The thing with Helena was that she was a pure wind mage, and amongst the four most basic elements, wind was a tricky one, energy wielders created their constructs and elements from nothing but their energy, in this case, mana.
But as with most things, they could do more than just that, earth mage had the bad habit of shoving their mana into the ground to cast their spells, using already existing earth to manifest their magic, but all mages could do that to some extent, naturally, if the the affinity aligned well with the thing that was being imbued with mana and which the caster was trying to exert control over, the result would be better.
