"My sister's Lonely Mountain Castle really is one of a kind in this North buried in ice and snow."
Whenever she had nothing to do, Islyn would often ride her Great Dragon, Skeld, to visit her elder sister, Iseryn. Compared with Moat Cailin, which had grown cold and dreary with the winter, Islyn and her Great Dragon preferred the blazing warmth of Lonely Mountain Castle.
Lonely Mountain Castle was a half-underground dragonstone castle built along the volcano and the excavated tunnels of the gold mines. With Lonely Mountain's volcanic veins and natural hot springs, the castle remained hot even after winter arrived.
Vast stretches of fruit and vegetables grew inside the towering Glass Greenhouses. Ice-and-snow roses unique to the North climbed over every tower of the castle.
Long Lake Town, on the shores of Long Lake, had also taken advantage of the hot springs to build large numbers of platinum greenhouses. Along with Winterfell and Dreadfort, it was one of the few places in the North that could grow fruit and vegetables even in winter.
Thus, Lonely Mountain had been the first to establish its own university, secondary schools, and primary schools. By now, more than eighty percent of the North's children and adolescents had gathered there.
The combined population of Lonely Mountain Castle and Long Lake Town had now exceeded five hundred thousand, making it unquestionably the largest city in the North. Reluctantly, Iseryn had been forced to send half the gold ore mined from Lonely Mountain to Reclea in exchange for enough food to feed them.
Iseryn also had to ride her Great Dragon, Veldrak, out to the Shivering Sea frequently to hunt large fish and sea beasts to supplement their supplies.
Strangely enough, as the temperature dropped, more and more fish and large sea beasts gathered in