“Greetings, graduate!” the skull said, smiling. At least smiling as much as possible given that it was missing a lower jaw… and flesh.

Honoria stopped short at the door to her chambers. “Who are you, then?”

“I’m your new assistant! Have someone who is not dead, that you would like dead thanks to the undead? I’m your skull!”

“And the moral implications of that are–“

“Not my concern!  You worry about the why, I worry about the how.”

“How about you shut up?”

The skull went quiet.  Well, crapweasels. If it was compelled to obey her, it was bonded to her.

“Why do you have a glass stuck to your ear?” She wasn’t sure how it did it, but it looked like it was bursting at the seams to talk. Whoever hated stuck her with this thing was capable of some seriously impressive magic. “You may speak.”

“I’m being utterly sneaky. Wanna hear what Old Gravedigger says about you?”

“Who?”

“Professor Graves!”

“Don’t be rude, skull.”

“Hate the message, not the messenger.  So who we gonna kill, mage-meister, huh? Ophelia Obermeier? Claudius Christensen? Gerrrrrrtruuuuude?”

Honoria spent a minute trying to figure out who those people were. Then everything clicked into place. 

“Skull…. what’s your name?”

“FINALLY!  I, Yorick, am yours to command.”

“Yorick? Hamlet’s Yorick? The king’s jester, Yorick?”

The glass flew away from Yorick’s ear and he burst out laughing. “Alas poor Hamlet. I knew him well, Honoria.”