Warning: Gore. Maybe not the best gore on the website, but still gore nonetheless. It contains a passage about rotting bodies. If you don't like that kind of stuff, feel free to skip.
Death
Wasn't it funny, how things died? Wasn't it odd, the contradiction between life and death, the foolhardy struggle to cling to life when you have nothing to live for? Astaroth always thought so, in an almost ironic sense, and perhaps he should. After all, as the King of Rot, he knew what it was to decay, slowly fade away until nothing but faded bones remained.
It was more vexing to him to watch a corpse die and decay than anything else. He didn't care much for what happened to its spirit, as much as he did observing. Watching, over weeks, as flies began circling the corpse and lay tiny eggs inside their muscles, in the ears, the blanched, life-drained eyes. Watching as the maggots hatched and feasted on the pale flesh, squirming and spasming. Slowly, they grew, and slowly the flesh, as did the organs, the tendons, replaced by the smell of decaying leaves.
When gone, all that was left was a shell. No eyes, no tongue, no heart. Perhaps there would be skin remaining, or fur, or feathers (depending on the corpse), but most likely, by this point, a stray animal will have takne what hadn't been left by infant flies.
This was only if the body wasn't found by a human, though. If it was a human body, they'd panic, scream, call for help. It always startled Coal Tars that swarmed around such bodies and made them scatter. But no matter what, it was always enjoyable to watch something just rot. And to watch things die, under his fingers, to see the life drain from its eyes and feel the steady pulse of breath disappear, it was...
Reason why Astaroth was attracted to Shiratori? He liked killing things as much as Astaroth liked watching it decay.