Chapter 1
“Five more minutes, Theo,” Mum said, poking her head around the bedroom door. “You’ve got school tomorrow and you need to get some sleep.”
Theo nodded to show he’d heard, but he kept his hands on the controller and his eyes on the screen in front of him.
He knew he probably should turn off his game and get some sleep, but he’d almost finished level 5 of Starboy and he’d never got that far before. Starboy was a new role-playing game set in Dream Land, and Theo was playing as the main character, Starboy, who had to defeat evil ninja minions in each level. Then in level 10, he’d need to
battle the ninjas’ boss, Nightmare, to save Dream Land and complete the game.
He’d only had Starboy for a week and he’d spent every spare moment playing. Mum kept telling him he needed to get outside more, and that his skateboard and football were getting dusty. His sister Millie said he was addicted to screens, but she just didn’t understand how good this game was.
Theo looked up as his door was shoved open.
“Turn it down, Theo!” Millie shouted. “I can’t hear the TV downstairs.”
“What did you say?” Theo said, pretending not to have heard. He pushed his blond hair out of his eyes.
“Argh!” Millie yelled at him. “Mum, he’s still playing, and he won’t turn it down.”
“Theo,” Mum called up with a warning note in her voice.
Theo could hear her clattering about downstairs, probably doing the dishes in their tiny fisherman’s
cottage kitchen. They’d had big bowls of pasta for tea – Mum was always hungry after teaching surfing all day. Theo was always hungry after gaming.
“All right, all right,” he said, as he turned the volume down.
Millie didn’t thank him; she just stormed back out of his room, leaving his door ajar.
As soon as she’d gone, he turned the volume back up again.
Theo focused back on his character, Starboy, and aimed a spinning kick at one of Nightmare’s ninja minions. It was impossible to tell if he’d battled it before because they all looked identical –it was small, dressed in red robes with a red
mask covering most of its face apart from a pair of glowing gold eyes. The minion went soaring out of the jungle dream he was in, and Theo smiled to himself.
There were only five more dream levels to get through before he met Nightmare herself. If he managed to vanquish her, he’d save Dream Land from nightmares for good. But each level got harder and harder to complete. There were more ninjas to defeat, and it was getting more difficult to find gemstones for his inventory, too.
Theo was close to the next level; he was sure of it. He ran through the jungle, dodging the poisonous snake that lunged at him from an overhead tree. Then he used the stepping stones to cross the river, jumping over the one he’d discovered was actually an angry hippo.
Next, he climbed up the tallest tree he could find and there, in a parrot’s nest, he reached out to collect the glowing green gemstone. He smiled as it appeared in his inventory at the bottom of the screen.
Green gemstones helped heal you if you
were injured, red ones were for combat and blue ones gave you clues when you got stuck.
Theo currently had two red gemstones, one green one and three blue ones.
He climbed down the tree and ran back over the river.
Next, he had to untangle a tiger that was caught in a trap.
The tiger hissed and spat until it was finally free. Then it opened its mouth to display rows of razor-sharp teeth and a shining gold star.
As Theo collected it and added it to his inventory with the other four stars he’d already won, the message he’d been desperate to see appeared on the screen: “Level 5 complete”.
Theo jumped out of his seat, whooping with delight.
All he had to do now was find a way to get to the next dream level. He’d learnt that the gateway to the next level was always a doorway but that it was different in every dream. It could be a normal looking door or the entrance to an amphitheatre.
“You have stopped gaming, Theo, haven’t you?” Mum called from downstairs.
“Yeah, of course,” Theo called back, guiltily. “Night, Mum.”
He turned the volume right down and explored more of the jungle. There must be a gateway somewhere.
Finally, he found it. It was hidden amongst an overgrown, half-crumbled temple. It looked so cool, Theo wished he could actually explore ruined temples in the jungle. That was what was so fun about games – you got to do all sorts of stuff that you couldn’t do in real life. Or, at least, not when you lived in a tiny village by the sea in Cornwall.
Theo moved Starboy towards the stone archway which had a tiny star engraved on one side of it.