"'Not having free will' sounds like an accurate description of the thing, sort of! It is an unsettling thing! I'm not sure if it's okay to do that to a sapient species, and it was definitely done, it has a design sense! The design sense is very elegant!"

"Elegant's one word for it."

"Eru. He created the universe. I've never met anyone who desperately wanted free will, and I'm not sure what'd happen if you tampered."

"I am not a tamperer. I just squint at things," says Lazarus. "I have now squinted at you. Do you want Keziah to de-gook you of the horrible curse and/or the unbreakable oaths?"

"Curse, Halls yes, oaths I'll keep if she can separate like that, a lot of them are oaths not to reveal strategically important information under torture and Pen thinks you'll obviate that but you haven't yet and she said in some worlds it takes a long time for one reason or another."

"...I don't actually know if I can separate it," Keziah says dubiously. "I just degook as all one thing."

"We will certainly do our best to obviate that but we aren't actually omnipotent - and your world's not Downsideable, either."

"Then go ahead and degook, I can swear the oaths again."

Maedhros arrives. "Ah, Angela, Lazarus, Keziah, Glass, this is my brother."

Maedhros looks respectably awed and delighted. 

"Hello, pleased to meet you -" She tightens her grip on Keziah's collar.

Keziah makes a very unhappy noise. "He has an extra thing!"

"- sorry, Keziah was called in to make sure there wasn't any unpleasant magic clinging to Pen and it turns out she doesn't like oaths or Doom or whatever extra thing you have, Lazarus what is it -"

He blinks at Maedhros.

"...Obnoxious amounts of memory-related mental tampering," he says after a second or two.

"Yes."

"Fix it!" Pen yells over her shoulder.

"I apologize for her. Pen wants me to fix your scars, Keziah wants to remove all three things she's observed from your person, I suspect somehow we've come up on a deeply incorrect priority order here but because your world's not Downsideable it will require special caution anyway."

"The best priority order would indeed be to stop the person doing it. The scars do not especially bother me but I could use two hands probably as much as everyone can use two hands, if you can do that. I would like all magical mind-tampering gone as soon as possible."

"Keziah will need to touch you to 'degook' you - treasure, do you need Céleste too?"

"Mmmmmaybe yes."

Céleste appears. "Oh no!" she exclaims of the Elves.

"Apparently the evils wrought by our Enemy are visible to your people?"

"It's just our template, we have almost the same ingot power, I'm here to fix that, right?"

"Yeah c'mon." And they reach in Maedhros's direction.

He does not flinch, though it takes an extraordinary effort.

The process is not painless, but it is not-painless in a sort of pleasant way if you are the sort of person who finds being unburdened of various magical horror pleasant.

"Thank you," he says levelly at the end of it. "I swear never to tell anyone anything of strategic relevance or bring about their awareness of it if I have reason to believe I am in Enemy custody."