestine breeze that sought to evade the prying ears of the doctors still orbiting Smaug's tank.

"We should free her now," Anakin murmured, conviction burning bright in his clandestine argument, yet Fox's head swayed with caution, his stance firm as an ancient oak. "No, no, unleashing her now would send the Chancellor into a frenzy. We will wait for the shroud of midnight," he countered, his voice a whisper against the storm of implications such rash actions would entail.

 "To stand by and let that despot return to her cell, to condone her silent screams and witness her tormented every single day?" he spat, his fists clenched like clenched stars about to supernova. In the dim glow of the laboratory lights, the Jedi's eyes were twin tempests, wild and wide with a fire kindled by Smaug's suffering.

Commander Fox, ever the bulwark in the face of danger, gently laid a palm upon the Jedi's shoulder, a silent plea for calm carved in the lines of his weathered face. "My objections are not born out of indifference," he murmured, his voice a somber note amidst the veil of Anakin's fury. "Patience, Anakin. Recklessness now could see us dismantled, scrapped. Do you not grasp the precipice on which we teeter?" His thumb brushed the fabric of Anakin's cloak, as though trying to smother the kindling rage beneath.

"Do you know Smaug as well as you claim, to stake our fates upon her liberation? What of your former master's reaction, should he discern our ruse and bring it before the Council, before the Chancellor? Think of the dungeons, Anakin," Fox continued, the gravity of his words anchoring the moment with a steel-cold clarity.

Anakin's glare bore into Fox, the charged blue of his eyes cutting through the ambient calm like sabers through darkness. "To let her perish within these glass walls, to wither away to nothing—I cannot, I will not stand for that," Anakin snapped, as if his words were the final strike to shatter any semblance of complacency.

Fox's visage darkened, a cloud passing over the normally stoic commander. "Do you truly believe her to be the lone soul I've come to care for in this forsaken place? Understand this—I harbor no desire to continue the cycle of her anguish," he said, releasing his hold as Anakin's scowl softened, replaced by a stormy contemplation. "But if we do this, we do it right, without recklessness. Smaug's freedom must not be the pyre upon which we immolate our cause," Fox concluded, his words not a command but a covenant between warriors.

Anakin exhaled, a heavy breath laden with the weight of their clandestine discourse, and with a slow, resigned nod, acknowledged the path they must take—measured, covert, a dance with shadows. Together, they retreated from the transparent prison, moving beyond the earshot of unwanted listeners, their silhouettes blending with the murky edges of the laboratory.

Back in the aqueous globe of her captivity, Smaug felt the last tendrils of wakefulness slip away as the shape of a white-clad medic eclipsed her dwindling consciousness. His face was a blur—a muddied blend of concern and clinical detachment—as he peered into her domain, making notes on his pad, oblivious to the dragon's internal struggle. Smaug, the once indomitable force of nature, now reduced to a spectral presence in her own body, surrendered to the seductive pull of darkness. In her mind's fading light, the murky waters sang a lullaby, and she drifted into the abyss, anchoring her pain to the hope ignited by whispered promises of liberation.

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The mighty Smaug, erstwhile sovereign of the Lonely Mountain's shadowy hallows, never imagined her waking would be orchestrated to the mechanical clinking against her enclosure—a sound as jarring as it was unexpected. Within her, rage mingled with curiosity, kindling the embers of a long-dormant will. As Anakin's steadfast vow to usher her freedom echoed through her memory, and Commander Fox's imminent plan of action crystallized into reality, she sensed the shift—the veil of night cloaking the laboratory in secrecy and opportunity.

Already the night sky reigns, Smaug mused, the thought coiling within her like smoke billowing from a dragon's maw. Muscle by sinewy muscle, she clenched her formidable talons into a fist, vowing not to idly await her fate any longer.

Resisting the urge to rattle her prison, she unfurled her wings with a collected grace that belied her surging anticipation, ascending slowly, up where the fading effervescence crowned her dark silhouette. The bubbling ceased, the emerald liquid that had been her cold confidante ebbed away, revealing her true grandeur inch by scorched inch. The pod's lid, a sky held captive by mere mortal design, swung open.

A tempest of red light flared, painting the confines of her world in sharp, dangerous hues. Yet they dimmed soon after, swallowed by the stealthy urgency of her night-bound emancipators. Smaug raised her regal head, extending her sinuous neck with the elegance of untamed royalty reclaiming her throne. Her eyes, pools of molten gold, flickered, scanning the domain beyond her—a world poised on the brink of pandemonium.

Her talons, instruments of destruction tender now in purpose, grasped the rim of her glass cage with care—an artisan would not shatter her own sculpture. With measured might, Smaug coaxed her colossal frame from the confines of the tank, her form unfolding like a legend stepping out of myth and into reality. Every action was calculated to avoid drawing the attention of the white-robed scholars scattered beyond her sanctuary. Freedom's perfume wafted through the air, a scent as intoxicating as the promise of vengeance and reunion with the skies from whence she came.