One day, twelve-year-old Arthur Pye is playing the trading-card game Rune Matrix with his friends, when a new card that he plays sends him into a vast Rune-Matrix-like game world, the Land of his Heart. In this strange place, his feelings and the things he believes are brought to life around him.
He is offered a quest that will lead him to the enigmatic Mount of Omnia, but turns it down in favour of one that promises to take him straight back home and out of this strange place. But he discovers that, to achieve that goal, he must solve numerous side-quests which take him across the Land and into all manner of trouble as he searches for seven mysterious black medallions required to open the Black Gate. Suffering extremes of winter cold in Lord North-wind’s mountainous realm, and of desert heat in the Southern Heat of Lady Flame-e’er-lasting desert, he finally collects all the medallions, but finds himself thrown into a deadly trap; and only by calling on God and the mysterious Game Master is he able to be saved and his enemy revealed.
Free once more, he finally accepts his original quest and, in the face of the unrelenting opposition of the nobles of the Land, finds his way to the Mount of Omnia, where the Game Master awaits.
He is offered a quest that will lead him to the enigmatic Mount of Omnia, but turns it down in favour of one that promises to take him straight back home and out of this strange place. But he discovers that, to achieve that goal, he must solve numerous side-quests which take him across the Land and into all manner of trouble as he searches for seven mysterious black medallions required to open the Black Gate. Suffering extremes of winter cold in Lord North-wind’s mountainous realm, and of desert heat in the Southern Heat of Lady Flame-e’er-lasting desert, he finally collects all the medallions, but finds himself thrown into a deadly trap; and only by calling on God and the mysterious Game Master is he able to be saved and his enemy revealed.
Free once more, he finally accepts his original quest and, in the face of the unrelenting opposition of the nobles of the Land, finds his way to the Mount of Omnia, where the Game Master awaits.